Multiboxing Q&A Site

[Akoko]

As multiboxers, I'm sure a decent number of us are programmers as well or at least have experience with scripting. And most programmers are familiar with the site "Stack Overflow" which was a fairly revolutionary Q&A site. It's incredibly easy to find information about any sort of programming problem you have because of the tagging system, and I was thinking that something like this is exactly what the multiboxing community needs.

A ton of the posts here on this forum ask for step by step walk-throughs for specific things, or even short answers to very exact questions. These types of posts all lend themselves very well to a Q&A site like Stack Overflow or any other Stack Exchange site. And the reputation/votes system makes it very easy to tell if the person answering your question is a known authority on the matter. The creator of that site even said that it was meant to be part Q&A, part discussion board, part blog, and part wiki. Crazily enough, we multiboxers have all 4 of these and unfortunately the information is split over so many different places that it's quite frankly difficult for new multiboxers to know where to get started.

Even as a veteran multiboxer, I find myself ashamed when I have to ask a simple but obscure question, or even worse, one that has been asked before but was impossible to dig up due to the inherent difficulty of finding concise information in a forum (search functions in PHPBB or vBulletin leave a lot to be desired).

So just out of curiosity, I'm asking you multiboxers how much interest you would have in something like this. Of course, no plans have been made yet :P I have no authority on this site, or any other multiboxing site, but just take a moment to wonder "What if?" for the following possibilities:

- Dual-Boxing.com had a Q&A part of the site, reserving subjective discussions to the forums (already a great community here, I don't see the point in dividing it!)
- We petitioned a new site to Area 51 (http://area51.stackexchange.com/), the place where new Q&A sites in the Stack Exchange network are proposed and created. This seems like a decent solution because the Q&A platform they use is not open source. This is a great solution, but it really requires a lot of co-operation and a large enough population of the community to participate.
- A separate site is made solely for the purpose of Multiboxing Q&A (risky and requires a lot of work unless an open-source clone of stack exchange can be found).

Let me know what you all think.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

search functions in PHPBB or vBulletin leave a lot to be desired
Which is why many of us use google/yahoo/bing's "site:dual-boxing.com <searchterm>" syntax. Much better results.

[Khatovar]

We've already had discussions on a rep system here. It seemed to come down to "fun, but useless". We also have the ability to add tags to posts, which not many people do.

IMO, we already have the whole Q&A thing covered between wiki pages, popular and sticky threads. But if people can't look at the stickies and wiki for that information or do a search, they aren't going to look through a Q&A.

For the most part, the wiki tends to get neglected in favor of the guides people like Ualaa and Fenril post. It's the discussion that makes things easier for people and that's much easier to watch and maintain than static information contained in the wiki. While I can't speak for other people, I really can't be arsed to go in and make changes to the wiki when the forum is so much more visible and it's a lot quicker just to go into a forum post to make edits. The forum itself outshines the wiki when you start adding things like text formatting, screenshots and videos, which really helps concepts stand out to new multiboxers. I don't imagine that changing much with a Q&A format.

And let's not forget that a lot of new people asking questions don't even really know what they're looking for. Being able to simply start a discussion on the forums allows new users to be pretty vague and still get the answers they're looking for. Especially when we use a lot of terms that the average new multiboxer won't know right off the bat.

You state that you're "ashamed" when you have to ask something that you feel you should already know. Why? Just because some people know it doesn't mean everyone does. Innovation is born of questions. I've been involved in threads where someone asks a "simple" question, and even though their concept was "common knowledge", dated, highly situational, irrelevant to me or just impractical overall, it was relevant to someone else, or it has opened up a discussion that makes people think and come up with something that becomes incredibly useful for everyone.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Which is why many of us use google/yahoo/bing's "site:dual-boxing.com <searchterm>" syntax. Much better results.


I don't use it for this site but I do for other sites and its so true. Google is just to good.


Ya people ask the same questions all the time, maybe being a bit more dilligent with the stickies (get rid of ones that are just to old and no longer valid) would be good. And maybe one clear question per sticky.

But anyway I don't think anyone has asked even the most simple question and not got an answer or redirect. Its not like most forums where a newb gets 20 flame posts before someone answers his question.

[topgear]

I got an idea, lets start up a youtube channel for multiboxers. Short videos showing information useful and entertaining to our community. I even have a name for it:
Boxers Briefs

jk(on the name)

[Littleburst]

IMO, we already have the whole Q&A thing covered between wiki pages, popular and sticky threads. But if people can't look at the stickies and wiki for that information or do a search, they aren't going to look through a Q&A.

+1.

[Svpernova09]

There is nothing to be gained by driving people away from a community driven site. The little I've seen from stack overflow is IRL elitists arguing over who can solve a problem better. Who cares? Just solve the problem.