[development] Drupal Answers: A Stackoverflow/StackExchange site proposal

[Justin Ellison]

I was going to keep quiet on this one, but Scott's mail spurred me to back
him up.  I'm pretty sure I'm the one that started the Area51 link being
passed around twitter.  I think the StackExchange site is an excellent idea,
but I knew that the conversation would quickly become "we could do it
ourselves with modules X, Y, and Z".

Drupal is a swiss army knife.  However, if I have to chop down a tree and
have my swiss army knife sitting right next to my chainsaw (that was built
specifically to chop down trees), which one will I pick up?  Just because I
*can* use my knife doesn't mean I *should*.

With my background in the sysadmin world, we're often preaching using the
best tool for the job, and I think that mantra is being overlooked here.

I understand the that the idea of having a .NET site run any part of
something endorsed by d.o is a bit unsettling, but you can't deny how cheap
it would be.  It costs little to no time, no custom module needs built, and
it will cost zero in terms of infrastructure.

All the hard work is already done wrt the StackExchange setup, all it needs
now are committals from the community to use it.  Why not at least help push
it forward just to see how it's received by the community?  If nothing else,
use the StackExchange site as a pilot/prototype, assess its strengths and
shortcomings, then develop a homegrown solution to succeed it?

The bottom line here is that it will take very little effort to get the
StackExchange site up and running, and I don't think anyone here would argue
that what we have right now is better than what the StackExchange site would
provide.

I should clarify that I'm not dead set on the idea either, and I'm not
saying I'm right.  These are just questions and ideas of mine that no one
else has brought up.  If you think I'm completely off base, please tell me
why.

Justin


On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Scott Reynen
<scott at makedatamakesense.com>wrote:

> ...

And that sounds a lot like what the Drupal community has been working hard
> to improve the last few years, so this might be a good opportunity to push
> that even further.
>
> --
> Scott Reynen
> MakeDataMakeSense.com
>
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