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Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:28:39 -0600
From: Warren Young <warren@etr-usa.com>
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To: cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: Stack Overflow versus the Cygwin mailing lists (Was: prefork error : couldn't create pipe process trackerWin32 error 161)
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On 4/29/2013 11:26, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>
> the "I'm looking for
> my keys here because the light is better" type of mentality to be very
> counterproductive.

More like, "I'm looking for my keys on this street because there are 
bullies on the next street over."

Bullies on SO get downvoted to oblivion or deleted.

> The net is full of bad and outdated advice about Cygwin.

Stack Overflow gives you the tools to fix that.  Post comments, post 
better answers, edit incorrect answers, downvote bad answers, vote to 
delete unhelpful answers, and gain reputation to get moderator fu.

Mailing lists give you only some of those abilities, and the powers that 
do exist are weaker here:

- Post comments and better answers: Threads go stale and future seekers 
have poor tools for judging the quality of the answers.  If someone 
tries replying to an old post to fix it, they generally get yelled at 
here.  So, you end up with multiple threads on a topic over time, each 
possibly containing the correct answer at the time, each increasingly 
outdated as a function of post date.

- Edit incorrect answers: nope.

- Downvote bad answers: nope.

- Delete unhelpful answers: only in the same sense that spam gets taken 
out of the archives.

- Gain reputation: kind of, but I imagine it takes a month or three of 
lurking here to figure out who the major players are, what their 
competencies are, etc.  I can do that on SO with a few clicks.

- Moderator fu: Post deletion and unsubsription are limited to a select 
few, leaving only yelling and persuasion as "moderating" tactics. 
Yelling is a poor tool, and persuasion sucks up a lot of time.  (As when 
I write this.)

I can't find a "Chris Faylor" on SO, and the four users with "CGF" in 
their name all have 0 rep.  So, if you don't want to engage with that 
world, point me at some bad posts and I'll see about dealing with them. 
  I have over 10k rep there, so I have nearly full moderator privileges. 
  And if you don't like one of *my* answers, tell me why here, or in a 
comment there, and I'll either fix it myself or consider your edit.

It does you no good to write off a vibrant alternative community.  You 
can't scorn it away, and ignoring it isn't going to fix anything.

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