When I was fresh out of college I semi-obsessively started answering StackOverflow questions about HTML Canvas, which was still new enough to not have a lot of coverage. At one point I answered over 10% of all canvas questions ever asked. I also blogged a few tutorials. This made Pearson email me for a book offer (HTML5 Unleashed, 2013, almost no one read it as I had no fame, but last amazon review: "Still relevant i…
Once upon a time, answering people's questions on forums was an excellent long-tail payback career strategy. I used to answer many questions, write explainer blog posts based on repeated questions, etc. In the early-to-mid-2000s, Macromedia paid for my trip to San Francisco, a hotel stay at the W, and a chance to meet the programmers and authors I looked up to -- all because I answered and helped people with their qu…
Eventually, the “organizers” show up and add too much order to a system that wants to be a balance between loose structure and otherwise chaotic ad hoc interplay.
And if the organizers aren’t the ones that over constrain the system, there’s always a PM somewhere looking to “monetize that asset.”
I think, sadly, SO has passed that inflection point now. I haven’t intuited where the next waves are breaking at.