Since shidogo is going to die apparently, I started a proposal for a similar site on StackExchange. If we get enough people then we can resurrect shidogo! I really hope we can do this as I love the StackExchange format.

-Dave

EDIT: Sorry, I just assumed people knew what I was talking about!

Shidogo was/is a site based on StackExchange, a Q/A platform that runs such sites as http://stackoverflow.com (for programming) and http://serverfault.com (for server admin/networking).

To create a site with this engine we need to have a community willing to support it. The full FAQ for this process can be found at http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq

shidogo.com got quite a bit of traffic the last few days and I'm hoping that support will travel to this proposal as well. To get an idea of what the new site would be like, you can take a look at any http://shidogo.com or any other StackExchange site.

EDIT AGAIN: DOH! I just realized I didn't add a link. Turns out someone else had already started one and I couldn't find it! http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/11942/game-of-go

It would help if you explain what it is. Many of us are not familiar with it or what advantages it has.

Could you maybe explain/describe what advantages this new thing has over the L19x19 forum? Thx.

I think stackoverflow.com is really nice, but I am having trouble envisioning it working with Go as the subject matter.

Sure. The idea is that you can go there and ask a specific, answerable question, rather than bring up a topic for debate. (A good question might be "What are the differences between Chinese and Japanese rules?" A bad question might be "Who is the best Go player ever?" as it's subjective.)

It's editable like a wiki and each answer can be voted up or down. Answers can also be marked as correct by the person who asked the question. In this way it's a bit like a fusion of the traditional forum and a wiki.

When your answers (or questions) are voted up you gain "reputation" when they are voted down you lose it. More reputation you have, the more privileges you gain on the site, edit questions, vote, comment, etc. After 10k rep there is very little difference between a user and a moderator. It's designed that way so that the people who participate are the ones who are basically running the site.

You can also earn badges for various accomplishments.

Well you can take a look at http://shidogo.com to see how it was going. The site was very small but there were already some (I think) interesting questions.

Thanks for your answers to my question. Although, I asked what are the advantages over this forum, and I'm not sure what you said makes me think "advantage!" I definitely see "different".

If we take your example ("What are the differences between Chinese and Japanese rules?"), I really don't see much advantage at all. Here at L19x19, I would probably get several replies, one of which might simply be "just do a search, idiot!", and probably one or two pointing me to resources like Sensei's. I don't really see any advantage to the StackExchange idea. Either way, I'll quickly get an answer to my question.

Also, you touched on the idea that a question that elicits a subjective response may not be suited to StackExchange. But isn't it entirely suited to the forum?

Maybe it's a really good idea. But I don't see why I wouldn't just continue to use this established community to get an answer to my "specific, answerable questions". And, of course, the concept will only work if there are enough people who visit regularly to answer questions. I dunno... probably not me: for many Go-related questions, I don't figure I'm qualified to answer (things like what move is good or why is it bad), but I do tend to offer input on those subjective type questions.

So, maybe it's just me -- and I hate to sound discouraging -- but I'm not sold.

To be honest, I wasn't really sold on the idea of StackOverflow when it first showed up. There were existing communities for programming, many of them using phpBB. After using it for an hour or so, I was convinced.

The idea is not to hang around and chat about some subject. A forum or chatroom is better suited for that. But when you search for an answer to a specific question, on a forum (particularly on a phpBB forum, due to the lack of comment threading) you have to read for quite a while sometimes before receiving an answer. I find following an existing thread very difficult if it's more than a few posts long.

On a StackExchange site however, the default is to sort the "accepted" answer (as chosen by the question asker) first, followed by the rest sorted by the number of votes they got. Here's an example. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/957928/is-there-a-way-to-get-to-the-git-root-directory-in-one-command/957978
The idea is to get to the information you really want, quickly and easily, with out having to be lead along the garden path for a bit first. The most important information then floats to the top.

I think I have given the wrong impression that nothing subjective should ever come up on a StackExchange site. It does work well for questions that are more like polls. Here's an example. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60367/the-single-most-useful-emacs-feature/68815
It also had a mode for questions called "Community Wiki" This was designed specifically for questions of either a more subjective nature, or use in compiling a body of information as in this question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1036585/unicode-support-in-various-programming-languages It prevents anyone from getting reputation from any answers posted and lowers the reputation requirement for editing any post. This shows the more wiki-like aspects of an SE site. (This also prevents someone from gaining a bunch of rep for starting a holy war.)

You can also edit any posts if you have high enough reputation. This sounds strange, but it's really very useful if used properly. For example, maybe someone posts a great answer, but their English skills are terrible. You can understand what they mean, but it is not as clear as it could be. Well on a forum the best you can do is post under them. This can be taken as rude by some. On an SE site, you can just edit it to be clearer. Or fix their spelling. Or add a link for the definition of a possibly unfamiliar term. Or update their answer with new information! I will admit this idea takes some getting used to. (All edits are logged and it's clearly visible when a post has been edited. Like this question. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/203303/how-do-you-beat-rsi/203320 You can even view a revision log. Like this. http://stackoverflow.com/posts/203303/revisions)

I hope that makes it a bit clearer why I like the idea of an SE site for Go so much.

I see your emacs and raise you vim (I actually looked up this topic yesterday on stackoverflow).
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5009 ... ags-in-vim

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I have already made my opinion clear in the thread concerning Shidogo.com. My opinion hasn't changed; the technology behind Stack Exchange does not seem like a good fit.

I realize that SO and its sister sites have raised the bar in terms of discussion and information dissemination in their focused areas of content. I am a semi-active member of Stack Overflow and find it to be by far the best site to go to for quick, reasonable answers on programming topics.

You need to keep in mind that the SE technology is not well suited for extended discussion. The primary function is to get reliable answers about specific questions. This functionality could be used by the go community, of course. Specific questions about certain positions or topics come up all the time on L19 here. The problem you are going to run into is tangents. A question here on L19 could be very specific, but often the discussion involves more than a specific answer. There is real value added by such discussion, and it strikes me as an area of communication which would get garbled and difficult to manage in a Stack Exchange environment.

Jeff and Joel have provided a shiny new tool for communication. We need to remember that sometimes the medium is just ill suited for what we wish to accomplish.

Perhaps you have a solid idea of how the SE platform will be used for discussion of Go?