Mindboards

Are any of you guys familiar with StackOverflow? Well I've applied for a site of that style for Lego Robotics, now that they're giving out the software, StackExchange.

StackExchange is a web app designed for Q&A. Users ask questions, and others answer them. Each answer can be up- or down- voted, depending on its relevance to the question. Similarly, the "correct" answer can be marked by the asker. One of the really neat features is the ability to tag questions, which greatly improves searchability. Also, the software has a reputation system: the more you contribute, the higher your rep, and therefore the more moderation tools you have access to.

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The robotics site won't become real until a sufficient number of people show an interest. I'm sure that the "Web 2.0" technology of the StackExchange software would, in many cases, add to the Mindstorms community. The software includes

You can commit to the proposal here!

Once enough people commit, we get our site, complete with a free domain name!

So Commit!

NB: the previous links are all referral links. If for some reason or other, you do not wish to use my referral link, use this non-refering link.

I committed early this month and hope we get enough people to do the same shortly. This thread should help... For now unfortunately there is little else I can do. Or is there?

linmix wrote:I committed early this month and hope we get enough people to do the same shortly. This thread should help... For now unfortunately there is little else I can do. Or is there?

Sure! Post your referral link on other mindstorms sites to help spread the word!

For those of us who don't bother to research this directly, can you explain a bit more about "referral links" and why I would care whether someone commits to the LEGO MINDSTORMS page because I referred them or someone else did?

With respect to the old threads about this on nxtasy.org, you can search either Bing or Google with this text: stackexchange site:forums.nxtasy.org

Any link that you see in the results with "cached" beside it will let you grab a copy of the content that Google or Bing has cached.

John Hansen

afanofosc wrote:For those of us who don't bother to research this directly, can you explain a bit more about "referral links" and why I would care whether someone commits to the LEGO MINDSTORMS page because I referred them or someone else did?

With respect to the old threads about this on nxtasy.org, you can search either Bing or Google with this text: stackexchange site:forums.nxtasy.org

Any link that you see in the results with "cached" beside it will let you grab a copy of the content that Google or Bing has cached.

John Hansen

No real reason. You get bonus reputation points on the Area51 site (not very useful for most users), and your name appears next to the users you referred. Gives an idea of who is doing the promoting. Totally optional.

You can use the non-referring link if you'd prefer.

Why not put this on the homepage?


You can get the full-size image here

Hey, I totally agree that we should have a link on the homepage but I think that using a referal link would be consfusing. It would imply that you, muntoo, are the owner of mindBoards, as the link from the home page would be referring under your name. Stick to a flat link.

nxtboy wrote:Hey, I totally agree that we should have a link on the homepage but I think that using a referal link would be consfusing. It would imply that you, muntoo, are the owner of mindBoards, as the link from the home page would be referring under your name. Stick to a flat link.

Arrrggh.... Curses. Foiled again!

Based on the information here, we need:

David Fullerton wrote:

1. A total Commitment Score of 500,
2. 200 committers
3. 100 committers with at least 200 rep on a single site

My recommendations for existing commiters are:

• To post referral links on their blogs/signatures on other sites/etc. (Referral links will give you reputation, and will help decrease the time till beta launch. Normal links work, but won't speed it up as much.)
• To participate in different existing StackExchange sites, and get at least 200 reputation on at least one site to show you're experienced with the system. You should use the same OpenID you used to sign up for the LEGO Mindstorms Area51 Proposal, so that the reputation associates with that account, and you may even get a +100 rep bonus across all sites, eventually.

So: Start participating!

To back my previous post up with data, here's what we've got so far: