On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 03:44:05PM +0200, Tirkon wrote:
> Thank you for your effort. This is really helpful stuff.
>
> But one question remains: Is there any reason, why you did not use the
> OSM-Wiki for that FAQ?
Although wiki theoretically can be used this way, it is not the best
tool for this job and in practice won't work, except for the regular
wiki users (and we want the help for all OSM users).
The same things can be done with wiki, web forum, mailing lists and the
'StackOverflow-like' software as now used on 'help.openstreetmap.org'.
All of them were designed for a specific uses and most of them were
abused for other tasks. And that usually doesn't work well.
Wiki is good for writing of documentation, but not that good for
discussion and question/answer interaction. It is effective for those
task for people 'thinking wiki', but won't be good for a random user
that comes there.
Similarly, web forum is great for 'free discussion' and I have seen
projects that used that also for generic documentation, but I hated
that. It worked well for the regular forum visitors, but not for someone
that came there for a piece of information. Also, where coming for an
answer for specific question a web forum is not ideal – you don't know
which section to look in and the question could be already asked and
answered somewhere deep in a thread.
That is why StackOverflow and similar sites are so successful recently –
for the very task of asking and answering questions they are just better
than a wiki, a mailing list or a web forum. This doesn't mean they make
wiki, mailing lists and web forums obsolete – all of these may coexist
and take advantage of each other (answers linking to wiki, forum
redirecting to an answer).
I am happy the new tool appeared and I hope it will be successful.
Greets,
Jacek
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