Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. - GK Chesterton

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Next Generation of Catholic Forums

I'm not shy about my love of Catholic Answers, but I've never been a huge fan of their forums. In fact, I'm not a fan of forums in general. Anyone who's ever asked a question understands the pitfalls. You ask a question and you're left with 5 pages of people babbling nonsense and your question remains unanswered. The software industry has finally offered an alternative to the mayhem of forums:
http://stackoverflow.com/about
http://stackoverflow.com/faq
If you skipped over those links, the basic concept is that answers to questions can be voted up and down, so the best answers will naturally bubble to the top. The end result is a knowledge base that makes is easy to find answers to all of your questions. It's like wikipedia for forums. As a software developer, I've been amazed at the level of quality that this service has to offer. The topic of programming isn't what readers of this blog probably care about, but the framework of voting answers up and down is a great way to organize lots of information. The creators of this software have recently opened up a beta in which you can (for a fee) administer your own "stack exchange" (their word for these next-gen forums). My proposal was recently accepted into this beta and I will be working at getting the site up and running. I don't believe this will be a small undertaking, but I believe it could potentially be huge. So I'm asking our Rochester community for help getting this off the ground. It won't be localized to Rochester, but if people want to ask specific questions about the DOR - that's fine. Here's the site so far:
http://www.askapapist.com/
It is obviously bare-bones at this point, but I figured I'd share it right away before it's polished in the hopes that I might get others to help me.

So how can you help?
  • Adding content. We need questions and we need answers. Go sign up (you can use your google login) and start generating questions and answers.
  • Skinning the site. We need a Catholic look and feel (images, colors, texts, etc). This task isn't for everyone - only the technically (or graphically) inclined. I will be taking on this task, but my graphical skills have much to be desired, so any help would be great.
  • Financial Support. To operate this site is not free. I think it's relatively cheap when you consider the potential value, but until there's much support behind it, it'll be tough to pay the monthly bills.
If you have any interest in supporting this initiative in any of these ways please contact me (benanderson@benanderson.us).

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