moderators for Q&A forum

[Ken Leung]

Ok, finally done with vacation. The past few days gave me the time I didn't have last month about this.

First of all, all these issues about choosing "moderators" and creating "question forum" have been troubling me since the first day I came up with the idea. It was all posted on the thread:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=15285
(funny how no one except Andy posted in that thread with concerns about these)

I was still brainstorming about this when Meabury suggested something similar, and I was soo busy with school work and workshop stuff that I went ahead and ask Brandon to create the forum before any more things were considered. I apologize for doing that. Thanks everyone for posting replies before it was too late.

Now, here are a few things I thought of while I was in "radio silent" the past two days.

The Chief Delphi Forum is a free-for-all forum, and therefore there shouldn't have been any sort of limitation on who can and can't post in a forum inside.

I still think having a Q&A forum is a good idea, as long as there's something to make sure the answers are helpful and correct.

When I suggested the Question forum, I didn't necessary mean creating one inside CD forum.

I think the first thing to do is to open it to everyone again. Then, CD can choose to keep (or not) the list of moderators to help manage that forum and make sure things run smoothly and questions get answered quickly and closed.


My original idea is creating something for organizations or groups like WRRF, where teams can ask questions to others inside that organization. It would be some what of a private forum just for the group only. I suggested this because WRRF teams already ask questions to the WRRF mailing list that only WRRF members can see, and having a forum is just one step on top of that. It would be like what Al said in his post earlier:

"It seems like what we are looking at here is a moderator who directs the questions to a group or expert (via e-mail) and then the reponse is posted to a forum that is read only."

This would be some what of a private forum for that group only. Of course, if the group chooses to open it to others they are welcome to.

Then the idea got expanded into a question forum for EVERY team, and suddenly it got a lot more complicated. I was too hasty to combine my idea with his and add Q&A into the CD forum. Again, I apologize for not thinking this thoroughly.

The Question forum I had in mind would be something created on the side, asking a number of people to help answer questions, as an additional resource on top of existing CD forum and other websites. However, putting it inside CD forum and setting a limit on answerers made it seems like “strips away some of that ability to see someone's worth. it will become the exclusive place to look for answers and discussion and - as someone told me - the "garbage" will be filtered out.” As M Krass said in his post. And he is right.

So, here is my question to everyone. Beside creating something for groups like WRRF or SCRRF, is there anyway of creating something that’s not free-for-all while not being “exclusive”? Or does it have to be free-for-all if its open to all teams in FIRST?