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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#71

Post by iSnow »

dested wrote: post #11

I always thought Microsoft would be a natural buyer given the tech stack and Microsoft's support for developers. Unrelated story, I have a day one Stack Overflow account. I don't remember how I found it but I'm sure it was posted on digg or slashdot or something at the time. I had a lot of posts in the first few years about some generally broad concepts, and completely inactive since. In spite of this, I am in the to…

It's relatively easy if you really take the time to answer questions.

Around 2016, I wanted to get deeper into some tech and used the learning curve to answer SO questions. I basically stopped the same year, but I am still in the top 8%, used to be top 1% for a couple of months.

Contribution rate must be an extremely uneven distribution.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#72

Post by caturopath »

jrockway wrote: post #45
caturopath wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played Stack Overflow years ago and have a ~0.3% ranked account, despite not really posting in years. It's amazing how little the ranking seems to have changed in the last 10 years, wavering around in the top half percent whenever I've peeked. I don't know whether the number is dishonest, or whether the new stars and new signups just happen to hold it in status, never sending it to 0.03% or 3%.

Same. I think what happened is that the early users answered all the most frequently occurring questions, and the questions honestly haven't changed much. I think my most popular answer is like how to diff with git. People are using git even more than they were when SO started, so it gets upvoted regularly.

Yeah, the continued upvotes for the same old questions doesn't surprise me, doubly so given the nasty culture of trying your best to close all new questions. Today, if someone posts a question, it will be closed as a duplicate (whether or not it actually is), or as too broad or too narrow. My main SO contribution in the last several years has been votes to re-open, which don't tend to get enough to actually re-open.

My real surprise isn't the continued flow of points, just the apparent stasis. I could imagine being at 0.003% by now, for instance, from this phenomenon.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#73

Post by thepete2 »

romanovcode wrote: post #66

Let's just hope there will be no "Pay to see the answer" thing happening like this one website experts exchange or whatever it was called.

They certainly have bought a lot of very useful "user-generated data", would be a shame if they restricted access to it now or in the future.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#74

Post by nickserv »

armchairhacker wrote: post #21

Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it used to be an amazing, "must-have" site. Always the #1 result on Google. I used it for basic web and iOS dev (remember Objective-C) and it had better documentation than most of the official docs. But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse, official…

The problem for me is that generally the highest ranked answers are the oldest, and in a fast moving tech stack this leads to really outdated advice. I do a lot of Python programming and some of the answers only work in 2.7 for example. Same as you, these days I'll just look at the official docs.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#75

Post by rossdavidh »

eric_b wrote: post #64

I find parallels between Stack Overflow and Mozilla. Both started with fairly focused products that were best in class. The user base grew and the network effect multiplied. Both were started and largely staffed by engineers. Then both companies started focusing on "bigger", more ambiguous goals. Their about pages are riddled with the latest marketing-speak: Authentically empowering dignity, community, and inclusivit…

While I agree that it is annoying whenever one reads something put out by the actual SO people, I notice that (thus far) if I simply ignore that and go there to look up the answers to questions (and very occasionally ask or answer them), it still works fine. As long as the new owner doesn't make it "pay to see", I can probably ignore them.

There is, of course, no guarantee in this. But, while I find what I hear about Mozilla's internal politics obnoxious, I am also able to just use Firefox and ignore all that, thus far.

Plenty of examples of a purchase being the beginning of the end, but it's not inevitable. Microsoft owns Github. Google owns Youtube. So far, both are still functional, if compared to other real-world products rather than some theoretical ideal. Now, you could put hundreds of counterexamples on the other side of that, but at least it is possible for the buyer not to completely screw things up.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#76

Post by cheschire »

romanovcode wrote: post #66

Let's just hope there will be no "Pay to see the answer" thing happening like this one website experts exchange or whatever it was called.

For the first couple months I couldn’t shake this feeling I was looking at a shady site. Then one day it dawned on me I had been subconsciously reading “expert sex change” the whole time. Terrible domain choice.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#78

Post by jonahx »

armchairhacker wrote: post #21

Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it used to be an amazing, "must-have" site. Always the #1 result on Google. I used it for basic web and iOS dev (remember Objective-C) and it had better documentation than most of the official docs. But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse, official…

Codidact is a community-controlled, open-source alternative to SO:

https://meta.codidact.com/policy/codidact-faq

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#79

Post by jononor »

munk-a wrote: post #43
dested wrote: post #11

I always thought Microsoft would be a natural buyer given the tech stack and Microsoft's support for developers. Unrelated story, I have a day one Stack Overflow account. I don't remember how I found it but I'm sure it was posted on digg or slashdot or something at the time. I had a lot of posts in the first few years about some generally broad concepts, and completely inactive since. In spite of this, I am in the to…

It's surprising what sorts of things people will buy for prestige - that might be worth a good deal of money for resale when you're looking to retire.

One could try selling answers as Non Fungible Tokens, especially if you have some wierd ones. Lots of geeks have crypto to mess around with, and might want to pay for some bragging rights. Which is the only NFTs can really hope to be good for.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#80

Post by nosianu »

digianarchist wrote: post #60
armchairhacker wrote: post #21

Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it used to be an amazing, "must-have" site. Always the #1 result on Google. I used it for basic web and iOS dev (remember Objective-C) and it had better documentation than most of the official docs. But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse, official…

I actually find myself landing on a Github issue after a Google search to diagnosing an problem these days. >But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse I see a lot of new users digging up 10 year old questions and cloning answers. They've really hit a spam problem that's difficult to solve.

Well, you make it a game - people start playing. The disadvantage of gamification.

I'm not sure that people giving good answers and help are well matched by a system designed for people who like "leveling up". I think that system pulls in a mismatched crowd over time, too focused on the game goal.

The solution creating a match is supposed to be what you get the points for leveling up for. However, that does not really remove the mismatch, it just covers it up a bit. You _will_ get, at least for a time, a lot of people who focus on quality to get ahead. Over time you will get more and more people focusing on just the points and the levels for their own sake though, who start cheating the system. I think gamification might, over time, slowly erode the target it wanted to achieve, even if/when it starts out doing well.

Of course, all of it happens in a context. Why are there so many people chasing after such fake "power" and "fame" in the first place? Are so many at least somewhat qualified people (on the Internet and with more than basic programming knowledge) that bored and dissatisfied with their local situation to chase purely virtual achievements?

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