What I’m NOT announcing Monday: yet another forum.

Written on October 23, 2008 by Brent Ozar in SQL Server

I was debating adding a forum to SQLServerPedia, but now’s not the time for two reasons. Aaron Lowe clued me in to the first one:

First, we don’t want to fragment the community any more than it’s already fragmented. There’s a ton of forums out there, and it’s hard to stay on top of them if you want to post answers. I can live with going to one site a day and spending maybe half an hour on that site answering questions, but I can’t live with going to all of these:

Come on, gimme a break. This is ridiculous.

If we added a new forum, then we’d be doing a disservice to the community. Just because we could doesn’t mean we should. (Kinda reminds me of CLR in the database!)

Second, I don’t think anybody can do online Q&A better than StackOverflow.com. StackOverflow has a bunch of unique features that make it a forum killer. First and foremost, us DBAs know more than just SQL Server, and StackOverflow makes it easy to ask (and answer) questions that include more than one component – like, say, T-SQL and PHP on IIS. The problem might be in any one of those areas, and with StackOverflow, you’re not forced to jam a square peg in a round hole, putting a question in a single forum that may not fit.

I’m not saying we’ll never do a forum – we might, but only when we think it can add real value to the community. Let’s say SQLServerPedia.com becomes the dominant force in the SQL Server education market and becomes every DBA’s home page. At that point, it might make sense to put a forum there to make it easier for DBAs to get answers.

But until DBAs start asking for a new forum, and until we see a way to help, that’s off the table. Thanks again to Aaron for helping me see the light!

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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David Stein

October 23, 2008 | 8:09 AM

Actually, with your last announcement that’s what I thought. “Oh great, another forum.” Incidentally, my forum of choice is SQL Team though I must admit that I do much more asking rather than answering questions there.

I’d love to try StackOverflow but I haven’t set up an OpenID yet and I’ve been too lazy to do so. With the exception of requiring OpenID, I think Jeff Atwood is a genius.

October 23, 2008 | 8:14 AM

I hear you about OpenID – when I saw that he was requiring it, my thoughts were in this order:

1. Wow, how many users have even heard of this?
2. How many people is he going to lose? (Like you.)
3. Does my OpenID even still work? (And by the way, it didn’t.)

I’d set one up on BrentOzar.com when I first heard about it, because I adore the concept. I want to have a single, unified reputation across every site I visit. I can just imagine some joker signing up with “BrentOzar” on some forum and saying stuff like, “SQL Server suxxorz!” Sure, I can say it wasn’t me, but how will you ever really know?

That sound you just heard was Mr. Langdon racing over to forums to register as me and do some trash talking, hahaha. (Just kidding, sir.)

I actually wanted to require OpenID on the relaunch of SQLServerPedia too, but I couldn’t get the code to work. So close, but yet so far….

Jerry Hung

October 23, 2008 | 9:08 AM

Hey, you do have OpenID Enabled for the comments

Exactly my first thoughts – another forum? I need more hours in a day. For now, I only stick to MSDN forums and SQL Server Central, and those kept me occupied pretty good already

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