Spolsky's Software Q-and-A Site

guzzibill writes "Joel Spolsky has announced the beta release of Stack Overflow, intended to be a high-quality source of answers to software questions. Post a software question and watch the answers flow in. Popularity voting is very much woven into the site, where both questions and answers can be edited for clarity and voted up or down for correctness. Correctly posed questions and insightful answers float to the top. This site has reached critical mass." From Joel's description, he was envisioning a source of technical Q&A about programming. So far, many of the questions are broader and less technical, such as advice on the best book about software development. It will be interesting to see where the community that's forming takes it.

Comments

Not Joel Spolsky's Site

[nmb3000]

To be fair, Joel had very little to do with the actual implementation or development of the site. The majority of the credit for the idea and actual creation should go to Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror.

Personally I think it's a great idea, if for no other reason than to put the screws to Expert Sexchange. Their stupid referrer sniffing and page layout designed to make people pay to see answers has gone on long enough.

Re:Expert sex change, again?

[Ortega-Starfire]

Uh, they put the dash in the url for a reason.

www.experts-exchange.com

You probably don't want to go to expertsexchange.com

Re:Expert sex change, again?

[lysergic.acid]

i prefer ugly and functional over pretty but unusable any day.

the fact that it doesn't require a paid subscription and implements collaborative editing already puts it way ahead of the competition.

all that's left to do is to promote the site properly and build up a healthy community of knowledgeable users.

Re:Example...

[Ethanol-fueled]

Which is better? i++ or i+1?

It's i=i+1 or i+=1 you idiot! Who's the muthafuckin' genuis NOW?!

Reputation System

[Nerdposeur]

I think the most interesting thing about StackOverFlow is the reputation system. The more good questions and answer you create, the more power you get. From the FAQ:

Here's how it works: if you post a good question or helpful answer, it will be voted up by your peers. If you post something that's off topic or incorrect, it will be voted down. Each up vote adds 10 reputation points; each down vote removes 2. Amass enough reputation points and Stack Overflow will allow you to do more things on the site, beyond simply asking and answering questions, such as:

15 - Vote up
15 - Flag offensive
50 - Leave comments
100 - Vote down
250 - Close your questions (no longer accept answers)
500 - Retag other people's questions
750 - Edit community wiki posts
2000 - Edit other people's posts
2000 - Delete comments
3000 - Close other people's questions

At the high end of this reputation spectrum there is little difference between users with high reputation and moderators. That is very much intentional. We don't run Stack Overflow. The community does.

Re:Expert sex change, again?

[sootman]

That's his goal. (To be useful, not to be like EE.) Joel has written about the development of S-O several times on his site and mentions this almost every time. From the most recent post:

You know what drives me crazy? Programmer Q&A websites. You know what I'm talking about. You type a very specific programming question into Google and you get back:

• A bunch of links to discussion forums where very unknowledgeable people are struggling with the same problem and getting nowhere,
• A link to a Q&A site that purports to have the answer, but when you get there, the answer is all encrypted, and you're being asked to sign up for a paid subscription plan,
• An old Usenet post with the exact right answer--for Windows 3.1--but it just doesn't work anymore,
• And something in Japanese.

If you're very lucky, on the fourth page of the search results, if you have the patience, you find a seven-page discussion with hundreds of replies, of which 25% are spam advertisements posted by bots trying to get googlejuice for timeshares in St. Maarten, yet some of the replies are actually useful, and someone whose name is "Anon Y. Moose" has posted a decent answer, grammatically incorrect though it may be, and which contains a devastating security bug, but this little gem is buried amongst a lot of dreck.

Well, technology has gotten better since those discussion forums were set up. I thought that the programming community could do better...

Basically, he (and some others) said "this could be better" so they went ahead and made it. And no, he is absolutely 100% against experts-exchange style trickery. He just saw a need he wanted to fill, saw something that he wanted to exist so he made it. He's got the money to run it ad-free forever.

Re:Correction in terminology

[lysergic.acid]

i would also add that teaching others is one of the best ways to teach yourself.

while i'm not a math wiz by any means (got a C in AP Calculus--though i did pass the AP test with a 5), i was involved in an after-school library tutoring program my junior and senior year. this was an excellent program, not only because it was a great resource for struggling students, but also because it was a great learning experience for the student tutors as well.

tutoring other students is a great way to review old knowledge, and sometimes you even learn alongside the students as you try to help them understand difficult concepts. there's no better way to gain a genuine grasp on challenging material than having to explain it to someone else. it really challenges you to look at, analyze, and break down difficult concepts in new ways in order to convey the concept to the person you're tutoring. and in this process, you yourself also become much more familiar with and gain a better understanding of the material.