1

Possible Duplicate:
Moving a personal technical blog to stackoverflow / serverfault

Many (most?) of the questions I've seen on Stack Overflow are specific to a narrowly-defined problem set, e.g., how-do-I-do-this, what-does-this-error-mean, etc.

Occasionally, a question comes along that is a little bit bigger in scope, such as how do I implement a simple client/server application using sockets or how do I create a Windows service. Every now and again, I've taken the time to provide a detailed instruction set (see answer to "Easiest language to create a Windows service in") for questions like these. And when I notice new questions that refer to the same or similar problem, I usually provide a link to the answer I've already given.

Would it be useful to the Stack Overflow community to have a tutorial section under one's profile that allows Stack Overflow participants to provide such tutorials without having to have a question asked? In my mind, I'm envisioning something like The Code Project but completely hosted within the Stack Overflow environment.

1

2 Answers 2

8

I think a link in your profile to your blog would serve the same purpose. You're also welcome to ask a question then provide the answer on those occasions when you have an answer ready but the question hasn't been asked yet.

2
  • Right. I thought about the blog thing. The thing is, I don't have a blog, and even if I did, my blog is not going to be read, not that that's the point. As for asking a question and answering it, that would work, but then it gets lost in the shuffle of the other 400K questions that have been asked.
    – Matt Davis
    Dec 15, 2009 at 21:05
  • 4
    Matt, yes, but the ask/self-answer technique gets TREMENDOUS Google Juice.
    – John Rudy
    Dec 15, 2009 at 21:30
10

Let's see ...

StackOverflow, et al, are question and answer sites. They are not a blog engine. In fact, the format doesn't even work particularly well for blog-type entries. They do OK for questions you self-answer, but even that seems to be frowned on (these days) by the communities.

Having a separate tutorial/blog post kind of deal that any of us (even with a minimum required threshold) can post to will dilute the value of the primary mission (Q & A), whilst simultaneously increasing the amount of noise and maintenance on the site. Not to mention the development effort for Jeff & crew (who I'm sure many of us would like to see implement things like tag blacklists first).

In my mind, I'm envisioning something like CodeProject but completely hosted within the SO environment.

That exists already. It's called CodeProject.

Bottom line: The sites work right now because they're laser-focused on specific missions and have a critical mass of users. Adding more to their nice, focused missions will dilute their value, hurt the quality, and take development resources away from more pressing and mission-focused feature requests.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .