I think it's unfair to compare groups to StackOverflow. There's still nothing better in my book for a good ol' fashioned, directed discussion. But as it turns out, groups is really less than optimal for asking questions about code. And that's okay: StackOverflow is a highly specialized tool that makes it very easy for developers to look for answers to their questions. With groups, while you're in the flow of a discussion, it might be easy to reconcile the back-and-forth as it develops to find the answers you're looking for, but the tradeoff is that it also leaves a lot of data in an intermediary, incomplete state that can be confusing to developers.
Daniel, there are no easy solutions anywhere. Use an outside solution and be criticized for not drinking our own champagne. Use our own solution and be criticized for "Not Invented Here" syndrome. At the end of the day, the question is really this: what's best for developers? The evidence from other Google teams that have made this move indicates that officially moving community support to StackOverflow and keeping a single discussion group seems to give us the best of all worlds. It'll take a little bit of time to get used to it, but my suspicion is that people are going to be happier in the long run (it's my experience that there hasn't been a single change in the history of software that wasn't met with grumpiness). There's some really good feedback here about getting updates for questions. StackOverflow has both RSS and email notifications, but there are definitely places where their email notifications can be improved. Maybe we can rig something up to email new questions to people. Anyway, this is the sort of discussion that thrives here in the Groups, and it's why we're not shutting them down. Keep it coming! -- Ikai Lan Developer Programs Engineer, Google App Engine plus.ikailan.com On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 7:20 AM, Daniel Florey <[email protected]>wrote: > I know that Google has grown to a large company and there may be many > divisions not knowing each other well. > But from an outside view it is really sad that instead of fixing / > improving existing Google products, teams are preferring an "easy > workaround" like moving to Stack Overflow. > I've experienced this many times in different Google projects and this > decision is by far not the worst example, but I don't think it is a good > idea anyway. > It was great when Google worked on Wave using gwt, which lead to many > improvements to gwt in a short time. Why not working closely with the guys > working on groups to add the missing features? > I'd prefer to use all the services with my google account integrated into > the navbar when working with the google stack. > > So in short: Eat your own dog food ;-) > > Daniel > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google App Engine" group. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/Utn2Os0vHVYJ. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
