StackOverflow For Any Topic 191
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."
Joel, uhg.. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I wholey appreciate the community and efforts of people involved in StackOverflow, I believe that Joel is subject to entirely too much fanfair and hero worship. I'd line him up right next to Dvorak in the grouping of "Right about as often as the sun shines on my dog's ass."
-Rick
Re:Good job, too (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
If parenting websites are any indication: a lot. There are many people in knowledge domains that are as dedicated to their chosen pursuit as hard core programmers are to theirs. It's just easy for us to forget that machines can be used for other things despite our jobs being about making them do other things.
I don't get it (Score:1, Insightful)
First, I never heard of the site before. Is it really popular? Am I just out of the loop? It's not come up in my daily searches for technical info.
I mean, it looks good, like somebody finally created a replacement for the community in usenet and what Expertsexchange was before they turned into a nag-site. It's not original, just re-creating stuff which was destroyed in the past by spammers and misguided business models
But looking closer, it seems to be a showcase for their business selling the software to run the site. Could it really be any different?
This is the most obvious Slashvertisement I've ever seen.
Re:Good job, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good job, too (Score:1, Insightful)
In many disciplines people don't ask questions to find the direct answer of how to do something. Especially in parenthood, people ask questions to find out their options and to get other people's opinions. Then they'll consider what they've heard and come up with their own result.
Actually, with regards to programming, I find the more interesting questions on the net to not be, 'how do I do X' but rather, 'which is a better way of doing X, Y or Z (or N)' as they seem to spark more debate and thought.
Re:Good job, too (Score:3, Insightful)
Web Karma (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still trying to figure out if this would be make for a utopian or dystopian internet.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Never seen it come up in a google search.. maybe it's got its niche..
Usenet beats any of these sites anyway - there's decades of experience on that.
No, it doesn't always come up in Google search (try searching with site:stackoverflow.com in your programming searches, though), because that is Google's algorithm. As far as a programming/technical site, though, Stackoverflow (and its sister sites; serverfault.com (for admin/IT questions) and superuser.com (for general computer use questions)) is a *wonderful* resource. Don't knock it until you try it.
As for your comment about Usenet, I do agree that there is a myriad of experience on there. Nowhere else are you going to see the beginnings of Linux and quite a bit of discussion on other technologies. BUT - Stackoverflow is current, its well moderated (by a user-community) and has some extremely knowledgeable and thoughtful people on its site to help out.
I disagree with the GP post that is simply a Slashvertisement. I wish someone had told me about the site sooner.
Face it, stack* is *good* (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very well designed. Compared to anything else in the same category, it's like the iPhone to a generic WinMo phone. It's easy to use, it's intuitive, it's powerful, it's fast, it's obvious and yet nobody comes close.
I've heard many people make fun of Joel, and I would have been a bit skeptical but stackoverflow is an undeniable success.
Re:Face it, stack* is *good* (Score:4, Insightful)
I would agree entirely. But one success does not a savior make. I don't even think that much of the unique features of StackOverflow is what makes it great. I think it is the combination of community and marketing that have made it what it is.
If Joel had come up with a completely different design for the site with different functionality, yet still managed the same community activity, that project would have been just as successful.
-Rick
Re:The Karma-Whoring Generation (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it true what they say about under-30s in America, thinking they are so smart when in fact, they're not?
That's true of everyone everywhere.
Re:A compelling need? (Score:5, Insightful)
The mods at Stack Overflow know what they're talking about.
Fixed it for ya.
Re:Joel, uhg.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Wow, that is rediculous. Why, it's almost as much as a single MSDN subscription [microsoft.com] or an Oracle license [oracle.com] (assuming I actually read that mess properly).
Re:Joel, uhg.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly you're not very familiar with "enterprice" software. Magento, which is a solid open source e-commerce solution but nothing more, costs $8900+ a year ($11,125 for the average deployment) just to license—no hosting. That's the whole idea of free market capitalism. What something is worth doesn't necessarily correlate to how much effort was put into creating it, its material/resource costs, its usefulness, or any other inherent value it has; instead, it is simply how much you can get others to pay you for it.
The cost of natural diamonds versus synthetic diamonds, for example, has nothing to do with any intrinsic value, nor can it be justified by its artificial scarcity (as used diamonds sell for far under market prices, but are purchased back from consumers by diamond distributors like De Beers, who turn around and repackage/resell it at market prices once again).
I mean, isn't the objective of every good businessman to buy for as low as possible and sell for as high as possible?
BB is the reason Stack Overflow exists (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeff Atwood has said a number of times one of the reasons Stack Overflow came about is because he hated all of the BB systems around. And he was right, the existing BB systems are terrible to use, especially so for a Q&A site.
The site is also better than a wiki for Q&A, because it has really well thought out community moderation aspects. You get more duplication than you would with a wiki, but it works out because you also get heavy user moderation redirecting you to better questions. And because it's a cross between a wiki and a forum, you have a much better ability to have different viewpoints of solutions expressed - for instance a user asking a question can accept an answer as valid, but other users can all vote up other answers as being more correct and those get prominent placement too.
If BB software and wikis are all so good, why is it nothing with the popularity and update of Stack Overflow has existed until now? I've never seen a programming site with such traction and quick uptake, never mind one that covered such a gamut of subjects! It's not just at the top of the list for C# (which is to be expected given the pedigree) but also iPhone development, and is the first place I would go for Emacs elisp questions... even Java.
Re:Joel, uhg.. (Score:3, Insightful)
A single MSDN subscription is $1,199 for the first YEAR, $799 for every YEAR after that. Running a site on StackExchange can be a thousand dollars a MONTH.
That said, a StackExchange site likely serves more than one person.
Good asking is key - but not key (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the difference is programmers usually know how to -ask- questions that make sense to other programmers.
That's more true than average. But it's not wholly true, as another poster noted you get plenty of ill-formed questions on Stack Overflow.
So why does stack overflow work so well? Because unlike the site you mentioned, the community can upvote good questions, and close or cancel bad ones. Users who have gained a lot of credibility with the system by way of points awarded for good questions or answers, can edit a question they feel in fundamentally decent but badly worded.
So a good question is important if you are asking, because it's more likely to be answered or voted up (which again makes it more likley to be answered), but the bad questions will generally fall of the map and not really matter to the system as a whole. It's a great system for discarding the noise which is ever-present in any forum.
Furthermore, people who post good questions and good answers, get rewarded for doing so via points and badges, which keeps them coming back to offer more good questions and answers. The Stack Overflow model is very good at retaining exactly the members of the community that offer the most value, while subtly deflecting those who are not as useful by lack of reward. If you've listened to the Stack Overflow podcast much, you'd realize every part of the system is designed to encourage healthy behavior on the part of users and generally the approach pretty much scales.
Never as there been a more civil programming website, with very little in the way of language wars and so on because people are more motivated to help than to hinder.
Re:Too bad StackOverflow sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
beauty is subjective, but a bad interface is not
Hence how we all agree about vi vs Emacs, right?
I like SO's interface. What do you find wrong with it? Especially, the markup language is terrific.