Permission to start a series of advanced regex articles [closed]

Question

There are many problems with what I perceive to be countless dupes of low quality questions in the [regex] tag. Rather than complaining about it, I've decided to take matters into my own hands.

I'm thinking that I should start a series of [regex] articles.

I do fear retaliation from the community, accusation of rep-whoring, etc, so I decided that perhaps I should start with more advanced techniques that is rarely (if ever) covered before. If I get good feedback (by votes and comments), then I may eventually start to cover some of the basics, stuff that has already been covered no doubt dozens if not hundreds of times before (at that point it may become somewhat of a rep-whoring, since it's essentially dupes of many dupes, but I hope in putting together well-written articles with generic but carefully-chosen examples, we can link them from the tag info for good learning resources).

I'd like feedback from the community before I start to embark on this effort.

---

Why advanced first?

The advanced articles will most probably be original, i.e. not dupes, but at the same time may not be as useful to the general public as the basic articles. The problem with the basic articles, of course, is that they've already been covered at various corners of the [regex] tag, but rarely (as far as I know) in a way that is comprehensive, self-containing, and aimed at being educational (instead of just writing an answer for the sake of getting votes/acceptances).

My reasoning for starting with advanced first is, like mentioned, to avoid accusation of rep-whoring. Once I've earned the community's trust, I'd then gradually move on to the basics.

---

The Go Ahead

OK, guys, I've decided to do this. I'm a bit busy right now so I'm not sure when I'll start, but probably within a week or so. Thanks for the feedback.

---

List of articles

I've started it.

• How does this regex find triangular numbers?
• How can we match a^n b^n with Java regex?
• How does this Java regex detect palindromes?
• How does this regex replacement reverse a string?

This is not part of the articles, but someone asked a very good inquisitive question, and my solution uses nested reference, so it's very much in line with the current series:

• Split string of varying length using regex

I'll appreciate all feedbacks and comments.

---

Unresolved questions

• Should we create a tag for this series and/or others? What should it be? Is it a meta tag?

Answer 1

I think this is a great idea and Stack Overflow needs more in-depth question/answer articles like this. The benefits are many:

• Stack Overflow gets better content
• Well written articles will rank highly in search engines for relevant terms
• The tag faq page will really reflect frequently asked questions
• It provides something definitive to connect to the other end of "duplicate of" close votes
• Users who provide valuable content are rewarded with rep points (that's what they're for)

Answer 2

As someone who would potentially benefit from such articles, I'd say go for it. As long as they fit the proper 1 question, 1 correct answer format I don't see why anyone would have a problem with it.

Answer 3

If you post your articles, are you going to do it in the FAQ type format on here where you ask a dummy question and give your obligatory in depth responses (which I do appreciate, I'm tired of one liner answers), or are you going to put it all in the question?

In general, how would the answers be handled? It would almost seem like your doing a reverse SO format where you ask a question containing all the information, then people would answer with questions, and then comments would explain it. I'm just not sure how certain parts of the SO community would take to this. I would almost expect a close before you can even post your answer.

While I love the idea, its the execution that I'm worried about.

Answer 4

My 2 cents :

Go for it, it's always a valuable source.

But from other websites and mailing lists I have the experience that the people who read it, don't ask questions easily found in a basic manual, and those that don't bother reading the manual, are probably not going to read your efforts either. So I do expect a valuable source of information, but alas no decline in "that kind of questions"...

Answer 5

The articles so far are very interesting. It's good you chose to start with advanced topics, it is defiantly more interesting than a standard article.

One thing that bothers me a little is the short time between the question and the answer - 21 seconds in case of the aⁿbⁿ article. I'm bored with most regex questions, which as you've said are mostly repetitive and of low level. I don't know how many people on SO would have found the ingenious answer in this case, but I'd like to see people try. For one, the .Net and recursive pattern solutions were almost immediate to me, but I didn't see a point in posting them after your answer - and the question wasn't inviting of extra answers, as you've acknowledged and dismissed these options as too easy :).

Answer 6

Definitely go for it.

I would suggest starting with the basics, and moving to more complex questions, since it is easier to read along that way. In other words, the basic questions will enable to comprehension of the more advanced questions.

I wouldn't worry about accusation of rep whoring and whatnot. If you write quality regex questions, and then you provide (even immediately) quality answers, I am sure everyone will appreciate it.

I would definitely up vote both your quality questions and answers. Getting rep for contributing to the community is what rep is all about, so you would deserve the rep.

Working code snippets (jsFiddle, Codepad, RegExr, etc, would be superb),

Answer 7

There is nothing wrong with asking and answering your own questions; it's even encouraged. Go for it.

If they are exact duplicates though, don't, consider updating the duplicate instead. But if the questions are in-depth as you say it's highly unlikely they will be exact duplicates.