I had always resisted posting anything into news groups. Especially the newsgroups that are active for more than 20 years. The newsgroups are invaded with pretentious experts, “standards” cops, who want to show off rather than help. If you have any doubt try posting something to comp.lang.c or comp.lang.c++. You should be fairly new in there to understand what I am talking about. There is a inbuilt arrogance up in the air. I can’t emphasize how much I despise those people.
Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky two of the most prominent programmers in the area have rigged together a user forum type of thingy for programmers to ask questions and get answers for them. The website is currently in private beta. So if you are not there, just wait patiently or submit your emails for an invite.
The best thing about it is, there is no rules for postings. You can post any questions right then and there. So you won’t get called out for posting irrelevant questions, or produced with a courtesy link to the faq for the rules. The postings get voted up or down. So bad or dumb questions gets to the bottom of the pile pretty quickly. Good questions and questions that have more relevance will get to the top and viewed over and over again.
Down the road you receive badges as you go. The votes you receive on your questions or answers will fetch you some nice nifty badges and increase your reputation. Its cool over all.
And did I tell you the UI is slick ?