What Alternative to StackOverflow?

Question

This question has been brought a few times before on HN, but I have found a satisfying answer yet.What community do you recommend to post "complicated questions"?For example, I just posted that:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63399940/how-to-tell-ssh-to-setuid-after-pam-and-not-before-to-remap-usersand I am being told this is not "SO material".All my latest SO questions have been in the same "vein", more architecture and design questions than strictly code question.I'd like a friendly community that can share experience and have healthy debates over tricky questions.

thorin · Accepted Answer

I guess the main alternatives are:1. Working it out for yourself2. Reading a book3. 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 bookhttp://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/VIC-20%20User's...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!

sgillen · Answer

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&rsquo;ve found there are specific discord/slack/whatever servers that are more open to discussion, I don&rsquo;t have one for networking stuff though.

plasma · Answer

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/ or https://superuser.com/ which are different categories of questions.

peter_d_sherman · Answer

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-...
Also, see this other post:
"Ask HN: We need a better alternative for Q/A than stackoverflow"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21347079
Anyway, wishing you luck in your endeavors!

rozenmd · Answer

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

detaro · Answer

There's some alternatives within the Stackoverflow "network":
Maybe that question would have worked better on https://serverfault.com
for more abstract software questions there is https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/
Otherwise, forums and other communities specific to technologies. E.g. a linux/unix admin group for your SSH/PAM question.

GrantZvolsky · Answer

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.

austinjp · Answer

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.

potta_coffee · Answer

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

Lordarminius · Answer

I have had success on reddit and slack and discord.

fiftyacorn · Answer

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

alexriabtsev · Answer

try Quora?

scott31 · Answer

https://www.experts-exchange.com/