<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On May 4, 2011, at 1:02 PM, Everett Toews wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:48 AM, Jordan Rinke <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jordan@openstack.org">jordan@openstack.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex; position: static; z-index: auto; ">
Because there is still debate over a forum or a QnA site I will wait to see what the decision is tomorrow before making any demo sites for review. The problem still is that the QnA solves a different issue, it provides a means to answer very specific questions not a realm for discussion. A user forum allows people to ask questions which require discussion and may have various trade offs. Not just "how do I get a list of all running instances using the euca2ools" which would be a great QnA question but questions like "How do I HA my mySQL DB for Nova" a question that will involve discussion, multiple potential answers based on their configuration and have trade offs depending on what they are wanting. There will be no specifically right answer. I think a number of people are failing to fully understand that not everyone is a developer and not everyone has the understanding to ask a very specific and provably solved question, and that not all questions are even specifically solvable but that the discussion around those provides valuable information for the community.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Agreed, QnA sites are not designed for discussion just as forums are not designed for QnA. There's actually a pretty succinct answer about it at <a href="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/36818/would-you-recommend-stack-exchange-sites-vs-other-types-of-forum">http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/36818/would-you-recommend-stack-exchange-sites-vs-other-types-of-forum</a></div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>On Area 51 they use the QnA format to do discussions. If you click "create new discussion" on a proposal, it's equivalent to asking a question on a Stack Exchange site.</div><div><br></div><div>Here's an example discussion question from the computational science Area 51 proposal: <a href="http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/320/shall-we-unite-computational-science-proposals">http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/320/shall-we-unite-computational-science-proposals</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Lorin</div></div><div><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>--</div><div>Lorin Hochstein, Computer Scientist</div><div>USC Information Sciences Institute<br></div><div>703.812.3710</div><div><a href="http://www.east.isi.edu/~lorin">http://www.east.isi.edu/~lorin</a></div><div><br></div></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></div></div></div></body></html>