[Biopython-dev] Encouraging use of Stack Overflow for questions

[Brad Chapman]

Giovanni;
Thanks for the feedback on this. We've had a few positive responses
and I think it's something that would be low effort to experiment with.
I'm open to whether we do this on the main StackOverflow site,
Nick's dedicated suggested site, or Blue Obelisk. The main criteria
is that we are likely to have the website be freely available (and
around) in the future.

> Sorry for the late reply... I also use StackOverflow and I think that it is
> a great resource, and it would very good if we can become more represented
> there.
> At the moment there are a few questions on biopython on SO, but there are so
> few biopython users that people usually receive few answers and they prefer
> to ask their questions again in this list.

Yes, that's what we'd be hoping to change. The main thing is that we
get folks interested in python bioinformatics programming looking
there, and then suggest users ask questions there. The significant
benefit is that the presentation of questions and answers gives you 
a historical resource that is easy to search and browse.

> By the way, it is possible to get feeds for questions on StackOverflow.
> For example, this is the feed for the questions tagged 'biopython':
> - http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/biopython
> We could add this rss to the biopython's friendfeed or twitter page (I
> barely know what I am talking about here), or to the blog/wiki/etc.
> Maybe there is also a way to notify this mailing list of the questions asked
> there.

There are resources we could use to redirect the feed to Twitter:

http://twitterfeed.com/

and the mailing list:

http://www.feedmyinbox.com/

Agreed that we should do this to increase visibility.

Brad