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Q and A Site Experiment

7 August, 2011 - 18:51 | by fyl
I have been playing with OSQA for a while and am finally happy it works. It is up at http://qa.a-zLiving.com. So, what is it, you ask?

It's "question and answer" software. OSQA is one of an assortment of implementations. It happens to be written using Django. Someday, my hope is that it can become part of a web site about living that does a lot more. Right now, as a test, it is a place where you can ask questions/answer questions/find answers about moving to and living in a new place.

When I started http://www.NicaLiving.com almost eight years ago I had hoped it could become the place to find out about moving to and living in Nicaragua. While it has has offered that information and helped many people, it currently suffers from a bad signal to noise ratio. That is, a lot of BS surrounding the useful information.

While you can call it a design problem, the more I try to find the right design the more I realize that being a combination of semi-authoritative information, discussion forums, photo galleries and blogs makes it virtually impossible to also be a good Q and A site. Thus, the new site is an experiment to see if you can break off Q and A from the other functions and create something useful.

Check it out. Contribute. Tell me what you think is right (and wrong) with it.

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Comments

by Anonymous | 7 August, 2011 - 21:38

D'oh!

I sent you a link to this, but didn't know you were already aware of it.

Heh.

Anyway, the first I heard of this via the Bitnami newsletter. I did use Bitnami Stacks for Ruby on Rails for a while, which worked, though installing everything "naked" is always better. Basically, the Bitnami mention was incidental. It simply happened to be where I heard of OSQA, which I thought was the most interesting idea.

Anyway (anyway, part II) it seems that something "Stack-Overflowish" might be better (possibly) for information than the usual forum style. Possibly.

So. You're there already. We'll see then.

-- Dave
by fyl | 10 August, 2011 - 08:38

So far, so good

http://qa.a-zLiving.com needs more players before we can be sure but I am pretty happy with the idea. Discussion Forums are needed--for discussions--but have proved problematic (that's a nice way to put it) for Question/Answer situations.

If OSQA could fit into the current NicaLiving site, I would put it there. But, it doesn't. For over a year I have been debating two approaches to fixing NL. One involves making Drupal do what I need, the other involves using Django to build what I need. Both needs and capabilities continue to change.

If I was being paid to do this, I would certainly pick Django. More up-front effort but you would get what is really needed. But, as a hobby, it's a harder choice. If, however, someone with the time to invest came along, I do have an idea for something that, ultimately, should make some money.