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Ask HN: What is a good place to ask a technical question?
4 points by lh7 3476 days ago
I tried asking here before, but the post disappeared. I don't know why nor care.

So, any suggestions? What I can think of, and why they don't fit the bill:

stackoverflow & co.: Viable, but I am appalled at the terrible quality of the answers there--I always skip those results when Googling something up. Besides, if it's a complicated question chances are it won't get any replies anyway.

Reddit: This is the place that was first suggested to me. Took a look, immediately disliked it. The noise/signal ratio is a bit discouraging.

Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn: I do not use them. I do not intend to use them.

Google Groups: See above.

GitLab / GitHub: As far as I know there is no forum-like feature. And it probably should stay that way.

NNTP: Those were the days, but now the traffic is low, spam is high, and I don't have an NNTP client installed and configured anyway.

IRC: This is what I normally use when my question concerns a specific product or technology and there's a channel for it, which usually there is. I don't know of a channel for more generic programming questions, but suggestions are welcome.

So, any good suggestions? Ideally something non-proprietary (the reason NNTP is dead is not spam, it's everyone's obsession with trying to get rich building walled gardens), without too much "community" bullshit (aka people trying to get "upvotes" / reputation points / any form of cred), and with a good quality of posters.

In my specific case, I am looking for API-related answers, and can't think of a good place to ask right now.

2 comments

> the reason NNTP is dead is not spam, it's everyone's obsession with trying to get rich building walled gardens

That's not how I remember the death of usenet.

Just like spam is dealt with in email and walled gardens, it could have been dealt with in Usenet.
Given the politics of usenet (both decentralized and rigid), I'm not at all sure about that. (And in addition to spam, which is just sort of there, there were people like weev who were actively trying to ruin people's experiences).
there are plenty of language and coding forums you can seek out to drop your questions onto. seems like you want to discuss, so lean on irc communities there are plenty in nearly all languages and topics. if you don't fancy that, hit the meet-up or hackathon scene and get some face time.

HN works too, but it'll be hit or miss