LinuxQuestions.org Turns Twelve

I’m extremely proud to announce that exactly twelve years ago yesterday I made my very first post at LinuxQuestions.org. As has become tradition, here’s a quick post looking back on the past year and ahead to the next. 4,693,050 posts and 469,470 registered members (659,324 members have actually registered, but we have a very active pruning policy for members who have never posted) does not even begin to tell the story. The community that has grown and flourished at LQ is both astounding and humbling. I’d like to once again thank each and every LQ member for their participation, dedication and feedback. I’d also like to thank the dedicated mod team, whose level-headed decisions have been a cornerstone of the site’s success.

To say that feedback has been absolutely critical to our success is an understatement. It would be impossible to enumerate the features we’ve added or changes we’ve made as a direct result of member feedback. With that in mind, I’d like to use this thread to collect as much feedback as possible about LQ. What are we doing well and where can we improve? What should we be doing differently? As part of our birthday celebration, we’ll be giving away Contributing Member updates, LQ Merchandise and even a gratis pass to OSCON 2012 in Portland. Stay tuned for more details.

You may be wondering what’s next for LQ. I’m happy to say that after twelve years, our mission remains as unequivocally unchanged now as it was when I started the site; to be the absolute best resource we can be for the Linux and Open Source community. We have a large code upgrade coming to LQ in the near future, which will bring it in line with the other Questions Network site, AndroidQuestions.org. The new code will bring many long awaiting features, including a much improved search. It will also allow us to iterate faster and add functionality that will improve usability for members and mods alike. After we’re sure the new release is stable, we’ll look at whether or not it makes sense to add any new sections to the site. We’ll also explore the possibility of adding new sites to The Questions Network. Feedback on both, including possible topics for the additional site(s), is very much encouraged.

–jeremy