What is "Community"?
There has been much discussion/controversy in the Oracle Blogosphere re: the appearance of Eddie Awad's new collaborative Q&A site, OraQA. This new site joins AskTom, Jonathan Lewis' Users Co-operative FAQ, Google CDOS, Best Practice PL/SQL, Dizwell Forum, etc.
The "con" camp is of the mind that a new Q&A resource serves only to 1) fuel bad habits by propagating unreliable info and 2) "fracture" the Oracle community.
I don't quite understand the concerns on either count. One of the defining characterstics of a community is the presence of a marketplace of competing ideas. If some "authority" is to decide what information should be shared and by whom, then that marketplace doesn't exist (and nor does a "community"). Rather, the rules of the marketplace, in which good ideas are adopted and bad ones ignored (based on experience), should prevail.
As for the "fracturing" of the community -- I don't understand the concern. Another defining chacteristic of a community is that it *grows*. A stagnant, homogeneous community is hardly that. Who would argue that the blogging movement itself "fractures" and is injurious to a community?
Rather, I say: Deploy those Q&A sites! Write those blogs! Join the marketplace of ideas! And if you get bad advice, don't blame the messenger...
