As for which community to ask, isn’t it all about the context? I find Stack Overflow is very useful for coding connumdrums, whereas JISCMail is the better of the two for in-context questions relating to my role within the institution (note: some of the e-learning JISCMail lists are quite active in comparison).

Anyway, as a final note, Stack Overflow also runs Server Fault, and Super User; two very similar sites with a different focus. I wonder if JISCMail moved some of its mailing lists over to this web-based/Stack-Overflow-style format, whether they’d be more successful?

The post was aimed at providing background information for a straw poll; you, Mike Ellis and Matt Jukes are fans, but I’d like further comments from a wider group. I’ve raised the issue on a mailing list as well as on Twitter.

I agree with your point that Stack Overflow can be useful as a both a knowledge base of answered queries and a place for asking queries (and also for answering them).

I guess there’s a distinction to make between “using” it in the sense of having found useful information there (for instance when searching), and having actively posted or commented. I’ve done far more of the former than the latter. But then, perhaps that’s because the majority of my questions have already been asked (and answered)? :)

I note, for example, that a Google search forStack+Overflow on the JISCMail Web site finds only a single reference to the service out of the 89,300 resources indexed by Google.

Are you aware of ways in which evidence of Stack Overflow use within our can be obtained? There doesn’t see to be a way of befriending people on Stack Overflow, for example.

I’m pretty sure that most web developers will have come across Stack Overflow quite some time ago. If only through stumbling across it when Googling for a solution to a particular problem…