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Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

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Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#61

Post by gord »

neutronicus wrote: post #5

let people log in with Twitter and Facebook, to make StackExchange reputations easily exportable to other platforms. StackOverflow should change absolutely nothing about their login process. It is perfect. I anonymously answered one question, and all of a sudden I have a profile. No confirmation e-mail, no Facebook or Twitter crap. Just use the site and bam! you're registered. It remembers me every time I come back a…

>absolutely no fucking attempt to worm its way into my social graph

Quote of the year.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#62

Post by gojomo »

seiji wrote: post #54
Ygor wrote: post #17

"they ought to clean up their very Web 1.0 UX" SO has one of the best UX on the web. I don't care if you call it Web 1.0, 2.0 or Blue Oranges 35, but don't clean it. And also - "clean up by letting people log in with Twitter and Facebook"? How do you clean up by adding stuff?

I want to make this Blue Oranges 35 thing real. Here's a start: Level 0 (basic): • XHR, not ajax • No anchoring namespaces (no /r/ or /b/, just have users/spaces at the root.) • No file extensions in URLs (no .html, .cgi, .aspx, ...) • All production HTML/JS/CSS has newlines stripped to 32k characters per line. • gzip for all html, js, css, json, ... • Proper password storage • Not exploitable by injection • No XSS p…

Why are 64K-long lines considered a good thing?

And, when the site has minified the JS/CSS, how would full versions be readily accessible?

A site that is happy with others learning from their own good practices won't want to do things that have the effect of obfuscating their resources, if the savings are very small. So other than the 'levels', you might want to split your benchmarks on whether collateral obfuscation is considered positive/neutral or negative.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#63

Post by kmontrose »

jules wrote: post #27
neutronicus wrote: post #5

let people log in with Twitter and Facebook, to make StackExchange reputations easily exportable to other platforms. StackOverflow should change absolutely nothing about their login process. It is perfect. I anonymously answered one question, and all of a sudden I have a profile. No confirmation e-mail, no Facebook or Twitter crap. Just use the site and bam! you're registered. It remembers me every time I come back a…

What happens if you clear your cookies?

There is a way to recover your account if your cookie is lost.

http://stackoverflow.com/users/account-recovery (this is linked from /users/login)

It does require that you provided a valid e-mail address at some point, which we don't require.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#64

Post by seiji »

gojomo wrote: post #62
seiji wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to make this Blue Oranges 35 thing real. Here's a start: Level 0 (basic): • XHR, not ajax • No anchoring namespaces (no /r/ or /b/, just have users/spaces at the root.) • No file extensions in URLs (no .html, .cgi, .aspx, ...) • All production HTML/JS/CSS has newlines stripped to 32k characters per line. • gzip for all html, js, css, json, ... • Proper password storage • Not exploitable by injection • No XSS p…

Why are 64K-long lines considered a good thing? And, when the site has minified the JS/CSS, how would full versions be readily accessible? A site that is happy with others learning from their own good practices won't want to do things that have the effect of obfuscating their resources, if the savings are very small. So other than the 'levels', you might want to split your benchmarks on whether collateral obfuscation…

Oh, I misremembered the line length. It's 32k from max-line-len option at https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS

As for having min and non-min, I like to have "file.compressed.js" and "file.js" available. We shouldn't shut off all avenues of learning for the sake of expediency.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#66

Post by gojomo »

charlesju wrote: post #53

I was actually thinking about a startup idea around this general theme. I'm going to share it with Hacker News, tell me what you think. I do not think reputation should be owned by a single site because unlike social networking, there are going to be lots of places to contribute to your online presence. Yes, stack overflow is important when trying to hire a programmer, but I have also looked at blogs, twitter, github…

This has been tried in several eras; there was an initiative 'OpenPrivacy' (folding around 2002) that wanted a standard for portable profiles and reputations, and this also seemed to me the original focus of RapLeaf.

More recently, about.me (acquired by AOL) and flavors.me have tackled one portion of this, the user-controlled aggregation of their multiple presences. There may still be prospects for a new service, though the resistance of existing reputation silos could be a problem.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#67

Post by barmstrong »

StackOverflow is definitely more important right now.

But one thing I think they're messing up is the process for launching new StackExchange sites. They're trying this thing to qualify new sites to ensure they have critical mass, but I think it's too restrictive and hurting their growth.

As an example, I "pledged" to contribute to the AI stack exchange site if it were to launch. When it launched as a trial it received maybe 100 questions and some good answers in the first few weeks. I got answers to all my questions - good ones which pointed me toward research I hadn't found in Google etc.

But a week later it had been shut down and they emailed everyone saying it didn't meet minimum activity thresholds. Those questions and answers are no longer available on the net.

The question is whether a StackExchange site with relatively small activity is still useful. I think it is - at least it's more useful than not having them at all. Who is to say a small site couldn't become much bigger over time.

Reddit has done well letting users create any subreddit they want. There is a diverse ecosystem of subreddits out there with varying levels of activity. Keeping the long tail of subreddits around to see which flourish doesn't seem to hurt anything - so I don't understand the StackExchange approach to this.

(It reminds me of Wikipedia deleting obscure pages also - what does it hurt to have them?)

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#68

Post by nepenthe »

kmontrose wrote: post #63
jules wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if you clear your cookies?

There is a way to recover your account if your cookie is lost. http://stackoverflow.com/users/account-recovery (this is linked from /users/login) It does require that you provided a valid e-mail address at some point, which we don't require.

If this mechanism(link to a valid e-mail) is used to recover an account, is this considered a form of registration?

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#69

Post by chc »

Simucal wrote: post #32
alain94040 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

StackOverflow should change absolutely nothing about their login process. It is perfect Maybe it works for you, but I'm still utterly confused about how to login. But hey, I only have about 25 years of coding and online experience. To be fair, it's not SO's fault.

I can see why a non tech-savvy user would be confused by OpenID but I it surprises me how many programmers are confused by it. On the login page they list a bunch of common providers you can login with if you already have an account with them: Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, etc. Click their icon, type in your credentials. If you don't have an account with one of those or don't wish to use them then it has a big regist…

You're making the same mistake as people who try to get programmers to fix their printer because programmers are "computer people." Competence with one technology does not confer instant familiarity with another — and however clear you might find OpenID, just the array of company logos alone is kind of overwhelming and highly unusual. Pretty much the opposite of "Don't make me think."

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#70

Post by talbina »

neutronicus wrote: post #5

let people log in with Twitter and Facebook, to make StackExchange reputations easily exportable to other platforms. StackOverflow should change absolutely nothing about their login process. It is perfect. I anonymously answered one question, and all of a sudden I have a profile. No confirmation e-mail, no Facebook or Twitter crap. Just use the site and bam! you're registered. It remembers me every time I come back a…

I'm sorry, but am I missing something? They do ask for your email http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask , so it's not anonymous anymore.
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