Where do you go to participate in technical discussions besides UNIX.COM and why?
Personally, I do not really participate in other forums and discussion boards, but I do ask questions from time to time on Stack sites. The problem I have with Stack is that my questions are never answered on any topic; so perhaps they are not the standard, beginner questions that we often see. Or, perhaps I not good at asking questions, haha.
This means for me, I normally get my tech answers from a Google search or watching a tutorial video; because I have very bad luck asking questions and getting answers in forums and other discussion sites.
I also find Stack sites to be really restrictive, because these sites do not really promote back and forth discussions, but they are rather "post a question and vote up the best answer" sites. So, when I try to post on any of these kind of sites, I cannot get any sense of community; but that's me I guess; maybe others have better experiences?
I do like the fact that the Stack sites are not forum based but taxonomy (tag) based, so there is no need to post in a particular forum or designed area on the site; but just tag the post with one or more keywords and go.
Also, on the Stack sites, I have difficulty with code tags and other BB code tags; and sometimes I really struggle to get code posted. This means for me, I often get good information from Stack but only from a Google search referral, but rarely, to almost never, get my written questions answered.
How about about you?
Where are your favorite tech discussion hangouts and why?
I am old and my nerdness has worn off over time. I prefer to hang out in person *) with people like me. I have a "regular's table" for UNIX and Linux admins and most of the tech questions i am interested in are discussed there.
Speaking about tech questions: 30 years ago i was interested in things like how to save a few CPU cycles in an echo canceller on a DSP but today i am more interested in "strategic" things: how to most efficiently run datacenters, DevOps methods, etc.. Such topics are less a matter of "factual know-how" but more driven by paradigmatical issues and generally "soft issues". Internet forae rarely have such topics, probably because there is no "one true answer" to such questions. If i want to know "how to change this format into that" then there are at best a handful of ways and all of them can be tested to either work or fail. A question like "how to organise a data center" is answered by something that is much less "true" or "false".
bakunin
___________
*) in this adventure game with the bad gameplay and the phantastic graphics called reality
That's a good answer but it's a bit off topic for the question I posed, which was about forums, websites and other online discussion groups (like this one):
Your Favorite Tech Support (Web) Sites and Why?
I'm sure many people here participate in other web sites and forums like this one, and I want to know which ones they like, why they like them (or don't like them) and what features we can add that would be helpful here (primarily on the user side, not the moderator / admin side).
To be honest, the only forums I've subscribed to are this one and the UbuntuForums one; and the only one I regularly read is this one.
As for asking questions, I did ask a few in the Solaris sub-forum last year, but that is the exception. Normally I just type my question into google and look to see which are the most relevant answers. That is probably how I found this forum in the first place.
Same here. Normally Google and look around until I find an answer; and for the newer technologies, watch YouTube video tutorials.
Like I said, when I ask tech questions in most other forums including all the stack* sites, I rarely get a reply; or I get a reply which is off-base and not helpful.
When I was refreshing my Javascript and jQuery coding recently, I found everything I needed from Google searches and YT.
When I see other forums like this one (like all the legacy vB forums, etc) this site is much better. But when I compare to the "newer generation" taxonomy-driven forums, I often feel I should change our forums to be taxonomy (tag) driven versus centered around hard-coded forums; but I'm not sure if that would make much difference - although it might force posters to tags their questions and posts more often, LOL
If you want to access the forum from the home page then you press the 'forum' button. If you want to make Android phones behave the way you want then it's where the expertise is. This site has changed beyond all recognition over the last couple of years.
For all other Unix/Linux O/S's, unix.com is the place to be.
One place I hang around as often as I do here is TEK-TIPS.com. I was most active there in the database parts there but it became very quite lately.
My reason to register there was the same as it was here: showing up often enough in searches and finding good answers.
Seems there is so much good information can be found in Google searches (as compared to years ago), that many people don't need to hang out in forums as much as they used to, from what you guys are posting.
Mostly here, other then google, and vendor closed stuff.
The number of accumulated posts here about well, everything, is amazing.
Other then learning about the unix/unix like operating systems internals, these forums offer real nice programming best practices, language agnostic.
A great place, feels real friendly and close, unlike most communities on the internet.
Human approach, patience, straightforwardness and professionalism makes this number 1 site.
... so, it seems all our members just hang our here at UNIX.COM because we are "the best community with the best posts"?
That sounds nice to hear, and my experience is the same (admittedly); but I feel we can be even greater and am interested to find out where other members hang out and why and what we can do better as far as forum features.
My idea is to move toward a taxonomy-based site (over time, not immediately) and I think I will start by writing some code which automatically tags each thread with a tag which represents the forum where the thread was created.
For example, for all threads in "Shell Programming and Scripting" each will have a tag "shell programming", and for all threads in the "Solaris" forum, each thread will have a "solaris" tag and maybe an "operating system" tag.
So, at a minimum, all thread will have at least one tag, automatically.
In that way, we can create any view on any topic based on the tags, which will move us a step-away from being "forum-based" and a step toward being "taxonomy-based".
Apart from a few isolated questions to askubuntu.com or wiki.ubuntu.com I didn't regularly spend much time on other IT / *nix related fora in recent years. Admittedly, as it has become rather quiet in here for some time now, I started to follow / participate unix.stackexchange.com for a few weeks now. Still, unix.com is my favorite place to look for.
I welcome any measures to increase the popularity of this site. That taxonomy-based approach may help here, as long as the look and feel doesn't change dramatically.
Yes, I try to hang out in SO(Stack overflow) site. So I check parallel UNIX.com and SO both for my hunger to solve more questions.
Reason for hanging out in other forums: yes, I have to agree that on SO there are more number of users with more questions, as I always mention more questions(sensible/real ones) more we learn. So for me that is 1 of the MAJOR reason(that is why in my previous post I posted same thing too https://www.unix.com/what-is-on-your-mind-/279431-regarding-thoughts-encourage-more-users-post-participate-unix-com-site.html\). Other reason(which I mentioned previously in posts too) they have many competitive stuff like ranks(weekly/monthly/yearly) etc which in some other we could also do, as we all need some kind of encouragement element.
EDIT: missed another MAJOR reason which is they have NEW upcoming technologies with their experts too which helps me and others too for learning them(this point was mention too in mentioned post), if we could create sub forums or TAGS etc for upcoming technologies and can we have experts here we will definitely see more number of users visiting our this GREAT site UNIX.com
If you can fully describe the reward / rating system you want to implement, in a way that it can be coded, then I will consider coding it.
Regarding "new technologies" that seems a good idea but my experience is that it is up to users (like you and others) to post want they want to post. Creating tags and sub forums will not change that.
In other words, it is up to the members to post and tag on the tech they want to talk about.
I agree with you that we need people to be more active. UNIX and Linux technology has been around for a long time and so it's not "the latest and greatest" like Javascript, for example. Not sure how we can get folks "excited more" about these very long established technologies when there are so many newer technologies.
Creating new forums with the names of new technologies will not help, I don't think, but I could be wrong.
I have searched for some pretty strange things and although "Stack Overflow" comes up many times, so does UNIX.COM for shell related stuff.
Sure other sites come up but not as often as this one for UNIX related stuff, S.O. is for just about everything SW related not just *NIX.
DON'T LAUGH!
I am an AMIGA fanatic still and was searching for a basic FFT routine for Python 1.4.0 for the AMIGA. I have successfully written one for a seriously expanded A1200 for Python 2.0.1 but was stumped for a stock AMIGA A1200. There are loads for Python 2.6.x to Python 3.6.x but nothing for Python 2.0.1 and certainly NOT Python 1.4.0. (The AMIGA does not have the numpy or scipy modules.)
After literally hours and dropping deeper into Google's archives I came across a Public Domain piece of code that opened my eyes. No it didn't work on Python 1.4.0 but after modifying it is now working from Python 1.4.0 for a stock A1200 up to and incuding the current 3.7.0 on all other platforms - WOOHOO. It is reissued to AMINET as CC0, public Domain too.
From this I am going to see if it is possible using ksh, (and bc if it is needed), to translate this code for this site, (fingers crossed), for the minimum of ksh version we have for OSX 10.13.6.
Wish me luck.
If successful then it will be another search that would bring one here...
Because I have settled in here this is the first place I come to, usually as a guest, after booting up my MBP.
Sorry for being a bit off-topic, but i can't let this one go:
My suggestion is to first do it in Assembler. Doing it in Python (or any other interpreted language, except probably FORTH) is like trying to build a race car - out of Lego. And, second, to do it on a DSP. I am not up to date with the latest DSPs any more, but i suggest to take a look at the C66x series from Texas Instruments or the ADSP-SC57x series from Analog Devices. Both are RT-capable floating-point DSPs and from my personal experience (TI32C80 from TI, i can't remember the name of the AD machine) both manufacturers made great procs. You might also try the still available 56k-series by Motorola. I used these (especially the 56001) a lot back in the days.
I tried to explain the reason why i don't generally hang out in other tech forae (but in person instead) AND i offered (admittedly only by implication) a topic we could maybe expand to: right now we focus on factual questions that have some "exact" answer(s) to them. Something like "how to do X?", for which there may be one or at most a handful of correct answers, but all the possible answers will be either "right" or "wrong". They will either result in "X" or not.
What we don't have (and what other forae, like askubuntu, stack overflow, etc., are lacking too IMHO) is a place for discussions about more strategic topics. I.e. "how to select a fitting DevOps system for a given company/data center)?" or "best practices for being ITIL-compliant?". I admit that such a place would be a lot more difficult to moderate than our "normal" boards because the difference between spam and content might be blurrier. On the other hand it would also set us apart from the crowd if we can find a way to make it work.
Yes, but I still do not understand your point, but I'm sure it's because I'm coding all day and night and not thinking, LOL.
Anyone can post and discuss any of the topics you describe in any of many forums or places on this site. There is nothing to preclude anyone from doing so.
If I want to discuss " best practices for being ITIL-compliant?" (your example), I would simply post in "What Is On Your Mind", which is the catch-all area to post.
If I want to talk about "strategic topics", I just start posting in "What's On Your Mind" or "War Stories" or in any of the many other forums here.
We don't have any rules that say "Only Shell Coding Q&A Is Allowed".
What am I missing here?
In the past, each time someone requested a "new forum" and we added that forum or sub-forum, the same person who requested that forum did not post in that new forum very much, LOL.
We have a lot of "requested forums" which I need to deleted because they were requested by members, rarely used, and now exist as "hidden forums" with just a small handful of posts.
This code is done, and new threads will automatically be tagged based on the the forum, so each new thread will have at least one tag (the forum token tag) plus all tags added by users, mods and admins.
I will try to get a cron going that updates all the old threads as well.
Here are some thoughts on improving forums.(but not sure from coding perspective side)
i- This is PRIORITY one for me and I think you will too agree on it. As already discussed let us allow guest posting with maximum level of checks to avoid spams. By this definitely more questions will come by which more users will start visiting the site and then more ideas will come over here.
ii- Let us increase number of levels of members status, currently we have:
1- ADMIN
2- MODs
3- Forums Advisers
We could add some more levels eg-->
4- Beginner(less than 20 posts or so)
5- experience(may be if someone crosses 100 posts)
iii- Let us give certificates for becoming forum adviser, MODs, admin or if any new levels we are creating to show that how valuable our site's awards are.
iv- We could have a dashboard kind of system where let us start award system like:
1- "Monthly/Yearly hero for asking questions"
2- "Monthly/yearly hero for answering"
3- "Monthly/yearly hero for editing/moderating posts."
4- We could take inspiration from SO a bit and could start badge systems for TAGs?(I leave this open for discussion with all here and we could have our own badges NOT copied from some other forums etc but more badges will definitely give KICK to users to involve more, we should take this also as a priority IMHO)
v- One more thought but that is more like question to all members how could we invite experts of new technologies too in here for new TAGS? by which we will definitely attract more visitors as well as we all will do learning too.
vi- Let us have a sub-forum where people share their experience and design may be or thoughts(only technical not like what's your mind) so that new comers can learn about projects, how about this?
vii- We could have meetings on TOLL FREE number or on skype etc? where we all could join monthly once(MODs, Forum advisers, admins) to discuss topics like this related to forums?
On another note: Can we have a NON-PROD environment for this site where if anyone interested could raise hand and try to learn and help you to reduce your over weight May be people could come up with more ideas on enhancement of forums and could apply them in first non-live site or a sub-forum and then could make them LIVE later?
EDIT: On your note of unix and shell technologies, I believe they are EVERGREEN languages may come and go but shell commands, shell scripting will always be there(with enhanced features I believe always) and people will be keep using it too, we need to only tell more and more people that we too have good platform(which many of them know but we have to publicize more now our forums) here where they could contribute on asking or answering questions rest will happen automatically. I tested it on many systems and on many times when ever I was searching for any UNIX related questions around 3 to 4 years back always OUR FORUM's replies it showed on TOP but now it shows on 3rd or 4th number so not sure how it works but if we make google also search our site as first answer then also we may get more visitors and active users IMHO.
Also BTW you yourself is a PHP expert(though I know you are a full busy guy handling alone a great site, but when you get sometime I mean here) how about teaching/guiding(by posting some good stuff on forums etc) us PHP and I know at least 20 people(from my college itself) who could ask thousands of questions on it itself
May be people could come up with more ideas on enhancement of forums and could apply them in first non-live site or a sub-forum and then could make them LIVE later?