Stack Exchange

[wiebe@CARYA]

How does this proposal (I've no idea what that implies) relate to existing posts on SO (tagged "LabVIEW")? I really have no idea.

I might try to follow (if it's easy, I don't have fancy Facebook accounts and such).

Not very good in making up things like questions though.

(It's "LabVIEW Programming", "LabVIEW programmer" won't work)

[SeanJ]

How does this proposal (I've no idea what that implies) relate to existing posts on SO (tagged "LabVIEW")? I really have no idea. 

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It's a new community a new stack.  A list of communities is shown below:

https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#questionsperday

Here is the current proposal for matlab

https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/106196/matlab

Maybe it's a waste of time.  However, I think by doing this, we would be ahead of the curve, rather than behind it.... worst case it doesn't get used.

[wiebe@CARYA]

But can this proposal somehow claim the SO questions that are tagged LabVIEW? That would give the start a boost.

[wiebe@CARYA]

Oh, and I am follower nr. 6! Did so (a few days ago) because:

A) it was easy (click, enter email, confirm email).

B) it won't hurt.

Tried to upvote your questions, but then you need to login, have accounts etc. Might give that a retry when I have some more time...

[SeanJ]

Thanks for your support Wiebe,

It looks like a long road to launch the proposal.  Maybe this time next year!

-S

[Ben]

While the days of me supporting LabVIEW in this forum are moving into the past, I have made an effort to support others that are willing ... which could be you Sean.

If have not already doen so, turn on Tagging in your profile and then browse my Tag Cloud that you can find here.

In addition to simply tagging  threads on this forum with key words, I also included many tags that categorize the nature of the thread. So you can start with "LabVIEW_Performance" and then find a related tag for sub-topics like GUI or memory etc.

If you were really ambitious, you could in theory automate the work and locate key words from Stack Exchange and then use the tags to find where that answer has already been addressed on this forum. It could be LabVIEW bot that answer Q's on Stack Exchange using the intelect from the NI sight. Bonus points if you write it in LV.

Ben 

[SeanJ]

Hi Ben,

That sounds like a challenge!!

If I can get out from under my current workload, I might just give it a go!

Thanks,

Seán

[aputman]

Originally, I down-voted this idea because I assumed that SE was another forum, similar to our beloved http://forums.ni.com.  I am not a Labview programmer by trade but I have a couple of projects that I work on from time to time at my place of employment.  I participate in the forums mostly as a way to stay current on what is new (even though I am far behind the curve) and to keep active in programming.  I just don't have time to participate in another forum (LAVA, for example). 

However, after reading all of the responses that have come in to this topic, I am still not sure what SE really is.  I understand that it is a Q&A site but how is that any different to a forum?  When I look at other SE sites, the format appears to be very similar to NI's Question/Answer/Kudo system, which as I mentioned, I don't have the time to participate in any more of those.  I suspect that may be the case for a lot of the people that participate in the forums.  

Labview IS a programming language but it very much applies to a niche.  The very name of it implies this and may actually be it's Achilles Heel, in that regard.  You can't use it for game programming or web development AFAIK.  And so the user base is necessarily going to be lower by comparison.  A smaller user base means there will be fewer people participating in user forums.  Again, people don't have time. 

I'm not saying this is a bad idea.  If you get it going and it succeeds, major KUDOS to SeanJ.  I want Labview to succeed as much as anyone here....I'm just having a hard time seeing outside the VI, as it were.

[wiebe@CARYA]

aputman wrote:

When I look at other SE sites, the format appears to be very similar to NI's Question/Answer/Kudo system, which as I mentioned, I don't have the time to participate in any more of those.  I suspect that may be the case for a lot of the people that participate in the forums.  

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SE is pretty much a Q/A/K system, but I think it's supposed to be programming questions and answers. So no discussions, help me do this project, what do you think about this, etc. Might be wrong about that, but I've seen questions being removed as "not possible to answer".

I'd assume there is a limit to the questions that are asked. So when a question is answered on SE, it won't (ideally of course) be asked here. So with more forums, there won't be more questions. If there are more questions, people couldn't find this forum. That makes SE an even better idea: we don't want people leaving LV because they can't get an answer to their questions.

In short, answering a question here takes as much time as answering a question on SE. There will be a little overhead for maintaining two forums, but I don't think it will double the needed effort (from a person or a community).

[billko]

Well, after thinking about it some, I have to say my answer is the same.

No doubt that it helps the solution provider because more exposure/more points/etc the more prestige you get in the "outside" world; however, I think it does a disservice to the asker because what they will get is diluted support, at best - that is unless you can enlist NI in the SE effort and get them to send AEs to patrol that forum as well.  This forum is, in many ways, a direct line to NI.

Other languages benefit from there being an unending parade of experts - not so, with LabVIEW.  Questions need to be in one place so they can enjoy the intense scrutiny they deserve.