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Possible Duplicate:
Routing a question to a particular Stack Overflow member or members

Currently the only options in Stackoverflow to share a question with someone that you think can help you is through:

  • email
  • Google+
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

It could be awesome the ability to also share the question to someone INSIDE Stackoverflow, this can be like a notification to the Stackoverflow user that received the request or something like that.

Thanks.

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    Related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19990/… ; some users would be swapped with unsolicited notifications.
    – Mat
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 16:51
  • Doesn't adding a comment like "@diosney Look at this" fulfil that function? (I don't know; it might not.) Once the comment has been notified to the inbox, after ten minutes or so, it can simply be deleted. But I don't know if you can address arbitrary users this way. Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 16:53
  • Wow! What unpopular question I made :D Thanks for the clarification on how this is a bad idea ;)
    – Diosney
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 16:58
  • I'd say that two downvotes doesn't make it unpopular, it just means that people disagree with your statement. Anything south of -5, however, may be unpopular.
    – Makoto
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 17:02
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    @Andrew Leach: It's perfectly fine to share a question that you feel is relevant to an answer you're commenting on, or link to a related or duplicate question. But if you just want to bring attention to an unrelated question in hopes of getting it answered by somebody, please don't. I've had to contact and clean up after users who posted dozens of comments begging various people to look at their questions. Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 17:09
  • Thanks :) It seems that I will be reaching the 5-downvotes threshold veery soon :D
    – Diosney
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 17:10
  • @Bolt Thanks for the confirmation. I can see another issue where two users have the same display name and neither has previously participated in a question. There's a high chance of spamming. Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 17:14
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    I love the double standard here... we don't want to pester our users but its fine to pester people on Facebook of Twitter. Personally, I think they're all obnoxious and should go away (the links to pester women e to help, not the services. :p).
    – Barak
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 19:19
  • Damned phone..... that should be "pester people", not "pester women". sigh
    – Barak
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 19:21
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    @Barak Haha, I actually tried to make sense of that for like 10 seconds. DYAC.
    – vzwick
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 23:07

1 Answer 1

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Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all have one very important thing in common: They are social networks. Their goal is completely different than the goal of Stack Exchange, which is to create high-quality content in the form of questions and answers.

While the social networks focus on connecting people, Stack Exchange focuses on building high-quality content that serves future visitors for years to come. The Stack Exchange system determines what's high quality and what's low quality using the voting system, which Stack Exchange tries really hard to make sure always focuses on content, not people.

Anything that turns Stack Exchange into a social network threatens the very existence of the reputation currency system by moving the focus onto the people instead of the material posted. This could lead to certain individuals having higher reputation, simply because of who that person is instead of what that person posted.

Instead, let the social networks handle the sharing. People and systems do much better at what they specialize in.

As an aside, if there are certain people who you'd like to share posts with, check their profile. Many people are on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or have blogs or ways to contact them. It wouldn't be unacceptable to tweet a question to your followers, where Jon Skeet just happens to be one of them.

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    Hi! Thanks for your answer, I really like it :) It was very professional. Thanks again.
    – Diosney
    Commented Sep 16, 2012 at 20:02

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