Proposal: Stack Overflow Academy
This site already exists at https://stackoverflow.com/help.
Failing that, there is always http://meta.stackoverflow.com.
Proposal: Stack Overflow Academy
This site already exists at https://stackoverflow.com/help.
Failing that, there is always http://meta.stackoverflow.com.
As you might have noticed, the proposal was created by our very own Shog9. The idea came up when discussing an idea for providing mentoring opportunities for people trying to get into programming. It is related to the triage system we've been kicking around. There exist people who might be able to ask interesting questions on Stack Overflow, but are hampered by the (very appropriate) customs that have developed over 6 years to protect the site from problem askers.
Now we've worked hard to improve our help for new users. We reformatted and expanded the traditional FAQ into a more comprehensive series of help articles. Even so, help remains rather general and purposely concise. A new user ought to be able to find answers to their own questions, but that does require some study beyond what is needed to understand the programming problem well enough to ask about it. For people who learn best by doing (and that's a real strength of the Q&A model), handing them a link to a bunch of words to read isn't as helpful as we might hope.
In addition, the help center is editable by a very small number of people and (with the notible exception of the on topic guidance) is nearly identical for every site on the network. If you need very specific help about how to participate on a site, you probably are better off asking on meta. Shog explained why meta might not be sufficient for the particular purpose this site is intended for. The long and short of it is that even after splitting Meta.SE from Meta.SO, such questions are often treated as little more than noise since there are other activities on a meta site besides individual help.
We recognize that this is an experiment and, perhaps, a misuse of a Stack Exchange site. Assuming the proposal proceeds to commitment and nears launch, we community managers will vet the idea. (In case you are concerned, we are currently divided on the wisdom of launching this proposal. All of us have at least some reservations.) If the site does make it to private beta, it'll be treated like any other launch. (We shut down 1 in 5 sites that reach beta.) If this becomes a clone of MSO (or the help center), we'd hardly keep investing in it.