I recently asked a question at the Unix & Linux SE site and so far two people suggested I ask my question on a dedicated forum — one in a comment and the other in an answer. They also made other helpful suggestions, but to recommend that I post my question to a forum seemed to go against the very existence of the Stack Exchange network.
I have some problems with that.
- I absolutely abhor forums, including “support” forums for Q&A. That’s why I use SE.
- It’s my understanding that Stack Exchange was designed to replace traditional forums for Q&A and create a collection of authoritative knowledge.
Suppose someone posts a question on Stack Overflow and is greeted with: “You should ask that at forum X.” It almost sounds like “We don’t know. The smart people are over there.”
Sometimes it’s beneficial to gather information from various forums, organize it, and post it as an answer, but they’re suggesting I ask my question somewhere else in the first place.
Does anyone else take issue with this or am I just blowing it out of proportion? One thing I’m certain of: StackOverflow didn’t become successful by shipping the Q&A elsewhere.