On May 12, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: > The QA format, in my opinion, is a very powerful tool for some kinds > of collaborative assistance, and a completely useless tool for others. > It's much easier to find a question with answers than to find a > mailing list thread. It's on the other hand pretty silly to engage in > any sort of extended interactive assistance on it.
That's been my experience as well. The QA format is pretty great for some stuff, but breaks down fast when I have to ask for log files and things of that nature. Another thought. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to just allow tagging and voting on top of a plain mailing list emails. A simple DB with the messageId as the key for tags and vote count then a slightly fancier archive view than we have now. And hey, markdown happens to look nice as plain email. I've actually been indenting code snippets for years. I admit I like getting SO points and badges but they do not factor in at all when looking for the right answer. The tags and votes though are definitely the two critical tools that help me find what i'm looking for. -David
