Stack Overflow and GotW

Question

Per Jeff's request, redirecting here:

I have a question about using SO as a forum to publish content.

Now that the next ISO C++ standard is pretty much locked down, I’m thinking of going back and revising all my popular Internet-published Guru of the Week (GotW) articles, which along with my traditional magazine articles were eventually assembled into my three Exceptional C++ books.

The first time around, during 1997-2003, I initially published each GotW as follows:

• post problem #N in news:comp.lang.c++.moderated
• let people discuss it for a week or three
• post solution #N (and problem N+1)
• further polish problem/solution #N and make it an Item in my next book

Now that I’m going to do it all over again (revising and republishing them one at a time, as well as writing new ones covering new C++0x features, and then eventually republishing them in Exceptional C++ 2nd ed. etc.), I’m wondering what the right modern “programmer discussion forum” place is. I’ll probably still post them to comp.lang.c++.moderated for old time’s sake, but it’s not the preeminent “The Place C++ Programmers Hang Out” location it used to be.

If anything, that’s Stack Overflow these days. I can’t think of a better current match for a participatory programmer hangout with threaded discussion (and more, voting and stuff of course... even if I may need to tolerate the possibility of my questions and answers getting edited, though I'll probably ignore all non-typo edits for book purposes). And I think it would be good for both GotW and SO -- for GotW to reach more C++ developers who would benefit from the material, and for SO to get more of just the kind of expert-Q&A-on-good-and-common-programming-questions that it's designed for.

What do you think? Appropriate or not? Would you prefer I do/don’t use SO as the main forum for new-and-improved GotW C++ article discussion? Are you okay with me posting copyrighted content (I would probably want to include a small copyright notice on every GotW problem or solution)?

Thanks,

Herb

P.S.: Jeff, a public congrats again on all you’ve accomplished at SO!

Answer 1

I think GotW installments would be terrific on StackOverflow. It would have to fall under the cc-wiki license, because we make dumps of the site available regularly, and people who consume those dumps will assume that they fall entirely under the same license.

Answer 2

Just so that you have context for this request, if you're wondering "who the heck is this Herb Sutter guy?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Sutter

Some sample "Guru of the Week" posts:

http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/009.htm
http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/041.htm
http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/059.htm
http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/073.htm

If these can be roughly made to fit the Stack Overflow Q&A format, I am tentatively for this, because I think it's a great (and useful) addition to the programming community on Stack Overflow.

I should also note that we allow Code Golf (mostly, with caveats) and this wouldn't be that conceptually different.

Answer 3

I think the format will need to change. In particular, I'd like to see one question per question, in order not to set a bad example. If we allow multiple questions, then there will be someone who says, "well, Herb did it"!

Answer 4

How about posting a single new GotW question as an SO question and seeing how the C++ community there responds? Asking questions about whether it is acceptable on Meta is all very well, but it's how it goes down on SO that is really important.

Answer 5

Personally, I'd love to see this. However, it does have to fit SO, rather than changing SO to fit GotW.

SO has no threaded discussion, except somewhat in the comments. The answers deliberately change order. It is best suited for asking one question per question, and collecting individual answers. Replies from the original poster should be done via editing the question or in comments. The license issues have already been pointed out.

I don't think Community Wiki status is necessary. Almost all the previous GotW questions have been questions with definite answers that are correct or not, while CW tends to be used for the softer questions, or at least questions with less definite correctness. You don't have to post the answer as an answer, but could edit the question instead.

Answer 6

I say go for it.

But keep in mind, most users don't read meta, won't know what's going on, and no amount of disclaimers will help with that. Every post will still be vetted by pretty much the same process as the rest of the site.

With that in mind, no matter what we say here, too much deviation from the normal format probably just won't work. You may have to re-write a lot the posts to fit the single question/answer format. And too much answering your own question can attract downvotes as well, so CW is likely the way to go.

Really, you sound like a better fit as a partner for the How-To Geek site.

Answer 7

My understanding is you'd be licensing all content under SO's license (linked in the page footer), in case you weren't clear with your "posting copyrighted content". Any copyright notices would be removed (by editors), similarly to how greetings and closings are removed, since they are redundant and contrary to SO convention.

As I'm sure you're well-aware, you can still publish your content in book form, but if you include any content or improvements from SO, those are subject to SO's license, and you could have to apply that license (or compatible) to the whole book.

That said, I would appreciate more GotWs, as the previous ones have helped me greatly. Thanks!

Answer 8

Could you show us some samples?

It's an interesting idea, if you can manage to trim each article down to a question for people to answer. Could you take a few of the GotW postings, make them into SO-like questions, and post them on your blog so we can get a better idea of what you're thinking?

Posting something more akin to a discussion topic is fine for Usenet, but might get a question closed for one of the reasons (copied from the "close question" form) mentioned below.

• subjective and argumentative

  It's impossible to objectively answer this question; questions of this type are too open ended and usually lead to confrontation and argument.

• not a real question

  It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form.

Answer 9

I'd like to see this done. I expect the community will be tentatively ok with it, but you might want to add a comment below each question pointing to the discussion here so people can look into it a bit further before reacting negatively to it. Lots of people are pretty sensitive to things that even remotely resemble spam.

Also, please consider tagging it with GOTW so it's easy to see and get an RSS feed for it. I'd like to follow them.

But the community usually reacts pretty well to high level and in-depth conversations, as long as it's a question that can be answered.

So go for it!