JJ Merelo

The Perl 6 IRC channel is an excellent place for all your Perl 6 needs. Any problem is solved in no time. However, it's not the best place for storing and searching those questions and answers. There's a place for that: StackOverflow.

I haven't been an IRC user for a long time, but lately, acting on the TPF grant, I've started to hang out a few (almost a dozen) hours a day there. Questions are asked all the time

Incidentally, that question is close to my first fumbling steps on the site, just in case you want to check out.

They are generally answered, but you will have to scroll down a bit to get the answer, and IRC structure is not good for threads. The question might very well be spilled over to the other side. And it's bad SEO. The question will be lost among many different documents and posts. On the other hand, there's StackOverflow, the single resource for programmers and developers all around the world. Perl 6 gets around 1 question a day. Again, most questions are answered, and with a very good answer. And it stays there for ever, and they have good SEO mojo. That's, of course, very few questions. For the sake of comparison (and nothing more), Perl gets around 20 a day.

Many of them are voted down, and quite a few not answered. But that's a different issue altogether.

My proposal is very simple: if you ask a question in the IRC channel, StackOverflow it!. If you answer a question in the IRC channel (or, for that matter, in Twitter or Facebook or Telegram or what have you), ask the person who's making the question to take it also to StackOverflow, and answer it there too!