Please support "Theoretical and Applied Mechanics" at Stack Exchange

Dear Bhisham,

As iMechanica has evolved, its primary purpose has become to act as a bulletin board for mechanics-related news.  A few research papers are posted once in a while but the large majority of research realted posts are just links to pay-per-view sites.  There is rarely any discussion of the papers.

The "Ask iMechanica" Q&A area is filled with unanswered questions, mostly related to Abaqus.  One of the reasons is that potential answer givers don't have an incentive system to provide answers.  StackExchange has a way of providing incentives by keeping track of reputation scores.  Good answers and bad answers are treated identically by iMechanica.  iMechanica does not allow LaTeX equations and figures are difficult to add.  Both these issues have been solved remarkably well by Stack Exchange.

I think Stack Exchange is significantly superior to iMechanica as a Q&A area.  In the proposed area students will be able to ask basic questions starting from statics and dynamics, strength of materials, elasticity, finite elements in mechanics, plasticity, through to the cutting edge of mechanics without feling intimidated.  And people will have an incentive to answer.

Also, you can log into Stack Exchange with a google account or open an account specific to Stack Exchange that can be used across the system.  

I've opened a discussion topic where you can contribute at  http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/14120/do-we-really-need-another-qa-forum-on-mechanics.  I'm keen to hear other views.

-- Biswajit

Dear Nicolas,

I agree with you assessment.  During the course of my work I've benefited immensely from information provided in various Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow formums.

For the proposed forum to be successful, the people who ask questions on iMechanica have to buy into the concept.  The proposal is open for 30 days.  If it cannot get the support of 60 people and at least 10 upvotes on the sample questions, then the area will automatically close down.  It will be interesting to see if the people who post and answer questions on iMechanica will try out the Stack Exchange ecosystem.

Of course, actual mechanics related questions can be asked and answers can be given on the site only after it has been accepted and reached a beta stage.  So please encourage people you know to post questions and upvote existing ones.

-- Biswajit