I just wanted to make this thread to ask the site maintainers to not consider switching from a forum to a Q&A site for getting support. Maybe if people will want to in the future, have both, but never completely switch to a Q&A site like StackExchange.
Both Q&A and forums have their pros and cons.
But I’ve had too much frustration with StackExchange’s sites to not post this.
With forums the main issue is questions are less organized and harder to find and so dublicate threads are often made.
In a forum with many moderators often the mods are not carefully picked and often choices regarding the location or existence of OPs thread depends on the subjective opinion or even feelings of a moderator (such as previous disputes between the member and moderator.
The main issue with Q&A sites ironically comes from their main advantage. Old members are basically all moderators because they can downvote and bury topics, or even close them, from trying too hard to keep things organized and on-topic. Too many times have I wasted time writing a topic just to get it closed or downvoted (buried) just because one of the older members with more “badges” didn’t like the topic title, had a gut feeling it’s offtopic and made a hasty decision about it without consulting with me.
Most people think that because they have X amount of virtual badges they should be as careful as an official checking a piece of legislation…
The whole badge and privilege aka virtual democracy system just doesn’t work. I’ve been in gamedev.stackexchange, StackOverflow, their other sites about electronics, SuperUser. It’s the same everywhere. People aren’t perfect. Giving every random person ability to become a moderator automatically does not result in a perfect site and for people like me even worse than the old style forums.
If a tool or piece of software has a large Q&A site support only or uses StackExchange for support, I’ll look for alternatives. I know not everyone agrees, but I know many who feel this way.
Rant over.
Well, I’m also somewhat active on stackoverflow, and I don’t agree on that, people are usually very nice and give accurate answers, while I often see very unaccurate questions, which get closed for a reason. If you don’t really know what you actually want to ask, or you ask for something like “can you write the code for me”, then obviously you will probably recieve no answer.
If your answers keep getting downvoted, then you should ask yourself what you are doing wrong, maybe you are not asking precisely enough, or asking for too much. I often add something like “What would be a more efficient way to do this? I dont need an implementation, just a basic idea or algorithm.”.
Also people don’t get moderator randomly, you gain reputation whenever you give good answers or advices, so people with high reputation are there for a reason.
If you link your questions then maybe we can see what the issue is.
I didn’t say people are not nice or helpful in StackOverflow. Nor that most closed or downvoted topics are not done so for a legitimate reason. I agree there.
The issue I see is more about the fact that we’re all human and make mistakes, and giving more people control over these kind of stuff increases the chance of errors or not well thought out decisions. Not the case for most topics, but still happen from time to time. Strict rules and moderating helps keep everything clean and on-topic more than phpbb/other forums, but is also a double edged sword which causes frustrating situations where anyone might have a problem even getting his topic out there because it might (subject to debate) violate rule IIX.V.a and someone downvote it or close it before other ‘lower level’ member even get a chance to see it. I can’t remember how many times a real answer has been posted as a comment instead of a reply because the topic had already been closed or indefinitely “put on hold”.
With forums like this there’s a lot of duplicated and off topic material and is harder to search for something you need, but at least you don’t have to read a ‘‘forum user’s handbook’’, wear a suit and have a formal meeting with others just to get an answer on something simple. Well, some forum might have such a crew of admin/mods with such rules, but it’s not the community the forum software helps create itself.
Of course that’s again just my opinion.
As for my specific incidents, I prefer not to link/move anything here.
While Q&A sites can be great repositories of information, they are not a replacement for forums. As such, we will not replace the forums with a Q&A site. (If there was significant demand for a Q&A site, we would offer it separately from the forums.)