[cctbxbb] crystallography Q&A site proposal on StackExchange

[Marcin Wojdyr]

Hello,
I'm writing about it first to developer mailing lists assuming that
developers know StackOverflow. SO has now a number of sister sites on
StackExchange and some Q&A sites in the same format are self-hosted,
e.g. biostars.org. Here is a list of sites in the science category on
SE: http://stackexchange.com/sites#science-traffic

I though that such a site for crystallography would be useful, mostly
because it has lower psychological and technical barrier for asking
questions. I'm not sure how it's on phenixbb and other mailing lists,
but on ccp4bb maybe a few percent of all 6000+ subscribers have asked
anything at all. I assume people have questions in mind, they are just
not eager to ask it by mailing 6000 other people.

I don't know if a Q&A site would help, but just to try here is
proposal for Crystallography site on SE:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/91841/crystallography

Using SE is simpler than hosting it, and even if the proposal doesn't
make it at least we'll have an idea what was the interest.

Technicalities.
New sites are created basically when enough people
is interested. Currently the proposal is in the "definition" stage,
which means coming up with example questions - to show what kind of
questions could be asked when the site exists.
To complete this stage we need 40 question with 10+ votes.
Everyone has 5 up-votes for selecting good questions. Votes can be
changed at any time. So at least 80 voting people would be needed for
this stage.
Having more example questions would also help.

Marcin