Art,

That seems significantly more complicated and doesn't actually resolve what I view as the main problem. Right now every voice (whether its a spam message or from a knowledgeable sas expert) on SAS-L has equal weight. Further, as you know, in SAS, there are always at least 5 different ways to solve the same problem. That dynamic isn't biased towards finding the best, most-useful answers to specific SAS programming questions. Likewise, a multiple-search-engine interface approach would only exacerbate that problem. We need a way to filter the signal from the noise, not just find more noise to sort through.

I don't think that the approach we're taking with www.runsubmit.com is the *only* good approach, but it is certainly, by now, a proven approach to the problem as witnessed by the phenomenal success of StackOverflow which took on a similar problem for the much broader topic of *ALL* programming related questions. Their defeat of a similarly poor knowledge exchange model (Experts Exchange) is in process as seen here... http://trends.google.com/websites?q=stackoverflow.com,+experts-exchange.com

I'm convinced that with enough critical mass of active contributors, this concept (on www.runsubmit.com) could prove to be a MUCH better one than the others.

J

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Arthur Tabachneck <art297@netscape.net>wrote:

> Jay, > > It's a nice concept, but so are all of the others. > > What I was thinking about was actually something similar to a cross > between Les Jansen's site, those search engines that submit a search to > multiple search engines and show the results in separate windows, and a > single point of entry that would allow one to simultaneously post to one > or more of those sites as well as enroll and specify the degree of > interaction they want with each. > > Art > --------- > On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 11:34:21 -0400, Jay Stevens <jay.l.stevens@GMAIL.COM> > wrote: > > >I've raised this same question a few times here over the last 2 years. > Most > >recently 9 months ago, I posted this: > > > > RunSubmit.com is a knowledge exchange site that is focused exclusively > >on SAS. It uses a reputation system and collaborative voting to ensure > that > >the best and most helpful answers to questions are bubbled up to the top. > > > > Historically, the primary user-driven community for information about > >programming and using SAS was SAS-L, the usenet newsgroup comp.soft- > sys.sas. > >This creates a problem for the user in search of knowledge about SAS. > While > >much of the content on SAS-L is useful and usable, its not always > accessible > >and the user is left to filter the signal from the noise themselves. > >RunSubmit.com avoids this issue. Interesting and Useful questions are > voted > >up by the community. Interesting and useful answers are likewise voted > up, > >ensuring that the wisdom of the crowd is leveraged for all users. > Overall, > >it has the potential to be a significantly better model than SAS-L. > UseNet > >newsgroups served their purpose, but really amounts to not much more than > >searching through a stack of email conversations which users (who are just > >looking for answers) are forced. > > > > In addition, each question on runsubmit.com can have multiple tags > which > >allows for a rich categorization of the content to better enable relevant > >searching. > > > > RunSubmit.com is built on top of the same technology that drives > >www.stackoverflow.com (the programming Q&A site that has quickly become > one > >of the top 500 sites on the web) and uses a similar system of reputation > and > >xbox-style badges to encourage community participation in something of an > >addictive way. In addition, as users reach higher levels of reputation, > >they are granted more capabilities in the system. Ultimately, once the > >system trusts you through your reputation, both questions and answers > become > >editable in a wiki-like way. This allows those users who have earned the > >trust of their peers to continually improve the questions and answers over > >time. > > > >Andrew's list of alternate sources of SAS information highlights the > >problem. There are hundreds of forums/outlets for potentially good SAS > >information on the web, but without some kind of collaborative filtering > to > >encourage the best, most-useful, most-helpful content to rise to the top, > >none of these are any better than doing a search through that stack of > >emails. > > > >The content and knowledge found in SAS-L over the decades is amazing. > >Unfortunately, I think that time will shows that SAS-L (as a useful and > >usable channel to access that information) has been dying a slow death for > >years with the advent of the social media uprising. > > > >Go check it out and see if there might be a slightly better way to do > this. > >www.runsubmit.com >