[yt-dev] Asking questions on StackOverflow

[Matthew Turk]

Hi Nathan,

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I recently subscribed to the [yt] tag on StackExchange.  Now, whenever a
> question is asked using this tag on any StackExchange site, I will get an
> e-mail about it, just like if a question is asked on the users or dev list.
> Currently (as far as I can tell) zero questions have been asked using this
> tag...
>
> If there are a few others who are interested in subscribing to the tag, I
> think it might be worthwhile to add StackOverflow to the website and docs
> where we describe how to get help and also announce on the user’s list that
> StackOverflow is an alternate place to ask questions.
>
> While this might split the community somewhat - not everyone will be
> subscribed to StackOverflow and thus might miss useful info - I think moving
> some helpful suggestions to StackOverflow will massively improve
> googleability of common yt issues, allowing us to avoid answering the same
> questions over and over again.
>
> It might also be worthwhile to ask and answer some common yt questions.  Off
> the top of my head, I think we could at least answer how to load various
> types of datasets into yt.

In principle, I'm okay with this.  But I have a few concerns --

1) I don't think the tag "yt" can be created unless someone with high
reputation does so.  (
http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/create-tags )
2) We have well-defined usage metrics that we can quantify based on
mailing list activity, so this may fragment that.
3) Many of the existing contributors and users don't want another inbox.

*However*.  SO is really quite good for evolving questions and for an
updateable reference.  I do really like that aspect.  But I think we
may find ourselves getting a bit fragmented -- in fact, what I see as
being a possible outcome is that if yt does end up growing into an
interdisciplinary space, we'd see people from non-Astro disciplines
using it, but retaining our original core audience here.  All your
points really are good ones.

I don't know.  Could be awesome.  And, I'd like to see us embrace more
modern and useful methods of communication and outreach.  So ... I
guess the experiment could be a good one!

-Matt

>
> -Nathan
>
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