[OSM-talk] Announcing help.openstreetmap.org

[Tobias Knerr]

Jacek Konieczny wrote:
> The same things can be done with wiki, web forum, mailing lists and the 
> 'StackOverflow-like' software as now used on 'help.openstreetmap.org'.
> All of them were designed for a specific uses and most of them were
> abused for other tasks. And that usually doesn't work well.

In theory, I agree with this. I actually like the idea of Q+A sites and
have already started to use this one. However, the problem is that the
different platforms can only coexist well if questions get asked in (or
moved to) the "correct" place.

For example, I've seen people ask questions on obscure wiki talk pages,
where they remained unanswered until someone happened to visit that talk
page weeks later (and even when they aren't forgotten, using a wiki to
imitate forum software is rather ugly). Similarly, diaries seem to be
abused for forum-like questions.

As I understand it, a Q+A site should be used for questions that can, in
principle, be answered by a *single* post, if that post is well-written,
comprehensive and factually correct.

However, there are already questions on help.* that ask for personal
preferences or opinions, or are likely to start discussions. Imo, there
needs to be some mechanism to guide people to the right place for asking
their questions, or moderation to move the question to the platform
that's best suited for it.

Tobias Knerr