Re: [tor-talk] Third-party Q&As

[Nick Mathewson <nickm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 11:09 AM, adrelanos <adrelanos@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi!
[...]
>  Well, I guess
> having any non-ideal Q/A forum is better than forever having no Q/A forum.

Hi, Adrelanos!

You have hit the nail on the head with that part.

So because I'm not principally involved with the decision to move away
from askbot, or the attempt to get a working Q+A forum, I can't
comment on the actual deficiencies. (I hope that someone else can!)
But as I understand it, the main reasoning was that we didn't seem to
be getting any closer to having an adequate production system (for
whatever value of "adequate"), and it seemed like a better idea to
have something working today than something even better in two or
three years or however long it seemed likely to take to develop
something better.


I that we as a project have had a tendency to stretch ourselves thin
by trying to do the optimal version of everything at all times.  We
need to question this impulse, since it can lead to abandonware,
opportunity costs which distract from other efforts, and situations
where we defer the good indefinitely in the name of the perfect.


It would be cool if we get something that's better than StackExchange
some day.  But my understanding is that the askbot deployment wasn't
that, and wasn't likely to become that without a fair amount of
expertise that we don't actually have and haven't been able to get.
(I hope others will step up with details here -- I'm afraid I don't
have them, and don't actually know what stood in the way of askbot's
adequacy.)


best wishes,
--
Nick
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