Posts Tagged ‘stack exchange’

Healthcare IT Q&A: R.I.P.

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

After close to two years of effort (see here) the Healthcare IT Stack Exchange Site is closing for good. HealthCare IT is closing:

it simply does not appear that this topic has a strong enough following on our network to support the site long-term

That says it all. 🙁

Finally Launched: Healthcare IT Q&A

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

The new Healthcare IT Stack Exchange site is now open to the public.

Hopefully this thing will take off.  So go search, ask, answer, up vote,  and (yes) down vote when necessary. Also, don't forget to tell your friends and colleagues.

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. -- Carl Sagan

Final Plea to Launch: Healthcare IT Q&A

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Closer to Launch: Healthcare IT Q&A didn't get close to doing the job. Even after 8 months the commitment level is still at only 60%:

It doesn't look like Area51 has a time limit on how long a proposal can languish in the Commitment phase, but we're going to need a lot more support to get to Beta. So go over and sign up today!

Writers Writing about Writing

Friday, February 4th, 2011

Jeff Atwood is a great writer. All of his blog posts are informative and interesting.

How to Write Without Writing is a case in point.  It starts off with a clever hook ("trick my fellow programmers"), expounds the benefits of writing, particularly answering questions ("fun sized") as a way to improve your communication skills.  All of this is true.

The worm in the apple of course is the blatant promotion for the Writers Stack Exchange site. You really can't fault Jeff for doing this though. If you were running a venture funded business that depended on driving traffic, you'd make use of your celebrity in exactly the same way.

This will hopefully not diminish the message that writing can be used as an effective vehicle to gain technical knowledge as well as being a critical professional skill.

That wasn't as insurmountable and impenetrable as I thought it was going to be.

Closer to Launch: Healthcare IT Q&A

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

The reverse psychology I used in Failure to Launch: Healthcare IT Q&A is finally starting to work. The question definitions are complete and the commitment phase has begun:

Go over and sign up today.

Failure to Launch: Healthcare IT Q&A

Monday, July 19th, 2010

It seems like a great concept (to me anyway). Grow a community of like-minded Healthcare IT geeks that want to participate in an on-line Q&A site which rewards contribution and facilitates constructive dialog. As of today, it appears unlikely this will happen anytime soon.

Even after being endorsed on HISTalk News 6/25/10 less than 900 people have visited the site.

The attraction that programmers have for Stack Overflow just doesn't translate for this group of professionals. I suppose it's the nature of the business.

  1. Programming, like Food and Cooking, have a much larger audience. Since only a small percentage of the interested population will actively participate or become community leaders, the numbers game is critical.
  2. Even though Healthcare IT seems like a broad topic, the number of non-subjective questions that could be asked is probably fairly limited.  The .NET Framework and bread recipes have tons of facts.
  3. Maybe HIT experts are a shy bunch?  The activity level also seems surprising low on Chris Paton's Health Informatics Forum site which has over 4000 members.

Anyway, it's really too bad there isn't a way for a site like this to gain traction. It would be a valuable HIT resource if it could get off the ground.