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Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

developers.facebook.com

51–57 of 57 posts

Re: Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

#52
post #37
post #3

I don't see the stack overflow model as being a great fit for what facebook api developers need. The main problem I saw with facebook api was that the right way to do things kept changing, and the docs and forum didn't keep up well. You basically needed to begin facebook API work by reading the entire blog in chronological order and then keep on scanning the dev blog daily, which may work ok if you're a fulltime face…

I disagree. Why try and build your own community when there's already an existing one with a lot of useful questions, engaged moderators and smart people answering? Especially when you've failed to support your existing community at all.

You do realize we already have 13,700 facebook related questions? http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions

Re: Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

#53

I don't love that facebook.stackoverflow.com looks exactly like stackoverflow.com — there’s no easy way to tell where you are, or to get back to the main stack overflow. Even more confusing, you can get to un-Facebook-related questions on facebook.stackoverflow.com (e.g. from your inbox, or from a user page). Since there are no redirects between regular and Facebook SO, this means that every question on Stack Overflo…

I agree this is mega confusing, we are probably going to change this and introduce a meta.so style brand for the mini site

Re: Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

#54
post #3

I don't see the stack overflow model as being a great fit for what facebook api developers need. The main problem I saw with facebook api was that the right way to do things kept changing, and the docs and forum didn't keep up well. You basically needed to begin facebook API work by reading the entire blog in chronological order and then keep on scanning the dev blog daily, which may work ok if you're a fulltime face…

They are still keeping the API docs though, and hopefully they will be able to re-allocate resources from managing the forum to keeping the API docs up to date.

Re: Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

#55

See also the blog.stackoverflow.com side of the partnership here: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/facebook-stackoverflow... Basically, it's a siloed version of stackoverflow.com containing only the tags relevant to Facebook. They're thinking about creating mini-sites for other major subdomains (see also http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/913/is-this-... ).

Hate the idea. SO's search is decent. This is just the kind of fragmentation that I already don't like about programmers. , unix. etc.. You can easily filter your lists by tags, you can easily search by tag. Where's the benefit?

The benefit is SO gets more traffic and users. Facebook benefits by off loading the management of their messy forums and rely on free crowd sourced moderation.

Re: Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

#56
post #3

I don't see the stack overflow model as being a great fit for what facebook api developers need. The main problem I saw with facebook api was that the right way to do things kept changing, and the docs and forum didn't keep up well. You basically needed to begin facebook API work by reading the entire blog in chronological order and then keep on scanning the dev blog daily, which may work ok if you're a fulltime face…

Agreed that the wiki would have been useful. I think the Stack overflow site would just be a replacement for their forums

Re: Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

#57
I like the documentation model of API pages with comments allowed, plus a semi-protected wiki model to edit the API pages. This allows the API maintainer to easily update, provides change history, plus allows the community to step in and provide corrections or code examples without the burden of rewriting the article.
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