Hi, On Sun, Jul 7, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Ross Singer <rossfsin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We have pretty established and highly active forums of communication in our > field. What does SE bring to the table that's enough of an advantage to > pull people away from the existing forums? > The main thing that the SE model adds is the ability to build up a set (in one, search-engine-visible place) of consensus answers to questions over time via the process of commenting and up-voting. In other words, I view it as a way to maybe achieve a community-built FAQ or best practices database. Mailing lists and IRC channels provide immediacy, but there are some important library mailing lists whose archives are not (intentionally) accessible to search engines, and there are none that I'm aware of that try to maintain a community-curated set of "best" questions and answers. Of course, for that model to work, there has to be a sizable number people participating and actually getting answers to their questions (as opposed to caviling about asking their questions "properly"). Providing immediate and (hopefully) well-informed answers to questions would have to be priority for the community of users; a goal of building a knowledge base would not be achievable without a recognition that it's necessarily a secondary goal. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: g...@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web: http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org & http://evergreen-ils.org