All, In recent years, DSpace Committers have noticed that it can sometimes be difficult to determine the "best answer" to a question on mailing lists. Even when you get a good answer to your question, you may not be able to tell if it is the "best" or accepted answer, or if it's just one of several possible answers. In addition, the good answers on mailing lists don't always float to the top when you search a topic in Google (or similar).
To this end, the DSpace Committers would like to encourage anyone to ask DSpace-related technical questions on StackOverflow.com! (If you prefer email, you are still more than welcome to continue asking questions on our mailing lists. We will continue to answer technical questions on lists as well.) StackOverflow has the potential to help us solve (or improve upon) these scenarios. On StackOverflow, questions and answers appear prominently in Google search results, and users have the ability to "vote up" the best answer to a specific question. For more details on how you may ask DSpace questions (or help us answer questions on StackOverflow), we've created a "Guide to Posting DSpace Technical Questions to StackOverflow": https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Guide+to+Posting+Technical+Questions+to+StackOverflow I've included a plain-text version of this guide at the end of this email (see below) While we will continue to support all types of questions on our DSpace mailing lists, we hope you will consider collaborating with us on StackOverflow in the near future! - Tim Donohue (on behalf of the DSpace Committers) ====================================================== Guide to Posting Technical Questions to StackOverflow ====================================================== == Why ask technical questions on StackOverflow? == You are still more than welcome to continue to ask technical questions about DSpace on mailing lists (specifically dspace-tech and dspace-devel). DSpace Developers have noticed that it can sometimes be difficult to determine the "best answer" to a question on mailing lists (or even in the mailing list archives). While you may get an answer to your question, you may not be able to tell if others agree that is the "best answer", or if it's just one of several possible answers. There are some questions that are asked frequently, which we'd all like to be able to "just Google". StackOverflow helps to solve both of these problems, as questions and answers appear prominently in Google search results, and it allows all users to "vote up" the best answer to a specific question. In addition, StackOverflow has a massive community of developers and system administrators (other "experts"), who may be able to answer your question even better than someone on a DSpace mailing list can. As a basic example, suppose you encounter issues with running DSpace on Tomcat behind an Apache web server. If you asked your question on StackOverflow, you may also find Tomcat and Apache experts answering your question or offering suggestions! For even more information take a look at the StackOverflow Tour: https://stackoverflow.com/tour == Can any technical question go on StackOverflow? == No. StackOverflow.com is oriented primarily towards developer-related or administrative-related questions. Questions that are subjective in nature are also discouraged, as it is very difficult (or impossible) to determine the "best answer". Here are some examples of DSpace questions which you could ask on StackOverflow: * How do I customize the DSpace XMLUI so that the side menu is on the left side? (Or any sort of customization related question) * How do I configure DSpace to connect to my local LDAP (or Shibboleth)? * How do I get DSpace to run on port 80 instead of port 8080? * I'm trying to add some custom code into my DSpace, and it's not working right. Here's a code snippet and the error I'm seeing: ______ * (Most any other question regarding customizing or configuring/setting up your DSpace instance) For more information on what is considered "on-topic" for StackOverflow see: https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic == How do I ask a DSpace question on StackOverflow? == It's easy! Though first, we do recommend searching (https://stackoverflow.com/search) to see if your question has already been asked before. 1. Login/Signup on http://stackoverflow.com (You can use your Google or Facebook account if you wish.) 2. Click the big "Ask Question" button in the upper right. 3. Enter in your question. Give it a title and describe the question or problem. MAKE SURE TO TAG IT "dspace" (as that is the primary way we are notified of new DSpace related questions). Also tag it with other related topics (e.g. if it's related to Tomcat, tag it "tomcat" as well). For more tips on asking a good question, see: https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask NOTE: StackOverflow also welcomes answering your own questions if you discover the answer, or already knew it but wanted to make it easier to find the answer publicly: https://stackoverflow.com/help/self-answer == How can I help answer DSpace questions? == Again, it's easy! 1. Login/Signup on http://stackoverflow.com (You can use your Google or Facebook account if you wish.) 2. Visit the "dspace" tag: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dspace You can also subscribe to the "dspace" tag for email updates: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/tag-favorites-and-tag-subscriptions/ 3. Locate a question that you may be able to help with 4. Type in your answer or suggestions. You can also obviously ask questions back to the submitter, if the question isn't clear. For more tips on writing a good answer, see: https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer -- Tim Donohue Technical Lead for DSpace & DSpaceDirect DuraSpace.org | DSpace.org | DSpaceDirect.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slashdot TV. Video for Nerds. Stuff that matters. http://tv.slashdot.org/ _______________________________________________ Dspace-devel mailing list Dspace-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-devel
