Ya know...this - along with other answers - is a product waiting to happen. Kinda like Product Hunt (I suppose) but with particular Q&A crowdsourced so everyone can get a clear non-marketing spun picture of a given product.
Maaaaaaybe. It's really hard to get objective information about this stuff -- people naturally tend to evangelize the tools they already understand, and discredit the ones they don't -- which would make crowdsourcing this kind of info a real challenge. The inventor of tool Foo saying "Foo is good for this but not good for that" signifies much more to me than Random User of tool Foo saying the same thing.
Oddly enough, as I'm rereading through my own list I'm just now noticing how many of them really boil down to assessing the quality of the tech based on the humility of the tech's inventors: if they understand that their code isn't self-explanatory, and that good documentation is important, and that it isn't necessarily perfect for everything just because they invented it, then that implies a lot more care and deliberation in the code itself.
Oh yeah. There's some friction that needs to be addressed. No kidding :) However, we ALL suffer (more) from the pain(s) of not having good information, to say nothing of all the aggregate time wasted testing products because we have no other choice.
I think if there was (kinda sorta) a crowdsourced FAQ that might work. Kinda like you see on e-comm sites in that someone asks a question - aside from some boilerplate questions (e.g., your list) and others can answer. Spammy questions (and answers) can be down voted (a la HN).
Comments
Ya know...this - along with other answers - is a product waiting to happen. Kinda like Product Hunt (I suppose) but with particular Q&A crowdsourced so everyone can get a clear non-marketing spun picture of a given product.
Maybe?
Maaaaaaybe. It's really hard to get objective information about this stuff -- people naturally tend to evangelize the tools they already understand, and discredit the ones they don't -- which would make crowdsourcing this kind of info a real challenge. The inventor of tool Foo saying "Foo is good for this but not good for that" signifies much more to me than Random User of tool Foo saying the same thing.
Oddly enough, as I'm rereading through my own list I'm just now noticing how many of them really boil down to assessing the quality of the tech based on the humility of the tech's inventors: if they understand that their code isn't self-explanatory, and that good documentation is important, and that it isn't necessarily perfect for everything just because they invented it, then that implies a lot more care and deliberation in the code itself.
Oh yeah. There's some friction that needs to be addressed. No kidding :) However, we ALL suffer (more) from the pain(s) of not having good information, to say nothing of all the aggregate time wasted testing products because we have no other choice.
I think if there was (kinda sorta) a crowdsourced FAQ that might work. Kinda like you see on e-comm sites in that someone asks a question - aside from some boilerplate questions (e.g., your list) and others can answer. Spammy questions (and answers) can be down voted (a la HN).
Again...Maybe? :)