As I alluded to in a previous post, part of the reason we're investing in new server hardware is so that we can expand.
We will launch an IT-centric Stack Overflow sister website in March 2009
While we haven't quite worked out all the details yet, here's what we do know:
- It's a place where System Administrator and IT professionals -- people who work with computers in a professional capacity, but aren't necessarily programmers -- can go to get their questions answered.
- It will be functionally identical to Stack Overflow: same software, running on a different server, with its own private database.
- It will have its own unique name and domain (and logo)
We're well under way on the hardware and deployment side, what we don't have is two things. We're hoping you could help us with these:
- A name. We need a domain name for this new site! We'd like it to be a term immediately recognizable to sysadmins and IT pros, but with a double use. Very much like the name 'Stack Overflow' is for programmers: as a programmer, you know what a 'stack overflow' is, even if most people don't, and yet 'stack overflow' is reasonably interpretable to the layman. That's what we're shooting for. We'd love to hear your suggestions that meet these guidelines (and are actually available as domain names, of course).
- Moderators and Leaders. We need at least two people who are plugged into the IT and sysadmin community to lead this thing, and act as moderators, guiding the nascent community. Ideally this would be someone who has a solid online presence, not necessarily huge, but a small audience at least. The important thing is that the candidates are part of the online conversation. And, obviously, system administrators or IT pros themselves.
Note that this site will be platform-agnostic, very much like Stack Overflow. We welcome UNIX, Mac, and Windows sysadmins and IT pros alike -- we believe, just like programmers, we all have one thing in common: we love this stuff, and we're willing to learn from each other!
So if you have suggestions for either, definitely leave them in the blog comments -- or if you'd like to email us a suggestion privately, do so at this email address please.