[Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia

Fri Jul 22 20:40:39 UTC 2011

Hi there,

to sum it up a bit I have to say following:

1) FAQ vs. Q&A
There is a huge difference. FAQ is not really very participative, possibly not answering correct questions. Asking a question already is a way of participation in the project - we want to have more participation.

2) domain
ask.wikimedia.org sounds very good

3) open source vs. proprietary
I guess the foundation tries to use open source if possible. This is goes pretty much with its mission. There definitely are options for OS Q&A systems - they shoudl be used. Open source solutions present - no more discussion needed.

4) in-house hosting vs. outsourced hosting
This results from point #3. We do not want to depend on 3rd party in terms of content security and reliability. As much as we can admire Stack Exchange the rule is to do it our way, however it should be more complicated.

5) integration with global login (SUL)
Desperately needed for ease of use.

Erik, what is the underlying problem you want to address? Is that participation and editor retention? Do you think microfeedback is a solution? How do you think microfeedback is scalable? Who is going to evaluate all that? It seems to me rather like another "black box" created "in the name of this and that grant" rather than useful thing (I havent seen a lot of stats from Article Feedback neither). Dont you think an easy, solid and effective Q&A system would not work better for increasing participation? We can have a Q&A site up in minutes and the only coding task would be SUL integration...

Does anyone think there is a way how to test-drive some solution hosted in-house? Incubator, toolserver or where to start?

Kozuch

> ------------ Původní zpráva ------------
> Od: Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org>
> Předmět: Re: [Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia
> Datum: 22.7.2011 13:00:37
> ----------------------------------------
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 22:07, Thomas Morton
> <morton.thomas at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> True.  But we don't need to use proprietary software for this.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Honest question; SE has sensible ideals and license their content well. Why
> > add to the workload of our sysops and developers with another system to
> > maintain and support....
> >
> > We do Wiki's really well. SE do Q&A extremely well... QED.
> >
> > I see companies make this mistake all the time; going down the "lets host
> > everything ourselves" and ending up with inadequate services and support.
> >
> 
> One can have both. Go with StackExchange for a while and see if it
> works out. The content is all licensed under CC BY-SA so if the
> StackExchange solution works well, we can always copy the good Q&As
> into Help: on wikipedia or meta or wherever. If it works really well,
> set up a local open source equivalent.
> 
> Basically use the StackExchange version as a test bed to see if
> Wikimedia should a Q&A site of its own.
> 
> -- 
> Tom Morris
> <http://tommorris.org/>
> 
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