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I know this is a question and answer site, but in this case (DIY/Home Improvement) it might benefit from the occasional "New product review" or "How to work with this product" article.

Is there a way to integrate this type of feature into the site? Maybe some type of wiki type article that would allow users to edit the "question" and add comments, but would not accept "answers".

Would something like this be beneficial to the site, or is this simply not the place for it?

As another idea for this. What if users collaborated on a "question" to describe how to work with a specific product, then other users could add "answers" describing how they used the product in their own project (possibly including pictures). These "articles" would have to be "Community Wiki", since I don't think it makes sense to reward rep for answers.

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I don't think this makes sense as stated. We are a Q&A network.

That said, you could ask a question (I would like to accomplish X, how do I do that?) and answer it yourself using a product (Well, product Y works well for this because ... and here's how I did it..)

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  • I was afraid of that, but as products change and techniques are improved I thought it might be a nice way to keep those not in the business informed on the progression of building materials.
    – Tester101
    Mar 8, 2011 at 12:51
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    I could see how this might make sense. Stackoverflow and Serverfault both have blog areas. Perhaps something along the lines of a blog for each stack exchange site, where high-rep users can submit articles which can then be approved by moderators?
    – Eric Petroelje
    Mar 9, 2011 at 17:24
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    @eric certainly possible, if someone is motivated enough to write blog articles!
    – Jeff Atwood
    Mar 9, 2011 at 22:20
  • @eric on a forum I belong to, a well thought out post is noticed and the author is approached to expand it for a blog entry on the front page. After a few iterations of this the forum worked up a stable of 20 or so writers and for awhile there were great entries almost daily. Unfortunately, that original group dwindled to two contributors over time and now the blog is a ghost town (while the forum is still decent). I think that's the tricky part: finding champion(s) that can keep the contributor pool lively enough to maintain a blog.
    – Steve Jackson
    Mar 10, 2011 at 12:57
  • Old topic, I know, but... is there a blog for this site?
    – The Evil Greebo
    Sep 26, 2011 at 22:50
  • @TheEvilGreebo the community is working on figuring out if the community is interested in creating and contributing to a community blog. You can see this effort taking place and add your opinion by looking at questions tagged blog.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    Sep 27, 2011 at 1:12
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I thought this was a pretty good way to get the info out there. I didn't know about kerdi-board before that. I also think the how-to could work in a question format - that's more or less why I put a french drain question in: I've installed a couple, but I still learned from the answers given. Similarly you could ask a "How-to install wall tile?" question and see what pops up.

It will be difficult to keep updating the questions without them being treated as dupes I think. Not a problem in the short term, but if you attempt to ask the same "how-to" five years from now, will the community flag it as a dupe, or make an effort to update the answer to use a RyobiDeWaltBlackAndDecker holographic laser saw?

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  • I could also support somewhat more specific variants like, 10 years from now you could ask "How do I install tile using a holographic laser saw?"
    – Jeff Atwood
    Mar 8, 2011 at 20:27

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