Unreal at Stackexchange

[Zur]

If you don't know StackExchange ( http://stackexchange.com/ ) yet it's a group questions and answers sites on a variety of subjects.

As the games site is pretty boring I'm thinking of putting a proposal in for a StackExchange centered on all things Unreal. The subject is vast and the advantage would be that all the information stays online under a Creative Commons license.

If I go ahead with the proposal would you be willing to show some support? The process is free and we just need to show that the site will be used.

 

[hal]

I don't see the point

 

[Zur]

I don't see the point

Some important sites have gone offline or become unreliable lately (UnrealAdmin is one example) and that can make it near impossible to find some information. It would definitely be interesting to fans and anyone running a server, making content or scripting. I'm probably going to go ahead with this anyway as people at UA are kind of getting worried about downtime.

 

[Wormbo]

[...] and that can make it near impossible to find some information.

Dude, you're posting on a site that has always been helpful at getting people's Unreal-related questions answered.

 

[Zur]

Dude, you're posting on a site that has always been helpful at getting people's Unreal-related questions answered.

How about extending that to a Q&A site? If anything it will get the unreal community more exposure and the same people that are active here and elsewhere can also be active there and even help to define the site. It's free so what can possibly be wrong with the idea?

 

[EQ²]

How about

Q: Where can I find an arse-tonne of information about Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine Games and modding for Unreal?
A: At BeyondUnreal or one of their extensive wikis.

It's free so what can possibly be wrong with the idea?

There's a small enough number of people who put time and effort into maintaining the existing repositories, and they don't have or don't want to spend additional time maintaining a duplicate resource when it would be more efficient to redirect people to the resources which already exist.

Sites like stack overflow et al work extremely well as Q/A sites but there's just so many of them now that search engine results for many topics just come back with pages of results of people asking a question in myriad different ways and getting answers to that specific question. This doesn't help people find information on the wider topic, because the site is a Q/A site not a general repository covering that subject. Even if the site in question does make some effort to group related questions, the information it can provide is still constrained by the general Q/A structure and the universe of questions it has answers to.

Essentially, once a Q/A site has one question on a subject, it needs a whole slew of other questions to make it a useful resource - in all other cases it's merely polluting the search results. Worse still, these kind of sites get relentlessly mirrored and duplicated by awful spiders like bigresource, which further pollute the search results to the point that actual useful websites are relegated to spots on page 2 or 3.

So the response at the start of this post might seem a little tongue-in-cheek, but if you really want to help people find information on unreal-related topics, and you are unable to realistically guarantee that you can provide all the information contained herein in Q/A format to allay the point I made above (which in the real world you won't be), then it's the most useful thing you could do.

As far as longevity goes, I think the argument is moot as well really, since with a few notable exceptions, no site is beyond the chance of being shut down. Surely it's better to pour resource into the sites which do exist, in the hope that they'll become better and last longer, than it is to meaninglessly and uselessly thin out the concentrated wisdom that exists in the extant repositories.

tl;dr version: Q/A sites are killing the internet, big up beyondunreal instead so search engines return it first

 

[Zur]

There's a small enough number of people who put time and effort into maintaining the existing repositories, and they don't have or don't want to spend additional time maintaining a duplicate resource when it would be more efficient to redirect people to the resources which already exist.

This I can understand.

Sites like stack overflow et al work extremely well as Q/A sites but there's just so many of them now that search engine results for many topics just come back with pages of results of people asking a question in myriad different ways and getting answers to that specific question. This doesn't help people find information on the wider topic, because the site is a Q/A site not a general repository covering that subject. Even if the site in question does make some effort to group related questions, the information it can provide is still constrained by the general Q/A structure and the universe of questions it has answers to.

The policy at StackExchange is to close questions that are duplicates of others. Your observation about Q/A structure is entirely valid though but the forum paradigm has it's own limits.

Essentially, once a Q/A site has one question on a subject, it needs a whole slew of other questions to make it a useful resource - in all other cases it's merely polluting the search results. Worse still, these kind of sites get relentlessly mirrored and duplicated by awful spiders like bigresource, which further pollute the search results to the point that actual useful websites are relegated to spots on page 2 or 3.

StackExchange policy is to stay on topic. That they are mirrored is not a problem with the site itself but others.

As far as longevity goes, I think the argument is moot as well really, since with a few notable exceptions, no site is beyond the chance of being shut down.

Along with the creative commons licence all the content is available in SQL format. So the shut down of a site is not an issue.

Surely it's better to pour resource into the sites which do exist, in the hope that they'll become better and last longer, than it is to meaninglessly and uselessly thin out the concentrated wisdom that exists in the extant repositories.

BU has a chance of staying up for a long while yet. That isn't so with lesser sites as fan numbers have dropped with the years. I'm not sure this would "thin out the concentrated wisdom" as much centralize it and linking to existing resources is a widespread practise. Think of it as a meta site.

tl;dr version: Q/A sites are killing the internet, big up beyondunreal instead so search engines return it first

If you were thinking of answers.com and Yahoo answers when typing your reply then I'd fully agree with you

 

[Wormbo]

Here's an idea: The UnrealWiki already is aimed at technical questions regarding the Unreal Engine, so extending it to server administration shouldn't be that much of a problem. In fact, I think there are already some rudimentary instructions for running dedicated servers as part of testing mods.
Additionally a special server admin section could be added to the Unreal Engine Games section of BUF to collect all relevant forum threads.

 

[Zur]

Wormbo, good thinking. That's a great solution .

 

[Zur]

Oh yeah btw like the face palm tag. However awkward this topic may come accross (which was mainly done in good intent) please do try to ensure that mutual respect is maintained despite whatever your respective positions are towards a question and/or an individual are.

 

[haarg]

However awkward this topic may come accross (which was mainly done in good intent) please do try to ensure that mutual respect is maintained despite whatever your respective positions are towards a question and/or an individual are.

No.

 

[Firefly]

There's no such thing as love and respect in off-topic.

 

[Zur]

It is always reassuring to see the same old attempts to get one's daily entertainment through the anonymous means that this Internet provides.

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

I wonder what I would smell like if I were on fire

sausages anyone?

 

[Zur]

Worse still, these kind of sites get relentlessly mirrored and duplicated by awful spiders like bigresource, which further pollute the search results to the point that actual useful websites are relegated to spots on page 2 or 3.

I now see why bigresource is such a big pain in the butt :

http://mysql.bigresource.com/Ignoring-Duplicate-Entries-in-an-INSERT-INTO-Query--ZLc3Vpdb.html