ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The dumb questions thread usually runs just fine, but sometimes things can get a little messy. I really like the way Q&A threads are run over at Giant in the Playground's forums. The poster of each question assigns their question a number, and then any answers to that question of followups reference that number. Here is an example thread.

Would anyone else be interested in getting a dumb questions thread that runs this way?

Sounds a bit too smart for a Dumb Questions Thread.


(Yeah let's try it.)

That would require so much work. And people to actually read the OP. And probably a new thread.

A new thread indeed, yes.

It could probably work without the rest of the large amount of overhead the thread I linked to has. Even just numbering would be really nice. To help all questions get resolved.

There's over 1100 replies in that thread... I'm certainly not going to be the one to go through it. If there's enough call for it, I'll put up a new thread.

If maintenance is unwieldy, the index could be on the Wiki.

Then anyone can maintain it.

A more radical approach would be to set up something like Askbot (available as both open source and hosted) and encourage people to ask questions there.

I've been on Stack Overflow (which inspired Askbot) for a few years now, and for pure question-and-answer, it's a much better format than forums.

Of course, it has drawbacks of its own (another web app to maintain, and two different sites for the community to check), but if you're serious about a really good Q&A format, it should work well.

I'll bring it up with the other mods and see what they say.

So I brought it up with the other mods. While we're not totally opposed to closing down the current thread and building a new one, we had the thought that setting up a "Dumb Questions" sub-forum might be the way to go. This way, people could more easily track replies and find questions that they wouldn't otherwise.

Thoughts?

Hi

I have created a new Dumb Question's Forum. If you have a 'dumb' question would you post in that forum, please?

One question - one topic.

Hey I totally would but unfortunately I do not have the required permission to view that board

Oops! Fixed.

Sorry about that!

Yay! I like this way of handling it too. Thanks!