[osg-users] [ A Stack Overflow for OSG? ]

[Jan Ciger]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 9:34 AM, michael kapelko <kornerr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi.
> I would says from my personal experience that stackoverflow is a great
> place to find answers to common questions and, what's more important, to
> see most upvoted answers.
> Mailing list/forum doesn't have that.
>
> I would also say that moving to Stackoverflow from Mailing list/Forum is
> like moving from self-hosted SVN to Github: the idea is the same, but
> implementation is more convenient (e.g., no need to attach complete files
> where you only need a tiny pull request).
>
> Thanks.
>

You are forgetting that the mailing list is not only for supporting
users/answering questions. For that SO is indeed useful. However, SO is
completely useless as a medium for having a discussion - such as this one.
In fact, such topics get routinely locked there as not being constructive.

Also the mailing list is not a bug tracking system (like the issues page on
Github). Ever tried to have a meaningful discussion using the issues system
there? In fact, that is the part of Github that is the most heavily
criticized and hated, because it is neither a proper bugtracker (lacks more
advanced features to track/assign/classify the problem reports) and neither
a proper discussion forum.

Then there is the aspect of convenience. From my experience as a developer
supporting a few projects, I don't have means nor time to check 10
different websites with 10 different systems every day for what is new and
who needs help. I wouldn't be doing anything else. Email may sound archaic
but it is a great timesaver - because the issue comes to me instead of me
having to search for it. On many forums people are whining that their
questions are not being answered - guess why. If the developer doesn't come
there and read the entire forum every day (super time consuming!), they may
never see it.

Setting up notifications is not really a solution - it still requires you
to context switch, load that page, remember what login you had for that
system, answer the issue - in the same time two or three things could have
been handled already if I was able to use email directly - especially when
I am doing it on my own time. This is why e.g. Github allows to reply to
issues by email as well.

I encourage anyone suggesting that the list moves to some new shiny thing
XY, because it is better/nicer/more modern/I don't like e-mail/forum/etc to
consider these issues in the future. You are getting free support, so
making the life easier for the project leads like Robert is probably the
least they can ask for in exchange.


All the best,

Jan
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