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The Stack Overflow Age

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#2
> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange.

By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions.

Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. But I always thought this was merely due to SEO trickery, not because they were actually widely used.

Truth be told, I would be hard pressed to even call it a “forum” — typical forums (bulletin boards) functioned very differently.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#4
post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

Worth noting:

I always just scrolled to the very bottom of the page to see the answers on EE.

This might not have worked in the start (I don't know) but as far as I can remember it worked.

I think they did this intentionally because google would ban them otherwise.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#6
post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

I would guess that the metric he's using here is Google search result popularity. I definitely remember the exact experience he describes regarding EE and Google search results.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#7
post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

Remember when the url made it look like Expert Sexchange? :)

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#8
post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

Worth noting: I always just scrolled to the very bottom of the page to see the answers on EE. This might not have worked in the start (I don't know) but as far as I can remember it worked. I think they did this intentionally because google would ban them otherwise.

I think you could also click to view the cached version of the page.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#9
It's too bad the culture of SO turned out the way it did. I was eager and happy to use it early on but was quickly disillusioned and it's my last resort to turn to if I have questions these days.
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