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Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

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

#101

Post by cletus »

I clicked this link expecting the usual TC love-in with Quora--and I got that--but I actually agree that the StackEchange model is flawed.

What works for programmers doesn't necessarily work for other groups (and vice versa). I will be shocked if any of these becomes a site as important in their respective field as SO.

As for Quora... Please for God's sake TechCrunch will you shut up about Quora. It's a Q&A site with a Facebook login that is liked by the Valley insiders--and is thought important by the same--because the other Valley insiders use it.

Until it gets appeal beyond the Valley it's a storm in a teacup. What's more I'll go out on a limb and say Quora will never get mass appeal.

To the Quora founders: congratulations on the Emperor's new clothes. Sell up before the jog is up.

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

#102

Post by Locke1689 »

keiferski wrote: post #85
nagnatron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of those really silly rules, isn't it?

Eh? It's a pretty fundamental part of usability, design, and business in general. Blaming your users is never a good idea.

Careful. If a user bypasses a warning dialog from the operating system to run a program they download from the Internet, is it still the OS's fault if it is malware?

Sometimes providing a perfect user experience is equivalent to solving the halting problem and not recognizing this is as big a problem as believing that all problems are the user's fault.

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

#103

Post by Locke1689 »

tastybites wrote: post #43
moe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your description of the problem is about right. But: As a SO-consumer this particular problem doesn't phase me. The better answers usually have more votes and sometimes the green checkmark is even on the best one - but when it's not, who cares? To me as a SO-consumer a bigger problem recently has been the duplication. For any given question there may be dozens of threads which makes it harder to track down th…

It's faze. Read more books.

Your pedantry is not welcome here (as supported by your comment score). Please follow this rule in the future for posting on HN: always consider other user's comments in the best possible way they could have meant them.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

Locke1689 wrote: post #102
keiferski wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? It's a pretty fundamental part of usability, design, and business in general. Blaming your users is never a good idea.

Careful. If a user bypasses a warning dialog from the operating system to run a program they download from the Internet, is it still the OS's fault if it is malware? Sometimes providing a perfect user experience is equivalent to solving the halting problem and not recognizing this is as big a problem as believing that all problems are the user's fault.

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by petercooper »

kunley wrote: post #97

I strongly disagree with the common conception that high points on StackOverflow would be a good measure of coder's quality. They are merely the measure of someone's involvement in answering the questions. Sadly, many answerers are just point hunters. They seem to monitor questions and quickly google for answers. I observed this asking specific detailed questions. Most answers were something obvious, something withou…

Agreed. I'm somewhere around the top 40 on HN but it would be absurd to say I'm even near the top 100 hackers or entrepreneurs around here. I just know how, when and what to say more than many of the folks actually getting on with their work ;-)

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

#106

Post by nagnatron »

keiferski wrote: post #85
nagnatron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of those really silly rules, isn't it?

Eh? It's a pretty fundamental part of usability, design, and business in general. Blaming your users is never a good idea.

Yes but ever and always is a bit over the top.

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

#107

Post by adrianwaj »

46Bit wrote: post #79
adrianwaj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes the browser's job faster and easier. Minifying for me has improved the speed of my sites.

Out of interest ... measured how?

Subjective measure. And I am not uncertain if an improvement has occurred or not.

edit: however, I do not minify on-the-fly, I keep the source HTML, CSS and JS files space and line-break compressed (and variable-name compressed.) The speed increase may be due to less going down the wire, or it may just be faster to process by the browser due to some other mechanism.

Also, having css and JS code within the HTML itself has sped things up too - no external files.

Have a look at the source of http://twitya.com/index.php - I also Gzip that, and this speeds it up as well. I keep a few line-breaks in for readability.

Takeaway: what matters most is having as little data go down the pipe as possible in a compressed fashion, and not worrying about server load - that could be offset by the improvements on the browser.

Also, Gzipping http://hackerbra.in has led to a marked improvement, with its large slabs of text.

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

#108

Post by adrianwaj »

cletus wrote: post #101

I clicked this link expecting the usual TC love-in with Quora--and I got that--but I actually agree that the StackEchange model is flawed. What works for programmers doesn't necessarily work for other groups (and vice versa). I will be shocked if any of these becomes a site as important in their respective field as SO. As for Quora... Please for God's sake TechCrunch will you shut up about Quora. It's a Q&A site with…

Quora has been successful at obtaining authoritative opinions - something that Google Knol failed to do because it grants an online reputation, instant readership and following to those that express their opinion, which seems to be important to such people. Furthermore, to me, it's like Ask HN and Hackerfollow on steroids. I still won't participate in it, but will read it like I read Wikipedia.

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

#109

Post by keiferski »

Locke1689 wrote: post #102
keiferski wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? It's a pretty fundamental part of usability, design, and business in general. Blaming your users is never a good idea.

Careful. If a user bypasses a warning dialog from the operating system to run a program they download from the Internet, is it still the OS's fault if it is malware? Sometimes providing a perfect user experience is equivalent to solving the halting problem and not recognizing this is as big a problem as believing that all problems are the user's fault.

An exception can be found for every rule, in just about anything.

Nitpicking specific examples and then saying "oh, well this disproves it" proves nothing. 99 out of a 100 times, blaming the user isn't the right move. For the sake of brevity, I used ever and always.

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

#110

Post by chc »

Locke1689 wrote: post #100
chc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

To a certain extent, security will always have to make the user think. There's simply no way around that without complete service dictation.

Yes, but Stack Overflow's signup screen takes more thinking than most sites (by virtue of being different, not to mention its complexity). Amazon's signup is far simpler and it does not seem to be terribly insecure.
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