ask.debian.net

Since a few hours, a Shapado instance for Debian is available at:

Shapado is a Question and Answer (QA) website, meant to provide user support to the community, by the community.

Another way of seeing it is as a skill exchange website: users can ask questions about stuff they don't know and other users, possiby more expert on that topic, can answer those questions; everyone can then use peer review to evaluate and sort answers.

Several proprietary web applications are based on the above notions and have proven useful for user support in several contexts, including other Free Software distributions. Shapado on the other hand is Free Software released under AGPL; as such it's the best match to give a try to something similar in the context of Debian. Shapado has also a couple of other niceties, e.g. offers login via OpenID and supports questions/answers in multiple languages.

Will it work for us?
Will it not?
It's up to the community. This kind of user support works when it reaches a critical mass of both "newbie" users in need of help and of "expert" users willing to help them. No matter your category, give it a try: go to the website and look around, you'll probably find a question to ask, a question to answer, or an answer to evaluate.

Acknowledgements

• the Shapado developers
• Patrick Aljord for hosting support
• Fernando C. Estrada and Luis Uribe for admin / moderation work (by the way, they are looking for help)
• Jorge Castro for pinging me about this idea

Update: add mention of multi-language support
Update: shapado.debian.net is now ask.debian.net (redirection is in place, don't worry)