[yt-dev] Asking questions on StackOverflow

[Nathan Goldbaum]

Didn't realize one needs very high reputation to create a new tag - I guess
that makes sense though.

While fragmentation is bad, I'd argue that StackOverflow's high google
ranking negates that somewhat.

Are there any SO users with high reputations who might be interested in
creating the tag?

Barring that, the scicomp beta exchange is also probably a good fit.

On Sunday, November 17, 2013, Matthew Turk wrote:

> Hi Nathan,
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com<javascript:;>>
> 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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> > yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org <javascript:;>
> > http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
> >
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