hi

my eyesight spots answered questions in the unanswered link or am I missing something?
(no body part answers please heh heh )

http://linuxexchange.org/unanswered

A question is marked as "unanswered" until the owner of the question accepts one of the responses as an answer.

--jeremy

This site is very confusing. Once I log in, I just stare at it wondering where to go.

I don't actually understand what its purpose is -- in other words, why would one post a question on LE as opposed to LQ?

Also, what does "collaboratively edited" actually mean? I thought it meant that, like a Wiki, everyone writes and/or edits the same body of text. But apparently not, because all of these new "collaboratively edited" sites look more like newsgroups than wikis. So exactly what does it mean?

r.stiltskin, I've attempted to answer that question earlier in this thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...3/#post3936391

--jeremy

I saw that, jeremy, but I think it answers "when should I not use LE?" What I still don't understand is under what circumstances should I prefer LE over LQ?

Ya but I could not understand what is the need of another forum?

LE is not another forum. LE is purely for questions and answers and is there for people who don't want to converse while solving a problem. It is entirely separate from LQ.

r.stiltskin, it's not really a matter of preferring one over the other. LE is utilizing an entirely new platform with an entirely different paradigm that is in no way a forum (in fact, "discussion" is off topic and will be remove or edited). That being said, I'm hoping we can learn from how the platform is utilized and it's possible you may even see some of those lessons learned applied here at LQ.

--jeremy

For those questioning the purpose of two sites, I'm all in favor of offering as much variety in the Linux website space as possible.

If LE turns out to be too redundant, it may fail. OK. But who knows--it might turn out to be more popular than LQ.

There are already numerous popular, thriving Linux forum sites very, very similar to LQ (more similar that LE). That doesn't seem to be a problem for any of them.

-----
A few moments ago when I tried to look at the site for the fist time I got an error: Server Error in '/' Application. But it looks like it's OK now.

One more Q&A can't hurt though I find the "sameness" of sites based on the stackoverflow.com engine very freewebs-like. Much too cookie-cutter.

OK, now that i've seen it, i also see the purpose. But - people seem to be not used to the way it's intended to work (a precisely formulated question should get precise answers, right?). Therefore, i see that many questions/answers already turn into discussion-like threads. Is there any policy planned so that it will not be used like a forum?

I'm pretty confused. I've used LQ.org and ServerFault and Superuser (similar to Stack overflow but more syseng and sysadmin focused). All have a nice community around them. All are for asking and answering questions. It is not clear at all why I would post to LQ vs LE despite what Jeremy has written. In my mind, the new site muddys the LQ waters without giving me a compelling reason to use it.

Since most of the time I post to the LQ forums when I need help with a systems problem (vs. "when will the next verson of slackware ship?"), I suspect my view of LQ is skewed. LQ is a perfectly good platform for asking system problems, so chances are I'll continue to ask there (plus they have a Slackware focused forum). At LE or Serverfault, my audience could be too broad to get a useful answer.

If you've used Serverfault, Superuser or Stackoverflow, you'll see that comments are used for QA. Otherwise there is no way to get clarity on a problem. And really, how often does someone ask a fully-formed question? Many questions are answered when the question is well understood. (Even if it just allows you to query google better)

Aside from me being the founder of both, the sites are not related in any way, which was a very cognizant decision. We debated launching the site as part of the LQ-network (as something along the lines of exchange.lq) but decided against it. Because of this, the site should not "muddy the LQ waters" in any way.

--jeremy