Thursday, October 8, 2009

apex.stackexchange.com

stackoverflow is a programming Q & A site that Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky created a while ago. It is now a very popular programming Q & A site and takes a different approach to asking questions then conventional forums.

They recently launched a site which allows individuals to host their own version of the application that focuses on a specific topic. I decided to register apex.stackexchange.com for Oracle Application Express (APEX) questions.

I realize that the APEX Forum is the main source of questions and answers regarding APEX, but I thought I'd see if anyone was interested in a different approach to handle questions.

If you're interested in trying it out, please go to: http://apex.stackexchange.com. You don't need to register to ask a question, but if you want to you can register using an OpenID account.



4 comments:

  1. StackOverflow.com is great, but why pay for a separate Apex site on the hosted StackExchange.com instead of just asking and answering Apex-related questions on the free StackOverflow site?

    Simply tag your questions with Apex and/or Oracle.

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  2. Martin,

    Part of me thinks this is a cool idea because it focuses on Apex, instead of those questions and answers getting "lost in the sauce", with so many StackOverflow.com questions tagged with "Oracle". That site has the other issue that you need to search by "Apex" or "Application Express." We all know the difficulty of searching the Apex User Forum, so many questions, answers and links to chase down. Sometimes I lose track of what I was originally searching for! (But maybe that's just me???)

    Besides not being chock-full of questions, comments, etc as the Apex User Forum, how would this site any better if people switch over to it?

    1) Is the search algorithm any better than the Forum?

    2) Is the user interface better? I don't think so.

    3) Who wants to have to search multiple places at once?

    Finally, apex.stackexchange.com feels pretty slow! Clearly it's not written in Apex and probably not built on Oracle! :-)

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  3. Hi Morten and Stew,

    Thanks for your feedback. I created the site just to see if people were interested in an alternate to the APEX forums as there's been a lot of positive feedback from stackoverflow and it's sister sites.

    So far apex.stackexchange.com doesn't seem to be going to well so odds are I won't subscribe to the service when the free beta trial period ends.

    Martin

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  4. The publishing arm of the company I work for (they are also behind SQL Server Central) has agreed to run (and more importantly fund) an Oracle-specific stack exchange. This has been made public today so feel free to add your questions!

    http://www.oracleoverflow.com/

    ReplyDelete