Salesforce Stack Exchange Proposal
I've just created a proposal over at area51.stackexchange.com to create a Salesforce stack exchange site, targeted at both developers and administrators who work with the force.com platform. I also started a discussion to explain my reasoning, which I'm including here too to help get some more exposure for it.
Salesforce, and Force.com in general, are attracting increasing numbers of users all the time, and therefore more and more administrators and developers are cutting their teeth on the platform, adding to the numbers who have been using it for many years already.
Due to the nature of the platform, development can range from configuration (declarative development) which requires no code to be written, through to custom web services, pages, object-oriented code and database triggers. Nearly all complex solutions require a mixture of the two styles, and even working out where the line between can be part of the challenge. Because of the two distinct areas of development I believe a salesforce exchange site would be beneficial for many people because the questions don't really fit in at stackoverflow.com every time.
For instance, today I answered this question:
This could relate to code, but if the requirement is just that a report is needed then no code is needed, making it a bad fit for the site but not leaving the asker anywhere sensible to turn. Personally I find the stack exchange format easier to deal with than regular forums, they're cleaner, neater and generally make it much easier to find the information you need. Ryan Huff (who already responded on Twitter) agrees:
So please lend a little support, and let's see if we can get this thing live!
