Ask HN: Where do you go for hacking help?

Re:Ask HN: Where do you go for hacking help? by epi0Bauqu on Thursday December 11, 2008 @08:21PM (#395177)

I'm thinking of starting (with mdakin) a help instance akin to the MIT help instance. It would be a live chat system that has a UI designed to not let you use focus. No idle chatter, just crowd sourced Q/A.

The intention is to have a core group of hackers essentially leave it on all the time and answer when available. When it works, it is much faster and often more useful than forums/Google.

If interested in beta-testing before full release, please email. We obviously need a core group of interested parties.

Some more info on it:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/classes/ics105s03/readings/acker...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Where do you go for hacking help? by gsiener on Thursday December 11, 2008 @11:17PM (#395334)

Have you looked at Fluther (http://fluther.com) at all? They're building something of this nature (but w/o a specific hacker slant). I know they're planning on releasing an IM interface shortly along with an API.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Where do you go for hacking help? by gsiener on Thursday December 11, 2008 @11:20PM (#395342)

PS as a side note, I think an issue with this format that I see on irc is similar to telling a crowd of people "someone, call 911." No one is really compelled to answer if they think someone else will...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Where do you go for hacking help? by sokoloff on Friday December 12, 2008 @09:17PM (#396399)

zephyr -i help

at MIT had almost exactly the opposite problem: people were charged up/competing to be the first one to provide the correct answer. It worked shockingly well, as a consumer and it was fun to kill some time as a supplier of answers. (My time at MIT all pre-dates the interwebs, so I can't directly compare/contrast it to a world with Google as an option.)

[ Parent | on HN ]