[MonoTouch] Forum - Why not StackOverflow.com?

Mon Oct 5 19:17:05 EDT 2009

Hi all,
This is my first post to the monotouch mailing list, but I am an active user
on stackoverflow.com and know of it's purpose, but I too would love to see a
forum rather and think it would really help provide an easy way for the
community to come together on this awesome framework, and not to mention can
be more targeted to individual users needs (as in they can just look at the
topics they are interested in)

Kind regards,
Graham

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Jon Dick <jondick at gmail.com> wrote:

> I like the idea of forums as well.  There's a much better opportunity for a
> strong sense of community and sharing amongst developers in a forum.
> Stackoverflow is awesome, and has its place, but I for one feel more
> compelled to check a forum daily and answer more questions and share amongst
> other users who i feel more of a connection to.
>
> Glad to see this is coming, and it being an official forum means it'll
> likely be adopted at a faster rate.  I'll be one of the first to sign up :)
>
>
> ---
> Jon D (aka Redth)
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:40 PM, Miguel de Icaza <miguel at novell.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello John,
>>
>>     I love StackOverflow, and I think that a lot of people are
>> already getting some of their questions answered on StackOverflow, but
>> I get the feeling from looking at how Unity runs their forums and how
>> Ubuntu runs their forums that the forums are aimed more at discussion.
>>
>>     For example, Unity has a couple of forums: social discussion/
>> gossip;   Announcements;   "I got my app on the AppStore"; Job
>> postings and a few others, and those do not seem to fit well with
>> either a mailing list, or StackOverflow.
>>
>> Miguel.
>>
>> On Oct 3, 2009, at 5:47 AM, John Mandia wrote:
>>
>> > Hi Miguel,
>> >
>> > I've given some thought to this as well :)
>> >
>> > Rather than a specific MonoTouch.NET Forum why not have
>> StackOverflow.com
>> >  be the place where people ask questions? I'm sure you can ask Jeff
>> > if you could a have a space on the page when MonoTouch tagged
>> > questions appear (for notifications, links to the product to buy/try
>> > it etc) in exchange for directing more traffic to his site (not that
>> > he needs it :) ).
>> >
>> > Why StackOverflow instead of http://monotouch.net/forums or adding
>> > it to http://www.go-mono.com/forums/ (which I have used in the past
>> > and like)?
>> >
>> > Well here are a few reasons:
>> >
>> > 1) Traffic - StackOverflow has a lot of traffic and these are not
>> > just .NET developers. Having lots of MonoTouch questions on there
>> > will mean it is more likely to get noticed by non-MonoTouch
>> > developers. They may be intrigued enough to visit the official site,
>> > try the eval and perhaps even buy the product. The end result would
>> > be more users and a larger MonoTouch community.
>> >
>> > 2) The StackOverflow forum is an improvement over your typical forum
>> > and it seems to work well (given it's popularity).
>> >
>> > 3) Source of knowledgeable people. Building a MonoTouch app requires
>> > knowledge of C#, the .NET/Mono framework, the iPhone SDK, and even
>> > potentially Objective-C. A MonoTouch forum may have lots of users
>> > but they are likely to be MonoTouch developers. On StackOverflow you
>> > may get questions answered by people who don't even use MonoTouch
>> > but are able to answer the question because they are a .NET or
>> > iPhone (Objective-C) developer.
>> >
>> > 4) Kudos - strange reason I know. StackOverflow has a good
>> > reputation/badge system. It will encourage others to answer
>> > questions since it builds up their reputation (they may already use
>> > StackOverflow for other projects or technologies) and it is
>> > increasingly being used by employers to get an idea of how good a
>> > person is.
>> >
>> > There are some negatives:
>> >
>> > 1) You lose control since it is not your site
>> >
>> > 2) You don't own the content (although you can re-use it as long as
>> > you refer back to stackoverflow.com
>> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/
>> > )
>> >
>> > I think the positives outweigh the negatives but at the end of the
>> > day it is your call :) If you do decide to host your own forum then
>> > I would recommend using the StackOverflow forum system since it
>> > seems to work well with devs :)
>> >
>> > Thanks for your time.
>> >
>> > John
>> >
>> > --- On Fri, 10/2/09, Miguel de Icaza <miguel at novell.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> From: Miguel de Icaza <miguel at novell.com>
>> >> Subject: Re: [MonoTouch] Forum
>> >> To: "Craig Fecteau" <craig.fecteau at loop101software.com>
>> >> Cc: monotouch at lists.ximian.com
>> >> Date: Friday, October 2, 2009, 11:48 PM
>> >> Hello,
>> >>
>> >>     We are setting up official forums on
>> >> MonoTouch.net in the next
>> >> couple of days.
>> >>
>> >>> I've just setup a forum that we can use to discuss
>> >> MonoTouch topics.
>> >>> The mailing list is really helpful but sometimes it's
>> >> hard to go
>> >>> searching through posts from the past.  Figured a
>> >> forum might help
>> >>> with that :)
>> >>>
>> >>> I use a free forum service I've never actually used
>> >> before so some
>> >>> feedback would be great!
>> >>>
>> >>> You can get to the forums at: http://monotouch.vanillaforums.com
>> >>>
>> >>> If there is enough usage I can setup a new forum
>> >> hosted on my server.
>> >>> Figured I'd go the free route first just to save time
>> >> and gauge
>> >>> interest.
>> >>>
>> >>> Thanks,
>> >>> Craig
>> >>> _______________________________________________
>> >>> MonoTouch mailing list
>> >>> MonoTouch at lists.ximian.com
>> >>> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/monotouch
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> MonoTouch mailing list
>> >> MonoTouch at lists.ximian.com
>> >> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/monotouch
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
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>
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