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Forget Quora, New York's Stack Overflow Is Killing It

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Re: Forget Quora, New York's Stack Overflow Is Killing It

#63
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Exchange is mostly Questions & Answers Quora is mostly Questions & Opinions

Actually, it depends on whether you consider volume of upvotes or volume of questions. If you look at the highest-upvoted "questions" on Stack Overflow, they most consist of things like "what is your favorite programming comic" or "is perl still relevant". These are not questions that can be answered factually; they merely ask for opinions. Now, there are a lot more "how do i replace foo with bar in a string"-type qu…

"Does SO experience a bike-shedding effect?"

Re: Forget Quora, New York's Stack Overflow Is Killing It

#64
post #11

To be honest I don't really think Stack Exchange and Quora are the same thing. Or, to be jargonny, "we're not in the same space." Quora is Yahoo!Answers done really well... it's more social and bloggy, and it's for chat and subjective questions. It's kind of like Twitter in a Q&A format with long, blog-type answers. It's full of VCs and tech journalists, unlike Yahoo!Answers which is full of teenagers asking question…

Stack Overflow aims to be an objective reference tool. Stack Exchange is something different - it is an infrastructure for creating Q&A websites, many of them (very) subjective. Take the infamous "Programmers" Stack Exchange, for instance, the subjective little brother of Stack Overflow.

Re: Forget Quora, New York's Stack Overflow Is Killing It

#65

Is anyone on Forrst? Their service looks like something I woudl like. On the technology end, it looks easy to post images and code for the purpose of discussion, and that would make my life a little easier. The community looks like one I'd like to be a part of, too. On the other hand, I'm currently re-working my own blog and am really enjoying designing the front end and tooling the backend to fit my needs precisely.…

I'm moderately into Forrst. It's solid, but not amazing or anything.

It's really nice for showing things off and getting feedback. The community has yet to really hook me, though.

Re: Forget Quora, New York's Stack Overflow Is Killing It

#66
post #57

I've said before that I simply don't get the success of Quora. Their secret sauce is little more than a ketchup bottle with the label scrubbed out (IMHO). The one thing they've managed to do well (and exceedingly well at that) is draw in the Valley elite. Their software isn't really anything remarkable and I'm yet to be convinced that what they're doing will have any general appeal beyond the Valley. SO is interestin…

> Programmers by their nature self-organize. I don't think that's generally true for other groups

Where does this come from? I think people by their nature self-organize. Programmers are often less social than their non-programming brethren.

Re: Forget Quora, New York's Stack Overflow Is Killing It

#67
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Exchange is mostly Questions & Answers Quora is mostly Questions & Opinions

Actually, it depends on whether you consider volume of upvotes or volume of questions. If you look at the highest-upvoted "questions" on Stack Overflow, they most consist of things like "what is your favorite programming comic" or "is perl still relevant". These are not questions that can be answered factually; they merely ask for opinions. Now, there are a lot more "how do i replace foo with bar in a string"-type qu…

there are a few of these type questions that are semi-grandfathered in from much earlier on, but now that http://programmers.stackexchange.com is online for the more discussiony and whiteboardy stuff that isn't so code-centric, we moved the useful questions of that type there. The rest get deleted. (You can still get to them through the creative commons historical dumps, of course)

Re: Forget Quora, New York's Stack Overflow Is Killing It

#68
post #64
post #11

To be honest I don't really think Stack Exchange and Quora are the same thing. Or, to be jargonny, "we're not in the same space." Quora is Yahoo!Answers done really well... it's more social and bloggy, and it's for chat and subjective questions. It's kind of like Twitter in a Q&A format with long, blog-type answers. It's full of VCs and tech journalists, unlike Yahoo!Answers which is full of teenagers asking question…

Stack Overflow aims to be an objective reference tool. Stack Exchange is something different - it is an infrastructure for creating Q&A websites, many of them (very) subjective. Take the infamous "Programmers" Stack Exchange, for instance, the subjective little brother of Stack Overflow.

subjective but also practical and concrete; see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq
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