StackOverflow For Any Topic

RobinH writes "StackOverflow, the successful question-and-answer website for programmers, is now over a year old and its top user has just passed 100,000 reputation points. Now one of the creators of StackOverflow, Joel Spolsky, and his company Fog Creek, are developing a software-as-a-service form of the StackOverflow engine called StackExchange to support any topic you want. The software is currently in private beta, but the first few beta sites have surfaced. Topics include business travel, the home, parenthood, the environment, finance, and iPhone game development."

Good job, too

[shmert]

StackOverflow is really impressive, and useful. I find myself adding "site:stackoverflow.com" to google queries when I'm troubleshooting some code problem. If there's an answer on there, it's almost always better than the answers on other sites. With none of the horrible multi-page answers, scribd paper, navigation hell that plagues other sites.

Great idea to branch this into other areas, but I wonder how many dedicated users you'll see like jon skeet when it comes to a parenthood advice website.

Re:A compelling need?

[MBCook]

Have you used Stack Overflow? It's quite different from a Wiki, and is much more focused than a bulliten board. The ability to rate questions and answers makes it much easier to find good responses than generic phpBB sites.

Re:The Karma-Whoring Generation

[Anonymous Coward]

You would have a point, except StackOverflow provides dumps of their databases in XML format and under a public license.

Re:A compelling need?

[seifried]

You get useful answers that actually help.

Re:Yahoo! Answers

[seifried]

Yes, because until you interact with the community and earn points it's hard to make an asshat of yourself. I recommend you watch "Learning from StackOverflow": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ [youtube.com]

Re:The Karma-Whoring Generation

[Blackeagle_Falcon]

But, hey! What happens when StackOverflow folds (which it will, eventually)?

Then, suddenly, all the knowledge contracts and contracts to a single point until it goes "POOF!" - nada, zero.

Actually, all the content on StackOverflow is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-Wiki license. They make monthly dumps of the entire question and answer database available. If SO ever folds, it would be quite easy to use the data dump to put up a new site with all the accumulated knowledge

Re:I don't get it

[Timothy Brownawell]

Slightly offtopic, but does anyone else read expertsexchange as Expert Sex Change?

Yes, that's why they hyphenated the name. They did that was a while ago, I think slightly after Pen Island [penisland.net] sprang up.

Re:Joel, uhg..

[Achromatic1978]

Personally, what I got the biggest laugh at is that, just like Fog Creek's other software, they're wanting ridiculous amounts of money for this code. Hosted? On a shared server? 10 million page views a month (Random page on Stack Overflow, 20KB, so in other words, about 200GB)? How much would you pay? For this forum / QA software?

With Stack Exchange? A THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH.

Wow. Just wow. Really, Joel? You think your software is worth that much?

Or hey, you could use it on your own server. If you're willing to pay TWO AND A HALF THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH...

Re:Just as clear as many programming questions

[Jurily]

With a statement like that, I'd have to wonder how long you had actually been programming.

Should you use singletons? What is the "best" development process? Is test-first the best thing ever or the spawn of satan?

While I would generally agree, StackOverflow is the place for immediate questions you have problems with, not general bullshit. That's why it's popular.

Here's an example from the front page: "In Perl, how can I concisely check if a $variable is defined and contains a non zero length string?"

Re:A compelling need?

[slim]

So, how does it differ from Ask Slashdot?

Mostly, it's the economy of reputation points and badges (sort of like Xbox Live achievements).

People get the warm and fuzzies just from having a score, and SO uses that instinct in all sorts of ways, to promote good questions, good answers, the refinement of good answers, and the sorting of good answers to the top.

It also helps that it's very useable. For example, the post markup language is pretty much perfect for the purpose (making it very easy to include code snippets with syntax highlighting)