After about two years with our current setup, we are taking stock of the current situation here and considering making some changes to
http://forum.jquery.com. We have received a lot of mixed feedback about the forum over the years with respect to both usability and volume, while we've seen the community at StackOverflow continue to flourish in the interim. Thus, we are considering two possible courses of action, in order of likelihood:
1. Move Q&A/Support from here at forum.jquery.com to StackOverflow
We would close posting on the Using jQuery, Using jQuery UI, Using jQuery Plugins, and jQuery Mobile forums, instructing users to instead post support queries to
StackOverflow, where quality questions are more likely to receive a rapid resonse, and lower quality questions will be filtered out.
Discussion will continue as usual in all of the development forums, which can provide a useful venue for developers to propose new ideas and ask questions that pertain to the development of the jQuery family of libraries.
2. Sunset the forum entirely
We'll close posting on all the forums but maintain the existing content so that is still accessible from search engines, etc. Q&A and support will move to StackOverflow, and discussion will move to another, as-yet-undecided venue. This involves considerably more overhead, but we are willing to consider it if we find that there are a large number of users who are avoiding getting involved in any sort of discussion entirely because of the platform itself.
3. Leave well enough alone
Don't tilt the apple cart! Everything's great! Work on incremental changes to improve the forum experience, but leave all support and discussion here for the foreseeable future.
The forum as is contains a lot of historical information and discussion from thousands of developers, and your feedback on how to proceed here is crucial to making the right decision. We are curious to get your general sentiment about the forum and your impressions from using it - or not using it! (If you'd prefer to provide your feedback *not* via this forum thread, feel free to get in touch via another mechanism... e-mail, Twitter, IRC). If you prefer #2 and have suggestions about *where* that discussion belongs, please provide that as well.
Thanks!