Ideas to build a federated StackExchange alternative
Ideas to build a federated StackExchange alternative
@Codeberg@social.anoxinon.de Actually since yesterday I'm pondering about the idea to build a #federated version of stackoverflow, nothing written yet, I'm reading, researching. Also, right now I was checking this stack exchange sqlite db under CC BY-SA 4.0 to check how useful and doable would b...
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15471632
Codeberg was asking about this. The linked toot by a commenter points to :
These are CC-BY-SA 4.0 remixes of the Stack Exchange Creative Commons Data Dumps. 100% Unendorsed by Stack Exchange, Inc.
They are minimal. They provide the data you probably care about and the data you need to comply with the original license in SQLite format.
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Would creating a Lemmy instance with that content be enough? Doing so the already enough large Lemmy community could already interact with it.
I think it would make sense to have a specialised forum for it. The question & answer format requires data that Lemmy just isn't able to fully replicate as it is.
Also the community editable nature of stack exchange is really unique and more like a wiki than a standard forum/branching discussion threads, where we're presumed to have sole ownership of all of our posts.
The question & answer format requires data that Lemmy just isn't able to fully replicate as it is.
Other than marking the correct answer and having user score/badges, there is anything else?
Also the community editable nature
You're right, I just forgot that people can edit your questions and answers.
Presentation matters. Replies to posts about minor items aren't displayed as prominently. This means the important answers are large and in charge, while debates about the merits of Rust in this situation are pushed away.
The two-tier reply system on SO is really useful and would be harder to implement -- the replies to the questions, but also replies to the posts/replies. I don't know how that would look if starting from Lemmy as a base.
I also like the bounty system to highlight questions the community feels are important to answer, which doesn't have an obvious equivalent in Lemmy.
Tagging is also really good and important -- both general tags that should be public and probably defined by the instance/moderators or by the software itself, and user tags which should be private or semi-private and more open. That's stuff that would have to be built.
There's also a zillion ways to improve the user experience. Multiple acceptable answers. Better filtering and search. Better clarity around edit histories.
Really, I think the best course would be to start from scratch, but it'll take more time to get up and running.
The two-tier reply system on SO is really useful and would be harder to implement -- the replies to the questions, but also replies to the posts/replies. I don't know how that would look if starting from Lemmy as a base.
How so? Lemmy allows unlimited nesting of replies, which is even better.
Wait what i didnt know about any community editable aspect, can you share some examples?
Basically any member is allowed to edit anyone else's question or answer. The changes may go up before or after review by mods depending on the member's trust level. I've had my questions changed before. It can be kind of annoying but I understand they're doing it to maintain some level of quality.
Is that the only difference? That feature doesn’t seem great tbh. I’d love a wiki on lemmy though especially one that integrated to the point you can one click add a question + answer directly to the communities wiki
No, there are a number of differences. There's questions & answers under which there are comments, and a bunch of other functionality. It's so different to a standard threaded forum that you may as well build a new system from scratch. I honestly think it would be less work than trying to shoehorn lemmy into this role, and have another fediverse ecosystem built around it.
Seems like it would be good to request Discourse and NodeBB to offer similar features
👍 Interesting idea.