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Every time I come here, whether by accident, via google or on purpose. I always look at the newest questions and barely see more than 5-10 being answered.
I think it is time to: 1. acknowledge this forum has a problem 2. start reforming it, to create an incentive for questions being answered.
So sad, seeing such a great development environment like ROS being so poorly supported.
No, I do not believe it's dead.
Is it as frequently visited by users able and willing to answers questions as in the past? No, it isn't.
Some interesting statistics are provided by metrics.ros.org/answers, and they seem to show this as well: notice how the percentage of unanswered questions has steadily gone up over the years.
What perhaps doesn't help is topics like Would it make sense to migrate ROS Answers to Stack Exchange? and announcements such as Planned Migration of ROS Answers and Gazebo Answers to Robotics Stack Exchange (which, for good reason, then doesn't lead to any immediate action, and leaves things in limbo for a long time).
But regardless, the number of active, experienced accounts here has steadily gone down over the years. I guess that's somewhat inevitable, as people progress to more demanding positions (as part of their careers) and/or just don't enjoy contributing to forums like this one any more.
I also believe in general participation on forums and Q&A sites has gone down, not just here on ROS Answers. Facebook groups, Discord, Whatsapp/Telegram/Slack/etc channels and other such venues have seen growth (even Youtube is used for these kinds of things in some scenes), whereas public forums are seen as old and clunky.
(or, my personal theory: there is too much money in robotics these days, and time == money, so time spent on sites like ROS Answers is "lost money". In reality, it's a free "training course", but not many people see it that way)
See some of the later posts on ROS Answers needs your help for some perspectives on this from different community members.
I think it is time to: 1. acknowledge this forum has a problem 2. start reforming it, to create an incentive for questions being answered.
turning it around a bit: looking at your account, you have 33 questions, 12 answers. It really doesn't take much to answer someone else's question, and if a couple more people would do that, we could turn it around pretty quickly I believe. Don't feel like you have to be an "expert" to start answering. That's not needed at all.
What might also not help motivate potential contributors: so many duplicates are being posted these days, that sometimes it feels like the same questions are being asked, over and over.
Seeing the 100th question titled "catkin_make error" without any context whatsoever is not a good thing.
That's probably partly due to the bad search, but I can't help but wonder whether some posters even try to look for previous Q&As before posting.
Dead is not a good definition. I think that there's a lot of you get out of it the level of effort that you put into it. A very generic unresearched question often will hang unanswered as it's often unbounded and mostly unanswerable without more information or a lot of work. Also as a community no one is paid to answer these questions and it may take a few days for any particular person to look at the questions. And with some ~30 questions per day coming in, there can be 100+ questions that have not yet been looked at by domain experts who check in a few times a week.
Can't argue the point raised by @PointCloud though: there's a bout 4 to 5 regular 'answerers' these days.
I really hope the migration to SE helps increase participation, because this isn't (and hasn't been) sustainable in the long run.
Asked: 2023-05-14 00:16:52 -0500
Seen: 239 times
Last updated: May 14 '23
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I really agree. I am actually looking for an answer to my question. No one answers cause this forum seems almost dead. Who do we turn to when you have a problem and need help?