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Stack Exchange 2.0

blog.stackexchange.com

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Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#81

Post by marbletiles »

spolsky wrote: post #80
marbletiles wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that nerds need completely different software: I implied that nerds were the only people who would put up with SO-style numbers games, because their need was so great and they can grok the system. Nor did I say the software per se was irrelevant: I agree it's vastly important to how a community interacts. But when it comes to community building it's beside the point: phpBB is very bad software for discus…

Maybe you have different goals than us. You're trying to build communities... we're trying to make the Internet a better place to get expert answers.

Surely you have to build communities to do this, though? Your earlier answer mentioned how you needed voting so the "community" could choose best answers, you needed tags to keep sub-communities separate and so on. And one of the rating criteria for the new SE sites seems to be how much of a community they manage to create.

If it is the case, I think this is the fundamental tension: You've built software geared to rating and creating answers, but to get those answers you need vibrant communities -- and the resulting software is so complex and strictured it is effectively anti-community.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#82

Post by telemachos »

wwalker3 wrote: post #44
telemachos wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked and looked, and my first thought was "He doesn't like Schoolhouse Rock? Schoolhouse Rock isn't political." Then I noticed this from the start of the article, "Like the small-town mayor who suddenly finds herself running an entire state, our ambitions for Stack Overflow keep growing." I have a hard time finding that to be anything but a casual and not very detailed analogy. Sarah Palin -> lots of ambition::th…

They also mention running for Vice President of the US, so it's not exactly subtle. I just don't see the upside to bringing in such a polarizing political figure. Regardless of what you think of Sarah Palin, it hits a sour note to find her in a product pitch.

My focus wasn't really on subtlety (or lack of it). The parent poster was upset about political bias. My point was just that the joke didn't suggest bias to me. Anyone who runs for Vice President is (pretty much by definition) full of ambition; so are the SO people, according to them. That seems to be a pretty limited and simple analogy. I don't see an insult there of any kind, much less political bias. Even more so since the whole point of the analogy was "we have this quality too." I don't see why any of this would "hit a sour note."

Having said that, the two other early responses to your post do suggest that you may be right about how polarizing Sarah Palin is.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#83

Post by philwelch »

cryptnoob wrote: post #20

I find myself emotionally torn about this. This is sharecropping, pure and simple. That's bad, since it's not me doing the share cropping. I suspect they can be very successful. Usenet was wonderful .. until it wasn't. A network of sites that can give us high value information instead of the adwords dreck that is polluting the web, should indeed, be a net positive to the world. Much like an interstate highway is a ne…

"It doesn't always work out so well for the little towns the highway goes through, however, and I fear the carnage that might result from this as well."

Totally off-topic question: how so? Don't most of these little nowhere towns turn into vast opportunities to build gas stations and hotels where no opportunity existed before? I'm not denying any bad side-effects, just asking what they are.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#84

Post by stse »

marbletiles wrote: post #81
spolsky wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you have different goals than us. You're trying to build communities... we're trying to make the Internet a better place to get expert answers.

Surely you have to build communities to do this, though? Your earlier answer mentioned how you needed voting so the "community" could choose best answers, you needed tags to keep sub-communities separate and so on. And one of the rating criteria for the new SE sites seems to be how much of a community they manage to create. If it is the case, I think this is the fundamental tension: You've built software geared to ra…

I think your reading to much into this. To me it seems like the stack exchange sites just got too little traffic to reach critical mass. Ask Metafilter is an exception to a lot of other communities which became awful as they grew.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#85

Post by nl »

frederickcook wrote: post #64
rguzman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that it being free has much to do with "VC rules!". Given the success of fogcreek, I'd guess that they could've made stackexchanges free from the get-go. They just found a new business model. Maybe with the help of their VCs.

"We believe that if our platform creates value for a large number of users, we will have opportunities to make money." That doesn't sound like a new business model, it sounds like wishful thinking.

um... Advertising? Seems to work for a few sites around the place.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#86

Post by blasdel »

spolsky wrote: post #69
marbletiles wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to expand a bit -- when I talk about modelling the complexity of human relationships I don't mean making friends, I mean how they try to turn the complicated ways we have of judging and trusting other people into a number. You can do that on eBay, because the metric is really simple -- "did this user deliver, or did they rip you off?" But when it comes to judging the value of technical advice, it's much muddier.…

Still, when you look at how answers are ranked on Stack Overflow, it really seems to work. The top ranked answers really are the best... far more than on a traditional PHPBB type site.

Applying your magic sort() encourages replies by users who want to play a game. That only works if those users exist and actually have useful contributions to make — both of those properties are much diminished outside the SO population.

You don't to rank answers unless you have unproductive bullshit in the replies. While programmers might love the karma stuff, everyone else prefers it if the bullshit was just not tolerated by the community and deleted by moderators.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#87

Post by bmm6o »

spolsky wrote: post #69
marbletiles wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to expand a bit -- when I talk about modelling the complexity of human relationships I don't mean making friends, I mean how they try to turn the complicated ways we have of judging and trusting other people into a number. You can do that on eBay, because the metric is really simple -- "did this user deliver, or did they rip you off?" But when it comes to judging the value of technical advice, it's much muddier.…

Still, when you look at how answers are ranked on Stack Overflow, it really seems to work. The top ranked answers really are the best... far more than on a traditional PHPBB type site.

I think most people here agree that SO is head-and-shoulders above its competition. I can point to specific things about it that I don't like, but in the end I come back and I appreciate the content. What I am curious to see (and I think this is roughly what bonaldi is talking about) is how well the SX software supports other less-technical communities.

My main concern is that SO had such a large and willing user community from day 1, that you could survive problems in converting visitors into active participants just through sheer numbers. For a nascent community, there are the karmic barriers to entry (e.g. I've been a casual SO user for over a year, and am still not able to fix someone else's spelling mistake!). Also, the question domain of SO lends itself to being able to ask a fairly concise question and getting a decent answer with a minimum of back-and-forth. This is important, because SX handles discussion so poorly (and I realize that's by design).

Anyway, I hope it works out for you - I do admire your goals and ambition. I just hope you keep an open mind about what the software needs to do to best serve the new communities, and adjust it accordingly.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#88

Post by gnaritas »

spolsky wrote: post #74
tptacek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then, do you think that Mahalo has a bum rap? Because the rep they have here is pretty close to "Google spammer".

I do the best I can not to comment on competitors, although I can't always live up to my ideal. There are a lot of companies built on the business model of making low-cost, low-quality pages for long-tail Google search results, either algorithmically or with low-paid humans. There's clearly an arbitrage opportunity there, providing some kind of semi-crappy web page on a topic so narrow that there isn't anything on th…

> low-cost, low-quality pages for long-tail Google search results

It's called spamming. Mahalo is spam, Jason is a spammer; friend or not that's simply what he does.

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#89

Post by richardburton »

The people behind phpBB don't decide who can and, more importantly, who can't build a forum in case it doesn't flourish. They just put the software out there.

If anyone feels like building a Q&A site for free without having to go through an approval procedure they can also check out http://www.qhub.com

Re: Stack Exchange 2.0

#90

Post by Kilimanjaro »

Like Usenet, Google Groups, or Reddit, just get one nice name and let everybody open their groups and compete for traffic.

Then you get millions of visitors and then you monetize it as you please.

The time is ripe to replace google groups.

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