Intentional communication with nudges, etc.

Question

Background:
I'd like to think that ask.clojure.org was formed to have a more like-minded community as noted in this talk: https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-hard-parts-of-open-source-by-evan-czaplicki

Question:
Can it go farther and also implement the intentional communication techniques like trying to frame the intent of people asking questions, the background, the actual question, and buttons that nudge people to engage on collaboration and understanding?

Thanks in advance, and let me know if it'd help to restate the question in a clearer way.

Answer 1

It is possible that any software for creating a web site could implement those ideas (given the proper time, skills, and software development effort), and it is pretty clear from Evan Czaplicki's talk that he is hoping someone creates such software: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Czaplicki_Evan/TheHardPartsOfOpenSource.md

That said, unless the software that Alex Miller selected already has some configuration option or add-on package that takes him an hour or less to enable it, my guess is that he is so busy with other things that it isn't in his interest to do so.

I do not spend much time outside of on-line programming communities other than ones focused on Clojure, but I have heard multiple comments by newcomers that they find other Clojurians helpful and polite, so unless this becomes an issue, we can just try to continue being helpful and polite in the mean time.

Comments

Thanks, that makes sense. Wonder if it could be open-sourced and community-managed.

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Jonathan, this ask.clojure.org site is based on https://www.question2answer.org/ so it is already open source. I don't know what, if any, code changes Alex made when building this or whether it is just configuration -- see https://ask.clojure.org/index.php/8219/what-plug-ins-were-needed-from-question2answer (which also underscores Andy's comment about the time commitments for working on Clojure vs working on this site).

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While it might sound free for ask.clojure.org maintainers to hand it over to being community managed, it cannot be free in time.  It is also under a clojure.org domain name, so they probably do not want to change who maintains it.

Before ask.clojure.org was created, there are several other places where Clojure questions are asked and answered, and/or announcements made, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure and https://clojureverse.org plus StackOverflow, of course.  One could just as well ask if those sites could be changed to follow Evan Czaplicki's intentional communication ideas.  The answer: Sure, they could, if someone who maintains them is willing to invest the time and effort to do so.