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Steve Jones Editor at SQLServerCentral.com You can follow Steve on Twitter as way0utwest (www.twitter.com/way0utwest)

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By Steve Jones in SQL Musings | 12-08-2009 7:25 AM | Categories: Filed under: SQLServerCentral.com

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We've had the ASK SQLServerCentral site up for a couple months now and while I see traffic continuing over there, it seems that most of our questions and answers are still taking place on the traditional forums. That's good since I prefer our forums, though I do try to get over to ASK at least a couple times a day and actually ask or answer a question.

It's slightly messed up my goals for the year since I had made it a goal to post 400 times a month in our forums, however when the ASK site came up, the new format changed the way that I worked with users. In our traditional forums, often an answer requires a discussion, we might ask for more information, we might need to clarify or respond to the posters understanding of our answer, or something else. That means that a traditional "discussion" of an issue typically winds up with 2-3 posts from an person answering going back and forth with the poster.

In the ASK site, we are supposed to edit the question, and if we need more information, post a comment, which isn't necessarily a part of the question or answer. So that as I try to answer something, I don't really get a post.

The other thing that I often do in traditional forums when I'm trying to help a user gain confidence, I'll second an answer given by someone else. I know when two people give me the same answer, or one seconds another's answer. I have confidence in it. On the ASK site I can vote up an answer, but I can't add my personal recommendation.

Maybe that doesn't matter, but it certainly has messed up my goals. After the Thanksgiving break and time spent on the ASK site, I came back last week to just over 200 posts in the last 30 days. I've been working to get that back to 300, but it's been hard, especially as many posts I've examined have had good answers on them already.

I'm not sure how I'll look at this moving forward for next year, but it's about time to re-examine my goals and start to create some for next year.

Comments

kevriley said:

Have you had any chance to look at stats for ASK? It definitely seems like the number of questions has slowed somewhat over the last few weeks. Or maybe it was skewed by people asking seeder questions in the beginning to try and create some momentum to get the site going.

December 8, 2009 7:59 AM

Steve Jones said:

I'm trying to get someone to run some stats and see what the rate of questions are. I think there was some skewing, especially by my asking questions, but I'm not sure how much. We have 663 questions today, I asked 69, so a good percentage, but not dominating. I am seeing new ones appearing, but I'm not sure how many are coming on a regular basis.

December 8, 2009 9:30 AM

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