Semantic Overflow

Question

1

Given that one of the goals of our work in the Semantic Web must be to encourage mainstream adoption and visibility why have we set up our own community and not simply stayed on Stack Overflow where I know various contributors on this site already have accounts?

While currently there are a fairly low number of questions on SO concerning various semantic web technologies it seems to me to be ill advised not to use the high visibility that SO has to help people with their SW problems. SO is now one of the top destinations for programming related questions so shouldn't we be giving Semantic Web help there?

I can see an argument for having this site for the various non-programming related sections of the Semantic Web but why else do people think we should have a separate site. I am open to being convinced of it's need and if it starts to get lots of visitors I will visit and contribute regularly just like I do with SO, so please try and convince me why we need this site?

flag	asked Nov 3 at 14:40 Rob Vesse 1,155●10

Ian Davis · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-03 16:05:03Z UTC

Isn't it about signal to noise ratio? People want to invest their time where they get the most value. Focussed communities can provide that. It's the same reason why there are thousands of overlapping mailing lists and forums for software development (or any other topic)

Bastian Spanneberg · Answer 2 · 2009-11-03 16:08:46Z UTC

It's a good question, but I also see benefits of having this site seperatly.

Questions on SO tend to disappear from the start page quite quick. Sure there are also a lot of questions concerning semantic web technologies, but in my eyes they are not easy to find in the mass of questions there.

And although semanticoverflow is a very young site, it already attracted a good amount of people and questions/discussions. Personally, I really like to have it on a own site, where people will focus on this topic alone.

Egon Willighagen · Answer 3 · 2009-11-03 21:23:56Z UTC

While keeping things together might sound like a good idea, I think Google (s/Google/Bing/g if you like) is doing this already for us. The Semantic Web even more so. Information does not have to be centralized, and search engines will ensure information will be found.

Getting experts together is more difficult than getting their output together, so I think it makes sense to have dedicated websites around topics, and leave the finding to the search giants.

Andrew Matthews · Answer 4 · 2009-11-04 02:23:52Z UTC

Because here EVERY question is about the semantic web, not every ten thousandth question. Because here, you stand a chance of getting to know who you're discussing ideas with, and because here you can discuss ideas without having to compose answerable questions about software development.

I want a site where I stand a reasonable chance of being interested in every question that gets asked - even if I can't necessarily answer them - rather than one in ten thousand. Don't get me wrong, I still go to StackOverflow all the time, but I'm always worried that I've missed something of interest because I looked away for too long. The only solution to that is to either stay glued to it all day, or create RSS subscriptions for every tag I can think of (which would be crappy).

I think there's enough interest in semantic web development these days to justify a site of its own.

Why are we here and not on Stack Overflow?

4 Answers