Idea for compsci site

[mirhagk]

http://xkcd.com/979/ The alt text actually has a pretty good idea. I hate searching through 8 pages of a thread reading comments only to find out it's either unsolved, or the solution is like 1 line of code, and I completely wasted my time.

[SNIPERDUDE]

I second this motion.

[[Gandalf]]

The comic part couldn't be truer!

But how would this summary be generated? They could always just skim or search through the thread. The internet is built on making use of giant amounts of information, most of which is irrelevant! The real problem lies when that information is not posted.

[Tony]

In the StackOverflow model, the answer is voted up to the top by the community. Of course that applies only to a Q&A format of content.

[ProgrammingFun]

Tony @ Sat Nov 19, 2011 8:44 pm wrote:

In the StackOverflow model, the answer is voted up to the top by the community. Of course that applies only to a Q&A format of content.

There is something like this for phpBB 3, I would guess that Dan and Tony's awesome skills can get users to optionally order posts to most likes.
Maybe we should hope that CompSci v4 will have this feature (though I doubt v4 will ever arrive since so much work has been put into the current version).

phpBB 3 is my favourite platform when creating forums for people but recently, I am also looking into IPB, which has less mods but more of these types of mods (it also comes with conversion scripts). However, IPB is not open-source (I'm pretty sure...though the PHP files should pretty much be the source) and it costs $200+ so if you were to use it, we would have to start a fundraiser (potentially).
Conclusion to my rant: phpBB is probably better...though perhaps we can create more admins and actually convert everything to phpBB 3.

[Aange10]

Quote:

it costs $200+ so if you were to use it, we would have to start a fundraiser (potentially).

And I'd be willing to help with anything to further Compsci.

[Tony]

looked into IPB. It's just $150 (although they scale the cost up for "chat" users). And they give you the full source with purchase.

The cost is not an issue. Moving existing content to any new platform is.

[ProgrammingFun]

Tony @ Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:42 pm wrote:

looked into IPB. It's just $150 (although they scale the cost up for "chat" users). And they give you the full source with purchase.

We don't need to get their chat system because we could still embed IRC or just use the shoutbox as the full time chat system.

Tony @ Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:42 pm wrote:

The cost is not an issue. Moving existing content to any new platform is.

IPB does offer scripts to convert from phpBB to IPB (another forum I visit just recently changed from phpBB 2 to IPB). However, some of the sick mods unique to this site may be lost.

[mirhagk]

I like the site all in all, but perhaps having some sort of summarizers could work on finding those posts with answers, and embedding the answer below the first post. I'd love to help do this, and I'm sure you could make some sort of privileged user group that can all edit and contribute to these. I'd be willing to be a summarizer for as many topics as I can.

[ProgrammingFun]

mirhagk @ Sun Nov 20, 2011 6:39 pm wrote:

I like the site all in all, but perhaps having some sort of summarizers could work on finding those posts with answers, and embedding the answer below the first post. I'd love to help do this, and I'm sure you could make some sort of privileged user group that can all edit and contribute to these. I'd be willing to be a summarizer for as many topics as I can.

All of us would love to do that...and that's why I would find a "Like" feature better (which you can sort by optionally).
No matter how good the sorters are, they would be human and would be bound to miss some threads...an automated system would be much more efficient IMO.

EDIT: And the summaries may miss a point that might of much more importance to another user. This might lead to repetitive questions being asked (though I guess that it could be argued that we already face that problem a lot of times).

[mirhagk]

true, then I guess a voting system might work pretty good, but don't make it just voted by asker because a lot of times they leave as soon as the question is answered

[ProgrammingFun]

mirhagk @ Sun Nov 20, 2011 7:26 pm wrote:

true, then I guess a voting system might work pretty good, but don't make it just voted by asker because a lot of times they leave as soon as the question is answered

So I guess that we have ended up supporting a system like StackOverflow just like Tony previously mentioned
If that is to me incorporated, I would suggest the following:

It is only used in the [Language Name] Help forums
Any user can vote on a certain answer, but can opt out of sorting it by most likes

This would transform those forums to a more answer-site type system but would allow to keep the rest of the site as the forum it currently is, because the StackOverflow model is good for Q&A, not good for discussions.