I’m new to Ansible (like days) and I’m trying to figure out the best place to look for help. Obviously the first step is scouring this forum, Reddit, StackOverflow, etc… In terms of posting a new question, however, there is a lot of content on Reddit but there are also a lot of folks offering incorrect solutions in authoritative ways (yay Internet). StackOverflow seems less active. I can’t tell how many people post here.
If you were looking for technical help on Ansible core language features with a focus on doing it “right” (i.e. the way the Ansible designers intended), where would you post?
Interesting question. I would certainly post here on the forum first, as people who work on Ansible for a living are here.
For searching however, it’s not as clear. The forum is relatively young. Stackoverflow … isn’t. It’ll be interesting to see how search results on the forum grow towards becoming a valuable resource in themselves. On the other hand, I’ve had pretty good luck, especially in my early Ansible years, supplementing my scouring of Ansible docs with results from Stackoverflow.
This Forum is the official place where a lot of the Ansible team at Red Hat hang out. As you’ve implied this Forum is newer, so doesn’t (yet) always have the same level of engagement as Reddit/Stackoverflow/etc, though you are far more likely to get the correct answers here.
The Ansible Community Team (which I’m part of) is currently putting in a lot of effort into making The Forum even better, and getting more folks here, see Proposal: Consolidating Ansible discussion platforms, so The Forum will be getting even better.
It’s personal preference IMO. Personally, I spend more time replying on Reddit, because of all the things I follow on Reddit, so Reddit tends to get more of my attention. However, that being said, I’m trying to be more active here because the forum can be a more centralized location for all things Ansible.
That’s one of the important things about building Communities. Although I’d wish everybody only used this Forum for Ansible, there are many people that spend a large amount of their day on Reddit, so if that applies to you, use r/ansible. Just be aware that there aren’t as many maintainers/Red Hatters there.
Just be aware that any project news will be shared via this Forum, so even if you do use Reddit as your go-to, we do suggest that folks subscribe to News & Announcements.
If folks have any pain-points, or suggestions let us know.
It usually depends what you are familiar with. The subreddit has been around for a long time and stackoverflow can be a pain due to the way that site functions. This site is a great place to find information and makes it easy to do questions/answers without hassle. Also like others mentioned, a lot of Red Hatters use this site mainly and migrated fully here. This is the official site so I would try to use this site more.