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Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

experts-exchange.com

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Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#131

Post by cscheid »

nostrademons wrote: post #97
lwat wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should reconsider their position on this I think.

If Google reconsidered their position on this, a vast archive of subscription-only NYTimes, Financial Times, WSJ, etc. content would suddenly become inaccessible. I can't count the number of times I've seen an interesting article on Reddit or HN, clicked through, found myself butting up against a paywall, and then just Googled the title and been able to read the whole thing for free. You think that these companies wo…

I wish google would put ACM and IEEE's feet to the fire. Their crawler definitely sees full PDFs, and we don't.

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#132

Post by phlux »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #56
phlux wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...Or really: who actually uses this thing? ... The image I have always had of the userbase of EE is a middle aged vet wearing a vest with a lot of pins and smells of cigarettes who sits in his trailer on The Internet Forums answering computer questions such as "Which is better - a 3 1/2 inch floppy or 5 1/4 inch floppy" and is known to the other folks in the park as "The Computer Guy" His goto answer for anything b…

My father, and his father before him, were military veterans in their middle age. I lived in a trailer park in Iowa when I was a kid. Not sure why you think those are negative things.

My brother is a Lt. General in the airforce, my father was in the airforce as well.

I find it so funny that you, and others on this site take such offense to an image I had in my head.

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#133

Post by icco »

htp wrote: post #89
icco wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are based in San Luis Obispo, CA, and I have met a few people that work there. It's interesting to hear all of the complaints from people who work there right out of college (Cal Poly is near by). Apparently they are not very nice to their developers and many burn out after a year and quit.

Speaking as a former straight-to-EE-out-of-college employee: I didn't experience any of the "not very nice"-ness you're referring to- my coworkers there were and are actually really nice folks. I did, however, leave because of burnout.

Interesting, I've heard mostly complaints. Good to hear that they aren't all bad.

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#134

Post by EEvangelist »

archangel_one wrote: post #22
kpanghmc wrote: post #10

One of the big things that makes Experts Exchange unique is a patented system that requires askers to select their best answer. Most Q&A sites (StackExchange included) let the community vote for the best answer, when really the person whose opinion matters most is the one who asked the question. StackOverflow allows for both community voting AND for the original asker to indicate which answer was the best answer. I s…

It seems like 90% of the EE questions I see, the asker has vanished before accepting one of the answers - in those cases this patented system is effectively worthless since I have no idea which answer is best. At least on SO I can still get an idea if some answers are better (or if some are flat-out wrong, as happens).

When the asker disappears (which happens even more at SO) a cleanup crew will come and either accept an answer (but give the experts chance to discuss which) or delete it. At SO it just sits there, with whatever votes and no accept. When the opposite happens, you need to do a bounty at SO which may or may not work (never worked for me). At EE the question is first marked abandoned, attracting experts who subscribe to that zone - if no reaction, a moderator will send out requests to know experts in the zone and re-zone if needed. Works well

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#135

Post by EEvangelist »

rdtsc wrote: post #37

> At Experts Exchange, we know who we are. Oh no they don't. Judging by their attitude these people are in complete denial as to how they are perceived by others. > Experts Exchange Experts are unpaid volunteers who give of their time to answer questions on the site. Right. So if they are unpaid volunteers wouldn't they rather help the community and provide the same answers at stackoverflow? If I volunteer to serve s…

I do actually. 9000 answers at EE (since 1998), 2.5K flair at SO (since last year)

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#136

Post by EEvangelist »

cft wrote: post #50

I am mostly a coder, but running a small start-up, I encountered a need to configure 3com and HP switches and routers (VLANs, routing, BGP, etc). Those devices have a complex OS, and the documentation is usually cumbersome. To my surprise, the only site where I got exact answers on this was experts-exchange. Google did not help, stackoverflow did not help. I was about to hire an consultant for a few thousand, but dis…

Yes, you are typically the kind of person I help at EE...

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#137

Post by rdtsc »

EEvangelist wrote: post #135
rdtsc wrote: post #37

> At Experts Exchange, we know who we are. Oh no they don't. Judging by their attitude these people are in complete denial as to how they are perceived by others. > Experts Exchange Experts are unpaid volunteers who give of their time to answer questions on the site. Right. So if they are unpaid volunteers wouldn't they rather help the community and provide the same answers at stackoverflow? If I volunteer to serve s…

I do actually. 9000 answers at EE (since 1998), 2.5K flair at SO (since last year)

1998? I guess if you are just as good, you should have had over 32000 answers then not just 9000 ;-)

Besides who cares to know if hp driver from '98 is compatible with windows Me anymore.

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#138

Post by bobberino »

treeface wrote: post #5

Q: What makes Experts Exchange different from other Q&A sites on the Internet? A: Most of our nearly 3 million solutions revolve around specific technology questions, and the majority of those have a sense of urgency to them. Huh? How does this differ from StackOverflow? Other than, of course, that those answers are hidden behind a paywall. We switched to a premium model to keep out of the Venture Capital business (b…

Ad rev and job postings don't account for much of a rev model unless you're in the Alexa top 20. Although I support SO, I don't think they have a viable long-term business model outside of Spolsky positioning it for acquisition. 30 people in a downtown Manhattan office building will eat through 6.5 million quickly.

Step 1: Steal underpants Step 2: Step 3: Make money

Re: Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

#140

Post by lwat »

nostrademons wrote: post #97
lwat wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should reconsider their position on this I think.

If Google reconsidered their position on this, a vast archive of subscription-only NYTimes, Financial Times, WSJ, etc. content would suddenly become inaccessible. I can't count the number of times I've seen an interesting article on Reddit or HN, clicked through, found myself butting up against a paywall, and then just Googled the title and been able to read the whole thing for free. You think that these companies wo…

Acceptable loss in my opinion.
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