Journocoders? Hacker journalists? Whatever the name, let’s help each other out!

For months now, Aron Pilhofer and I have been talking about a Web site where people doing computer programming in journalism could ask and answer questions, solve each other’s problems and, in general, build a supportive community. Somewhere along the way, someone said to me, “You mean, like Stack Overflow?” I went to visit the site — a thriving support community for software developers — and it looked very much like what we had in mind.

Though our original idea was to build a custom site, we learned that the team behind Stack Overflow had set up a hosted service for other groups interested in similar functionality. Having joined forces with Burt Herman to form Hacks and Hackers, the three of us decided — with a nudge from our friends on the Chicago Tribune’s news application team — to set up a site based on the Stack Overflow software.

I’m very pleased to announce that the site is now officially launched — at http://help.hackshackers.com. We’re launching in “bootstrap mode,” which allows all registered users to post questions, post answers, comment, tag and rate questions and answers. Everything you do on the site is factored into the site’s reputation management system, which lets you earn points/prestige by participating actively in the community.

For the past week or so, a few of our friends and colleagues have begun participating on the site, and you can see a sense of community beginning to emerge. We’re seeing a nice mix of questions, some of them related to hard-core coding (tagging and structuring an XML document), some to more accessible topics (WordPress customization), and some to cosmic questions (what we should call a programmer-journalist). Burt and I are administering the site, and we have Joe Germuska, Greg Linch, Brian Boyer and Chrys Wu as volunteer moderators.

There’s just one little problem: The team behind Stack Overflow has just suspended Stack Exchange, their hosted service for other sites. This caused us a small amount of panic last week, but as we read about the company’s plans, it seemed clear the goal was to keep thriving StackExchange-based communities up and running — and without requiring them to pay for the service.

Currently, our site is guaranteed to stay up through July 13. On the Stack Exchange blog, the team writes: “Community is hard to build, and we want to work with you to preserve it if you’ve already done that with Stack Exchange.” To keep this site up and running, it looks like the best approach is to demonstrate to the Stack Exchange team that we’re meeting an important need and building a thriving community.

So now it’s up to you. Please register at help.hackshackers.com, post a question, post an answer, or just rate some posts. We’re counting on you.