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1

Just became a catalyst member and I have one thing to say: I really wish you had a stack exchange site

I really hate relying on this forum because you never know if there’s been a better answer since the topic was closed

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You don’t need to … there are also other channels, which can provide you with a better answer:

But if you find a better solution on a closed topic, you’re more than welcome to share it and, if relevant, link closed topics.

Cheers, Marko :nerd_face:

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I would love to use StackOverflow but it’s not appropriate for Obsidian, unless it’s a programming question. I recently asked a question about file management and it was promptly removed (and deleted) because I was asking how to use Obsidian, not how to write a plugin.

StackOverflow is one of many stack exchange sites, that are specifically designed to be best in class for issue based discussions. Sites like https://askubuntu.com/ are the place for Ubuntu questions, and you’ll often find activity on topics that can grow over years. Users go back and update the posts to alert future users if the question is no longer relevant, solved, or to add detail.

The Obsidian forum is another example of a one-off forum like Microsoft’s Redirecting. That’s a great site technically and comes up with many Google queries, but it SUCKS as a user. Participation requires a separate registration, the topics get closed, and it’s hard to tell who’s reputable when answering.

Just to go down the list:

  • Reddit - Great for discussions in a point in time, but it’s not the same as issue based threads. It’s essentially a workaround for support.
  • Discord - This is chat. Not topic based.
  • Google? That’s not a forum. Google helps the user find the forum, which is usually this one, which is usually a closed thread. For example, yesterday I wondered… can I edit the background of Dataview result? The queries (e.g. “add box to obsidian data view” or more generally “Obsidian dataview format” Google Search) all turned up many robust discussion on date formats. I didn’t want to add another discussion if this discussion has happened already, I couldn’t be sure that any of the results were actually accurate anymore so I didn’t read them, and I had already used the time I was wiling to spend learning something new on wading though these irrelevant posts.

So, yeah, I thought about using other things, but there’s a reason that I specifically posted about Stack Exchange.