Template talk:Not a support forum

Why not use talk pages as mini-FAQs?
Is it really beneficial to encourage people to ask their questions pertaining to a given component of MediaWiki in a centralized support forum or listserv, rather than on the talk page for the component? My thought is that if the user receives an answer, say, on mediawiki-l, what happens when the next person runs into the same problem? Unless someone took the initiative to post the information on the relevant page, that person may end up asking the same question at that centralized forum.

Suppose, for instance, someone asks mediawiki-l, "Ever since I installed Extension:Awesomeness, it responds with o_O whenever I use http://examplewiki.com/index.php?O_o. Why is that?" Someone might respond, "That's because the extension is designed to do that," but if no one updates the documentation at Extension:Awesomeness to reflect that fact, the next person who runs into the same unexpected functionality may ask the same question. Whereas, if someone asks the question at Extension talk:Awesomeness and receives an answer there, the next person who goes to ask that question there may find that answer. And at some point, some wiki-gnome may post the information at Extension:Awesomeness. I don't see anything wrong with talk pages of MediaWiki components becoming de facto mini-FAQs; what else were we going to use those talk pages for? Tisane 07:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)