[Cialug] Announcing O'Reilly Answers - A useful site that's, well, a different kind of animal

[Josh More]

Passing along information from O'Reilly
---------------------------------------------

Announcing O'Reilly Answers
A useful site that's, well, a different kind of animal

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers
<a dccb7c3ead68a7063d="true"
href="http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1z9qakcmkl59bmslgein6u8oduje0ci7rqs9kqg7g"
target="_blank">http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1z9qakcmkl59bmslgein6u8oduje0ci7rqs9kqg7g

,
and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a
community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing
answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference
speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly).

Why Answers, and why now?
O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing
and idea generation. We've created the usual means of facilitating
communication between customers, O'Reilly folks, and the outside experts
we call "alpha geeks" who contribute to O'Reilly books, conferences, and
websites. We can connect through  reader reviews, errata submissions,
book forums,  blog comments, Get Satisfaction, our customer service
department, and more. But too much of this conversation is siloed, and
not enough is public (e.g., discussions on our internal mailing list for
editors, or personal responses to customer questions). O'Reilly Answers
will be the place where much of that communication happens from this
point forward.

Why participate?
The lofty reason: Like O'Reilly, you want to "change the world by
spreading the knowledge of innovators." That's our mission, and we've
been fortunate enough to build a community of passionate, committed
people who love to learn and share their knowledge as they work towards
a better world for us all.

The "nice, but what's in it for me" reasons: reputation, recognition,
and rewards.

Get Recognized: "Find interesting people" is a core activity at
O'Reilly, and an important component of our success. We see Answers as
an important way to discover and connect with our next authors, online
instructors, videographers, and speakers.

Build Your Reputation: You've learned a lot, why not get credit for all
that knowledge? As your submissions to Answers are voted up, your
personal reputation on the site increases. At launch, your reputation
will be based solely on your participation in O'Reilly Answers. Soon,
we're expanding  across <a dccb7c3ead68a7063d="true"
href="http://oreilly.com/" target="_blank">oreilly.com 
, so the book errata and book reviews
you've submitted, books you've registered, and conferences you've
attended, will add reputation points. You'll also earn badges
<a dccb7c3ead68a7063d="true"
href="http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1z847l4boe3gu06jg2ojde33fd0flbsuhgd79k2q8"
target="_blank">http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1z847l4boe3gu06jg2ojde33fd0flbsuhgd79k2q8


to mark accomplishments and milestones.

Earn Rewards: Glory is great, but discounts and deals are nice, too. We
want to reward your contributions to the O'Reilly community. Shortly
we'll have a point-based system in place that you can redeem for books,
training, courses, and conferences. Details soon, but in the meantime,
any actions you take now will count towards your total points.

This is just v.1:
The best part of any project on the web is watching it take on a life of
its own. With that in mind, we're looking forward to *your* suggestions
about where O'Reilly Answers should go, what features should be added,
and what benefits and rewards we can offer all of you.

I'd like to acknowledge the projects that have proceeded Answers and
inspired us, such as SitePoint Forums (we distribute their books),
StackOverflow, Yahoo! Answers, Knol, and many others. They're great
resources, and we think the O'Reilly community can create a useful site
that's, well, a different kind of animal.

One last thing: O'Reilly Answers is in beta and you may encounter bugs.
We're still working on many improvements to the site, such as feeds for
each tag, but would love to hear your suggestions for features and
improvements. Please send any suggestions/questions/bug reports to
answers at <a dccb7c3ead68a7063d="true" href="http://oreilly.com/"
target="_blank">oreilly.com 
.


-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP, GIAC 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515-245-7701