Benefits of GitHub based Q&A system over mailing list

[pattacini]

Just to give a look in retrospect, here are the main advantages we managed to gain by using GitHub as our Q&A system, as taken from https://www.godaddy.com/garage/webpro/development/cool-github-hack.

It's asynchronous

For questions that fall into the “important, but not urgent” box, this model works really well. An individual can post a public question to another, and the recipient can get to it in the queue when time permits.

It enables arbitrary length of response

Although some questions can be answered in 140 characters, others require a lengthier and more thought-full (as opposed to thought-free) response. This works wonderfully for that.

It’s persistent, one-to-many and public

Both of the points above could be applied to email as well. However, engaging in Q&A using this mechanism enables the interaction to be indexed by search engines and enables it to be found by others in the future who might have a similar question.

No need for subscribing to read the threads: everything is public and, as such, problems and solutions can be easily ranked by Google.

It builds reputation and community

All of the Qs and As that gather engagement not only show up in the Q&A thread, but also show up in the activity history of the individual participants. This gives a pulse to their activity over time when they participate. GitHub also highlights the group of individuals who have participated in the topic thread, giving the conversation a human face.

[alecive]

It doesn't clutter everyone's inbox 😄

[lornat75]

Another positive point is that now that we have routed to github most of the specific questions from users, we can use the mailing list for important, general purpose notifications.

[drdanz]

We can easily redirect questions to the repositories they belong to, or assign them to someone.

[pattacini]

@drdanz actually, assigning tasks is a big pro.

[drdanz]

We can also fix typos, formatting, etc