
Ask HN: What Alternative to StackOverflow? - kuon
This question has been brought a few times before on HN, but I have found a satisfying answer yet.<p>What community do you recommend to post &quot;complicated questions&quot;?<p>For example, I just posted that:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;63399940&#x2F;how-to-tell-ssh-to-setuid-after-pam-and-not-before-to-remap-users<p>and I am being told this is not &quot;SO material&quot;.<p>All my latest SO questions have been in the same &quot;vein&quot;, more architecture and design questions than strictly code question.<p>I&#x27;d like a friendly community that can share experience and have healthy debates over tricky questions.
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thorin
I guess the main alternatives are:

1\. Working it out for yourself

2\. Reading a book

3\. Asking a friend

[EDIT] I'm not really joking, I started programming in the 80s as a kid
reading stuff like this as the only book

[http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/VIC-20%20User's...](http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/VIC-20%20User's%20Manual.pdf)

Then when I started working mid-90s there were cases and cases of books about
Oracle products, Reporting tools, Unix, Windows, and C and Visual Basic
programming all around the office! Getting to know the people that could
answer questions in real life or on the phone became pretty useful!

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sgillen
I mean to be fair the user telling you the question is not SO material offered
you two alternative communities to post the question in. Is there something
lacking in those communities?

In general I’ve found there are specific discord/slack/whatever servers that
are more open to discussion, I don’t have one for networking stuff though.

~~~
kuon
Yeah I realize my question might not be SO material, but it's also hard to put
on another stack exchange site. Because the question has multiple parts, some
about linux internals, some about programming, some about security…

That's what is hard, with experience I've come to have to resolve harder
problems, but they are not harder because they require more skills, they are
harder because they are 50 ways to approach them.

Finding WHAT I need to code has become my problem was more than HOW.

I'd like a community that can share those concerns.

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plasma
I think the commenter to your question on SO is suggesting you use one of the
other SO "sites" to post under, specifically
[https://unix.stackexchange.com/](https://unix.stackexchange.com/) or
[https://superuser.com/](https://superuser.com/) which are different
categories of questions.

~~~
jolmg
I'm not sure those sites are correct either, since it is a programming
question, after all. Those other sites mainly focus on software usage and
configuration.

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peter_d_sherman
If you're a programmer, you could download the source code to ssh, then modify
and recompile it to implement the functionality you desire.

If you aren't, there are many places on the web where you can hire a
programmer who can do that for you, most notably Elance, Freelancer, Guru,
Upwork, and vWorker -- but there are others as well.

Also, see this post if you want to host your own StackOverflow-like Q&A site:

[https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/are-there-
any-...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/are-there-any-clones-
alternatives-for-running-a-stack-exchange-style-qa-site)

Also, see this other post:

"Ask HN: We need a better alternative for Q/A than stackoverflow"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21347079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21347079)

Anyway, wishing you luck in your endeavors!

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rozenmd
I've found value in individual subreddits - like /r/reactjs for React
questions. Common questions still get answered, unlike on SO.

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detaro
There's some alternatives within the Stackoverflow "network":

Maybe that question would have worked better on
[https://serverfault.com](https://serverfault.com)

for more abstract software questions there is
[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/)

Otherwise, forums and other communities specific to technologies. E.g. a
linux/unix admin group for your SSH/PAM question.

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GrantZvolsky
If you can't find the answer with a search engine and your question is too
specific for a Q&A site, dive into the source code.

~~~
non-entity
that works unless the source is proprietary and non-accesible :(

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austinjp
Curious, so piggy backing to ask: does anyone use Spectrum in this way with
success? I've looked around some communities out of curiosity but not yet
engaged much.

I actually had a brief conversation on an open Telegram group about a software
issue recently, and the developer replied within seconds. I suspect that
Telegram isn't commonly used in this way, though.

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potta_coffee
I've had good luck with language / tech specific IRC and Slack channels. Your
mileage may vary.

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Lordarminius
I have had success on reddit and slack and discord.

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fiftyacorn
Blogs or GitHub. If i can't find the soln then i can normally find the code or
unit tests and solve problems from there

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alexriabtsev
try Quora?

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scott31
[https://www.experts-exchange.com/](https://www.experts-exchange.com/)

~~~
Something1234
How is this site not a scam? Like experts aren't paid and everyone pays for
access. How did it even get traction?

~~~
wingerlang
I think it might have been a joke. If I’m not wrong experts exchange was the
go to site before SO because the replacement. So giving SE as the answer as an
alternative is kind of funny. Maybe I’m killing the joke but hey.

