I’m a regular user of http://StackOverflow.com to ask questions and provide answers about programming. The StackExchange network (of which StackOverflow.com is a member) has a place called Area51 which is used to “launch” new sites that run on the StackExchange platform.
While I can appreciate each hardware vendor offering a separate forum to support their products and the .NET Micro Framework, I’m especially impressed by how well the StackExchange engine promotes getting good answers to your questions. I would really like to see at StackExchange site where we can discuss the .NET Micro Framework.
If this is something you would like to support, please “follow” the proposal here:
That is not a bad idea but note that our “experience points” system doesn’t work if you are not on this forum
GHI has no way of keeping track of what users are doing on other forums.
I can appreciate that, Gus, and GHI is certainly very generous in awarding active members with real discounts and real consulting. However, the StackExchange engine excels at helping users get excellent answers to their questions.
Take, for example, this question that I asked the other day. The first few answers mostly criticized my understanding of the technology (which is fine, but they didn’t exactly provide a helpful answer). It wasn’t until Mark H posted his very helpful suggestion about using the PWM port that I was able to find a solution to my problem.
On the StackExchange engine, I could have given upvotes to the helpful answers, commented on answers that needed clarification, and marked as correct an answer that gave me the most help. This helps other members of the community find the correct answer and other helpful answers much much quicker.
Again, I really appreciate GHI’s active engagement and support of their customers and the .NET MF community in general. I just think there are great advantages to the StackExchange engine as a tool for helping people get great answers to their questions.
Nothing against StackExchange engine. There is a reason why so many developers use it. I was only pointing out something that users maybe overlooking. We do not require anyone to use this forum but the support monkeys are on this forum, if you need them, and we have a ranking system that help us and developers on the long run.
I worry about things spreading too thin. I don’t want to go to 5 different forums on MF. I think MS needs a good single place (their current ng stinks). And the vendor (i.e. ghi) needs a good place - which they have. If you could get MS on board, that would be good. Not sure why using “MicroFramework” Tag with StackOverflow would not acheive same result and hit a bigger audience. And maybe draw other SO people into the MF world.
Some of the feedback I’ve heard so far as to use electronics.stackexchange.com for the hardware side of .NET MF and use stackoverflow.com for the software side. Apparently there’s a good bit of material on SO already relating to the software side. The electronics site doesn’t have very much .NET MF content though.
Even though I would like to see the StackExchange proposal take off, I think the StackOverflow community would see it as unnecessary since SO and electronics already exist. That’s unfortunate because, even though SO has a huge audience, I’m afraid hardware-related .NET MF questions will be labeled as off-topic.
Who knows what’s going to happen, though; .NET MF is gaining in popularity and while not perfect, the vendors’ communities are doing a good job at this point in helping to serve those interested in the new framework.
