Re: Purpose of IRC and Q&A

On 12 Oct 2012, at 02:50, Michael Del Tito <mdeltito@gmail.com> wrote:

> We really have three types of questions being discussed here:
> 
> 	• meta -  these questions would be about site operations, guidelines, site functionality, etc
> "Is anyone working on reviewing [WPD_URL]?"
> 	• general - questions related to the documentation and other content provided on the site
> 
> "How would I use HTML's Target attribute to open in a new window?"
> 	• support - specific questions about a single individual's code, use-case, or implementation 
> "Why is my feature X not working?" or "How would I do X in Rails?"

Yup, for sure. And the third type is exactly the type we want to discourage, for sanity's sake ;-)

> I think Paul's points re: IRC hold true for the Q&A section as well. Stack Overflow caters (in large part) to support questions, and I don't see that type of discussion being productive here based on my understanding of the site's goals. 
> 
> I also think the guidelines for IRC and Q&A should be exactly the same, and that this should be made clear "at the door." If we can define and agree-upon the "types" of questions that we see being posed, then I think we should draft some guidelines and have both mediums follow them. 

I'm not sure I agree. I have made a slight distinction at http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Keeping_on_Topic because I think discussing dev questions that would make good documentation is much better done on the Q&A, as it is easier to find the history and follow the thread.

> 
> It seems that #webplatform-site is currently serving as a "dev" or "meta" IRC channel. IMO this seems like a reasonable separation, but it's something we should also consider/define.

Yeah, I think we are planning on shutting this down a few of use don't see why need both, now that we have significantly reduced the scope of what we want to discuss on IRC.

Received on Friday, 12 October 2012 14:10:13 UTC