# Would an all BSD family Stack Exchange site be useful to you?



## justinnoor (Dec 7, 2018)

The current Unix & Linux Stack Exchange site is convoluted with Linux and OSX users, who often clutter questions with irrelevancies. Especially in the Linux world, where a new distribution is created just about every 20 minutes.

Would an all BSD family Stack Exchange site be useful to you?

If you have time, kindly respond with yes or no.


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## SirDice (Dec 7, 2018)

justinnoor said:


> Would an all BSD family Stack Exchange site be useful to you?


It would not. What would be the added benefit in relation to this forum?


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## justinnoor (Dec 7, 2018)

SirDice said:


> What would be the added benefit in relation to this forum?



My apologies. If you feel this question should be removed I am not offended. Have a great weekend.


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## aragats (Dec 7, 2018)

justinnoor , you got it wrong, SirDice just asked what it can add beyond this forum.
You might have a good answer.


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## fraxamo (Dec 7, 2018)

justinnoor said:


> Would an all BSD family Stack Exchange site be useful to you?



I seem to recall that there was a proposal for a *BSD category listed on the Area51 Stack Exchange site a couple of years ago. However, it failed to gain any traction, so never saw the light of day.


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## justinnoor (Dec 7, 2018)

aragats said:


> justinnoor , you got it wrong, SirDice just asked what it can add beyond this forum.



Thanks for the reply. In no way am I dismissing the importance of this platform. This was a random thought brought on by frustrations with the current Unix & Linux Stack Exchange (SE) site.

SE would facilitate accessibility, incentives to participate, dialogue between the BSD families, interaction with a vast audience, free infrastructure, job search opportunities, and more.

To briefly elaborate, SE is largely accessed via native smartphone apps. This provides immediate access to a vast audience. Freebsd, TrueOS, Openbsd, Netbsd, and Dragonflybsd users could have one app working in sync. SE’s  points based Q&A incentivizes participation. Something about points triggers those dopamine glands


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## forquare (Dec 7, 2018)

I'm very much in two minds.  While I don't currently go there for FreeBSD based queries, I think it would be nice for have a forum (in the "public square" sense) for cross-BSD Q&A/discussion, especially where they wouldn't get trampled over with Linux specific answers to a *BSD question.

That said, I believe the likes of Michael Dexter attend Linux based User Groups and other events in order to raise *BSD awareness.  Keeping *BSD questions in a place where Linux and macOS users frequent does something similar, it may not draw the majority but I suspect a few curious types might have a poke and might like what they see.
I suspect this thinking would work if more *BSD users frequented the site and gave great answers, showing off the insane amount of technical and professional talent the platforms have, but that takes additional energy away from places such as this…


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 7, 2018)

justinnoor said:


> SE would facilitate accessibility, incentives to participate, dialogue between the BSD families, interaction with a vast audience, free infrastructure, job search opportunities, and more.


All of which aren't allowed on any Stack Exchange site. At least not in the Q&A section. They do have live chat areas which I don't participate in, though. 

One problem with splitting off a BSD-only exchange is that you will have marked BSD as something that is not Unix and I don't think we want to do that. You will also isolate those who only visit for the Linux Q&A and may not even be aware of a separate exchange, not to mention that there would be many crickets.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 7, 2018)

I think an all FreeBSD forum would benefit me great. 
Oh wait... I'm already here.


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## blackhaz (Dec 7, 2018)

It may fragment the community which isn't huge to begin with.


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## ShelLuser (Dec 7, 2018)

There's a reason why I frequent this place instead of any Stack Exchange mess. My experiences are somewhat dated but even so: what the OP describes doesn't limit itself to the Linux sections IMO: it's present on the entire website as far as I could see.

Then there's also the moronic voting system. Any registered idiot can downvote an answer even if it was actually correct, something I've seen happening dozens of times. And no one does anything about it (I've seen false votes dated years back). Do you really want to support that kind of an elitist crappy system?

Don't take my (too?) harsh comments in the wrong way here... I honestly think the OP asked an interesting question, but I don't have a high opinion about a "knowledge" site which allows people to downvote (-1 and beyond) correct answers or actually copy answers from other places to take credit for it themselves. And even though I support the "don't ask the same question" rules I also think it's often applied too roughly. You know:

<locked answered thread>
<asks the question>
<"asked & answered, voting for a lock">
<(op) "I didn't understand the answer">
<thread gets locked>

Such a helpfull concept indeed!

See, what I respect the most about this forum is that there are rules to follow, but those rules have a reason behind them. And sometimes the rules are merely there to protect the illiterate. Yet sometimes they don't need protection in which case a thread is allowed to continue even though it might be open for closure as well. The staff here looks at the intention of the rules first before applying them and you can't say the same for the (sometimes): lynch mob that is S.E.

(for obvious reasons I am not going to share literal examples of what I described above because I know some dweebs are going to try and take advantage of it if they knew what I was talking about).

Just my 2 cents here.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 7, 2018)

Well...actually...

Disclosure: I'm a high rep Stack Overflow user, in the upper 3%, with mod privileges but I'm not a mod.

I don't know anything ShelLuser posted so this isn't about him but, in most cases, I find that people don't use SO correctly. They treat it like a forum but it is not. They ask for code to be written for them but that's not allowed. They give answers to questions as links to third party sites which also isn't allowed (links go dead). 

When you sign up, you are told to take The Tour but nobody does. There is also the Help Center which nobody reads. If I refer someone to the Help Center as the reason I voted to close his question, some get mad and I wind up with 10 downvotes from 10 different previous answers of mine (which are automatically recouped by the system but no one knows that). I have a file of copy/paste text I post so they will know the exact reason they are violating the rules but I get a response of "But I don't know how to do that so that's why I asked for the code" or "OK, I'll remember that next time." 

Next time? What's the matter with now?!

The quality of questions and answers there has gone downhill since I joined nine years ago. Then you have other high rep users like me who answer off topic questions even though they're not supposed to, and then lambaste you for pointing it out. "You need to be nice", they'll say. And a lot of respectable people I enjoyed back in the day no longer go there for those reasons. I rarely answer questions anymore. Now that reddit has discovered it, the quality has really dropped rapidly.

I used to regularly attend a cinematography site where professional cinematographers hung out. We were required to use our real name which had to be verifiable somehow. The calibre of professional discourse was above reproach and closely monitored. I loved that place. This forum approaches that quality where even the hobbyists are respectable. 

As an aside, it's one of my fears of FreeBSD getting popular is how a site like this can protect itself. I know a few of here remember the original freebsdforums.com (is that right?). On that point, it's an area that Stack Exchange does well. Shenanigans get shut down quickly.


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## client (Dec 7, 2018)

this forum dot freebsd dot org is $$$ software, right? Aside from the interesting topics, I'd rate this software way past ipb and vbulletin, I lurk on here every so often, it's so nice! I'd like to see a dragonflybsd section in it... and an openbsd section! On stack ex, I end up only from google, if ever, not a fan.


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## ShelLuser (Dec 8, 2018)

client said:


> this forum dot freebsd dot org is $$$ software, right?


Correct. It's called Xenforo (see footer) and isn't free. But the positive side is that Xenforo allows for much more than merely a forum to be maintained. There's also wiki functionality and very slick scripting options which allow you to hook it up to other things as well. I've seen Minecraft fora where developers even managed to link the forum to in-game statistics, which I think is pretty slick.

Fun fact: the staff have tried to run an open source forum in the past. I'm not sure anymore which one that was but it didn't take them long to move to this environment, and I agree: it works like a charm.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 8, 2018)

btw, you can follow FreeBSD questions using the "Watched Tags" on the right side of any Stack Exchange site. This will highlight in yellow any FreeBSD questions. 

Another thing you can do is, in the Exchange search bar, enter 
	
	



```
[freebsd]
```
 and you will get a list of all the FreeBSD questions.


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## client (Dec 9, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> btw, you can follow FreeBSD questions using the "Watched Tags" on the right side of any Stack Exchange site.


 Do I get this fuctionality without activating javascript? And what's the difference between watching tags and doing a site:stackexchange.com mysearchedtextastag directly from google? google which has sort by date, last week, last month, last year, etc. Isn't the tag having a prerequisite? As in, it requires the existance of the word freebsd in the question and/or answers or it needs to be specified through the activation of some checkbox by the OP when the question is posted? Maybe it is freebsd related but has no freebsd in it, by being a question about.. jails, for example.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 9, 2018)

client said:


> what's the difference between watching tags and doing a site:stackexchange.com mysearchedtextastag directly from google?


People were asking about a BSD Stack and I brought up a method for listing current questions about BSD not about searching for questions or answers about BSD.



client said:


> it requires the existance of the word freebsd in the question and/or answers


This is a requirement so it is supposed to be there. If it's not, people like me will put it there but you'll struggle with Google for the same reason.



client said:


> Maybe it is freebsd related but has no freebsd in it, by being a question about.. jails, for example.


Again, same problem using Google.


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## justinnoor (Dec 10, 2018)

Thank you all for the insightful feedback.


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