Proposal: Tridion
There is currently a very active and growing Tridion Community, but not one that really uses the current Stack Overflow site. On the last try only 30 posts come up with a search for Tridion.
Not all Tridion questions are programming related, and are mostly raised in the closed Tridion forums. The forums are difficult to navigate and do not benefit from the features of a Stack Exchange site, which I think would help the Tridion Community to develop further.
As a veteran Stack Overflow user, and a fairly new Tridion user. I can say that Stack Overflow is great for questions of syntax and for algorithmic errors or often questions of architecture.
However, it is difficult to get answers on niche topics such as SDL Tridion, because these questions tend to get buried beneath the more common language specific questions on the popular tags such as C#, jQuery, etc.
A community specifically for SDL Tridion would lower the barrier to entry for people to share their knowledge making it far easier than it currently is to give back to the community. The Stack Exchange platform is proven, fast and mature.
The reputation scores create healthy competition between experts as we've seen on Stack Overflow - the top users have become minor celebrities on the web. It would be a good measure for MVP status.
As you say Dave, Tridion is distinct from Stack Overflow in that a lot of the questions that arise around the product are not programming related, which would likely be closed as off-topic on Stack Overflow, there are issues of content management for example and techniques such as Blue Printing and Compound Component Templates which simply do not exist in other products.
Finally, I think ideas evolve from discussion and it would ultimately become a brilliant resource that could drive best practice and the product's reputation.
I completely agree with Rob - it's easy to get answers to general Tridion programming questions since it's essentially just a web app; however when it comes to questions such as architecture, blueprinting and templating these are not always appropriate for StackOverflow.
In many ways it's similar to SharePoint (which has it's own site at sharepoint.stackexchange.com) - it's a highly specialised subject that the majority of developers will have little experience in.
SDL Tridion needs it's own StackExchange site because
1-3 disqualify the current SDL Tridion forum and 4-5 disqualify the existing stackexchange offering.
Apart from not all Tridion questions being programming related, even the ones that are typical programming questions can easily get an incorrect answer because its context isn't clear.
For example this question Unable to load .Net dll while publishing, it was answered quite fast by somebody with .net knowledge. But because he did not understand the context of the question (it was SDL Tridion related), his answer did not make sense and got down-voted. I think that's sad for his effort that he ends up loosing reputation. If this question was asked on tridion.stackexchange.com he would probably not have answered, knowing he doesn't understand the context.
Yes, many programming-related Tridion questions have "easy" answers because someone will know the programming language or basic concepts. I agree the content management discussion is challenging--just because we can do it a certain way with a system such as Tridion doesn't mean we should.
A strong development team can implement Tridion in a way that meets technical requirements with clean, maintainable code but leave out author needs in the process.
I suspect too questions don't make it even to the closed forum since content authors, programmers, and consultants can find workarounds. We need technical, functional, and possibly content author perspectives.
The Tridion forums are closed. That is a a problem, but is it a necessary security "problem"?
I am in favor of a Tridion community in Stack Overflow, but Tridion has so many different ways to be implemented as a product that users may be very inclined to post sensitive information about their organization which their security director may not be pleased to see on the Internet. When users & developers of any system need help, they are going to ask for it and the concern of the sensitivity of their material may get lost.
