I like the idea of vote to promote as well as having a searchable
archive of answers on the web. For me it comes down to it being "out of
sight, out of mind". It has to come to my "inbox" for me to pay
attention, which is one of the nice features of the "Code4Lib Jobs"
app. In that vein, StackExchange has an API, which could be used to
simply forward a daily digest of questions to the mailing list. If all
we need is an increase in traffic to establish the forum, that might do it.
Questions could be tagged with "code4lib" to make them easy to
aggregate. For example, we can get all the "php" tagged questions
posted in the past day:
http://api.stackexchange.com/2.1/questions?fromdate=1373155200&todate=1373241600&order=desc&sort=activity&tagged=php&site=stackoverflow
-Shaun
On 7/7/13 4:46 PM, Galen Charlton wrote:
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.
