[klenwell]

There was an open source version of Stack Overflow that I set up internally a few years ago at a previous company. I was the only one on the team who actively used it, but even then I found it useful as it was a place to squirrel away these useful little pieces of information you come across and don't know quite what to do with. I ended up coming back to find stuff I'd put there a few times and was starting to refer others to questions here and there.

Then after a couple months, just as it felt like it was getting some traction, the server got wiped out accidentally by our server team and there were no backups. I never got around to putting it back up.

I hope not having your knowledge base arbitrarily wiped out by careless admins would be a feature of this service.

[Grae]

What tool did you use, and would you recommend it? I'm considering that route for project-relevant questions my students have.

[klenwell]

I believe it was this:

https://github.com/dzone/osqa

But not positive. I vaguely remember it was a Python product. Not sure I can recommend it. I remember it not being nearly as polished as SO and not sure it's being actively maintained.

It's a shame that you can't use Stack Overflow itself constructively for this. I think Stack Overflow usage would be a great lesson for any introductory class. Just teaching new devs how to write a good Stack Overflow question is an invaluable step in problem-solving, even if they never post it.

Unfortunately, at the moment, I fear a good part of that lesson would be "the talk" about navigating the tricky culture of Stack Overflow.

[cheath]

can confirm: that's definitely one of the features of this product.