Q: Does anybody asks/answer Solr questions on Stack Overflow? Why?

[Alexandre Rafalovitch <ar...@gmail.com>]

Hello,

This is an informal survey trying to understand the community
participation patterns.

Most of the non-interactive Solr information-gathering activity is
happening on Google/Bing/DDG/Yandex/etc. That's probably very common,
though I'd love to see Google Analytics stats from websites with large
collection of Solr articles. I'd be happy to share mine in exchange.

Most of the interactive Solr discussion activity happens on this list.
Which is great. There are real experts hanging around and popping out
of shadows when the need comes. I owe my first book's success to this
community's willingness to answer my incomprehensible questions.

But there is also Stack Overflow. Which some people ask questions at
and - even smaller number of people - answer. I answer SO questions
(2^8 as of today), but don't ask there.

But I am curious about other peoples' experiences with SO. Do you ask
questions in that forum? Do you answer? Why? How do you compare that
"support channel" with this one? Did you migrate from one to another?
Private replies are welcome, though I suspect this topic might be
interesting for public discussion too.

Regards,
   Alex.
P.s. This is related to my next Solr book, if somebody is really
confused right now.

Personal: http://www.outerthoughts.com/ and @arafalov
Solr resources and newsletter: http://www.solr-start.com/ and @solrstart
Solr popularizers community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=6713853

Re: Does anybody asks/answer Solr questions on Stack Overflow? Why?

[Alexandre Rafalovitch <ar...@gmail.com>]

On 10 December 2014 at 09:32, Erick Erickson <er...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That said, I've seen some excellent answers posted over there come up
> on Google searches and the like

That's a big one. Solr mailing list is not optimized for discovery
well. There are third party services that do some and game Google to
be visible, but they usually have ads and other negative extras around
it.

http://search-lucene.com/ is not bad, but again, it does not show up
in Google when people look. I just link to that as much as relevant.

Regards,
    Alex
P.s. Ignoring SO might be part of the Innovator's Dilemma issue unfortunately.

Personal: http://www.outerthoughts.com/ and @arafalov
Solr resources and newsletter: http://www.solr-start.com/ and @solrstart
Solr popularizers community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=6713853

Re: Does anybody asks/answer Solr questions on Stack Overflow? Why?

[Erick Erickson <er...@gmail.com>]

I barely keep up with the current message boards, so I really don't
have time to participate in SO as well.

That said, I've seen some excellent answers posted over there come up
on Google searches and the like, I've just got to be kind of brutal in
my prioritizing....

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Toke Eskildsen <te...@statsbiblioteket.dk> wrote:
> Alexandre Rafalovitch [arafalov@gmail.com] wrote:
>> But I am curious about other peoples' experiences with SO. Do you ask
>> questions in that forum? Do you answer? Why? How do you compare that
>> "support channel" with this one? Did you migrate from one to another?
>
> I have answered a few questions on StackOverflow, but do not consider myself an active member. I see SO as strict question->answer. I prefer the more open dialogue form of the mailing list and accept the extra noise. "Look what I made" is a fine conversation starter, that I see no room for on SO.
>
> - Toke Eskildsen

RE: Does anybody asks/answer Solr questions on Stack Overflow? Why?

[Toke Eskildsen <te...@statsbiblioteket.dk>]

Alexandre Rafalovitch [arafalov@gmail.com] wrote:
> But I am curious about other peoples' experiences with SO. Do you ask
> questions in that forum? Do you answer? Why? How do you compare that
> "support channel" with this one? Did you migrate from one to another?

I have answered a few questions on StackOverflow, but do not consider myself an active member. I see SO as strict question->answer. I prefer the more open dialogue form of the mailing list and accept the extra noise. "Look what I made" is a fine conversation starter, that I see no room for on SO.

- Toke Eskildsen

Re: Q: Does anybody asks/answer Solr questions on Stack Overflow? Why?

[Michael Sokolov <ms...@safaribooksonline.com>]

Alex, I spent some time answering questions there, but got ultimately 
got turned off by the competitive nature of it. I wanted to increase my 
score -- fun! But if you are not watching it all the time, the questions 
go by very fast, and you lose your edge.  The typical pattern seems to 
be: so-so answer gets selected as correct, and then the really good 
thoughtful answer comes along later. Not to say I don't value it, but it 
seems to demand a kind of intensity of effort that I didn't have time 
for -- it's much easier to find good answers there than it is to find 
good questions.

-Mike

On 12/09/2014 02:03 PM, Alexandre Rafalovitch wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This is an informal survey trying to understand the community
> participation patterns.
>
> Most of the non-interactive Solr information-gathering activity is
> happening on Google/Bing/DDG/Yandex/etc. That's probably very common,
> though I'd love to see Google Analytics stats from websites with large
> collection of Solr articles. I'd be happy to share mine in exchange.
>
> Most of the interactive Solr discussion activity happens on this list.
> Which is great. There are real experts hanging around and popping out
> of shadows when the need comes. I owe my first book's success to this
> community's willingness to answer my incomprehensible questions.
>
> But there is also Stack Overflow. Which some people ask questions at
> and - even smaller number of people - answer. I answer SO questions
> (2^8 as of today), but don't ask there.
>
> But I am curious about other peoples' experiences with SO. Do you ask
> questions in that forum? Do you answer? Why? How do you compare that
> "support channel" with this one? Did you migrate from one to another?
> Private replies are welcome, though I suspect this topic might be
> interesting for public discussion too.
>
> Regards,
>     Alex.
> P.s. This is related to my next Solr book, if somebody is really
> confused right now.
>
> Personal: http://www.outerthoughts.com/ and @arafalov
> Solr resources and newsletter: http://www.solr-start.com/ and @solrstart
> Solr popularizers community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=6713853

Re: Q: Does anybody asks/answer Solr questions on Stack Overflow? Why?

[Alexandre Rafalovitch <ar...@gmail.com>]

On 9 December 2014 at 16:05, Chris Hostetter <ho...@fucit.org> wrote:
> (don't even get me started on quora and their bullshit "you can't even
> *read* the content foolish people wrote for us for free w/o giving us
> access to your social graph")
+2 on Quora annoyance. It's even worse than that, because they don't
seem to organize content by recency. Just some sort interest-order
useful for themselves. I only comment on Quora - very occasionally -
to drive clueless to better forums through the links.

Regards,
   Alex.


Personal: http://www.outerthoughts.com/ and @arafalov
Solr resources and newsletter: http://www.solr-start.com/ and @solrstart
Solr popularizers community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=6713853

Re: Q: Does anybody asks/answer Solr questions on Stack Overflow? Why?

[Chris Hostetter <ho...@fucit.org>]

: But I am curious about other peoples' experiences with SO. Do you ask
: questions in that forum? Do you answer? Why? How do you compare that
: "support channel" with this one? Did you migrate from one to another?
: Private replies are welcome, though I suspect this topic might be
: interesting for public discussion too.

There aren't enough hours in the day for me to read/respond to every 
question/discussion that i want to help out with the solr-user@lucene 
mailing list -- i'm certainly not going to sacrifice any of the time i 
have available to help out in this official community/support discussion 
@apache to create "content" for a 3rd party company that generates ad 
revenue based on the answers people provide for free, and might not be 
arround next week/month/year to keep an archive for future users.

(don't even get me started on quora and their bullshit "you can't even 
*read* the content foolish people wrote for us for free w/o giving us 
access to your social graph")


-Hoss
http://www.lucidworks.com/