There should be some straightforward guidelines as to which one to pick. Also what is the scope of answers.ros.org, is it the same as ros-users? What about questions that would otherwise have been asked on ros-developers, ros-kinect, or pcl-users?
answers.ros.org has been created with the goal of decreasing the volume of traffic on the ros-users as well as providing an easy place to archive common answers to questions.
We have been seeing a number of repeated questions on the ros-users mailing list as new people join the community. The hope is that this forum will allow easier access to older posts, as well as by slightly more dynamic and browseable.
We also hoping to merge this site with the Troubleshooting and FAQs for individual packages which developers have not filled out as well as they might have. Questions relating to specific stacks should be tagged with the stacks name. And questions relating to a specific package should be tagged with both the stack and package name if possible. If you find a question useful please upvote.
In general ask questions here, on answers.ros.org, for which you think there is a single answer. If you would like to start a discussion or an open ended question you should use the mailing lists.
Kinect related things definitely just tag with "kinect" and pcl with "pcl" as the package tagging guidelines above would suggest.
PS We will be updating the faq linked at the top with this and other questions about how this site works. If you have more for now go ahead and post with "answers.ros.org" as the tag, and we'll consolidate them as seems appropriate.
I'm not sure what the site admin folks think about this, but I'll share my thoughts.
answers.ros.org should serve as the first place to come for a question if a Google search (or ROS.org search) doesn't turn up the results that you are looking for. It serves as a place for some generalized, common questions that would apply to more than one person. The idea is that this site can cache knowledge in a format that is less formal than a wiki, but still searchable and sortable. I believe that the ROS mailing list should probably be reserved for in-depth (and specific) technical troubleshooting questions (that may often only apply to one situation) and development questions.
The idea is that an FAQ site like this should serve up just that, frequently asked questions.
I think that some of the common questions asked on the stack-specific mailing lists may also end up on this site as well, as a central repository of frequent ROS questions.
From most generic to most specific:
Asked: Feb 14 '11
Seen: 590 times
Last updated: Feb 14 '11
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