Slashdot Mirror
StackOverflow For Any Topic
RobinH writes "StackOverflow, the successful question-and-answer website for programmers, is now over a year old and its top user has just passed 100,000 reputation points. Now one of the creators of StackOverflow, Joel Spolsky, and his company Fog Creek, are developing a software-as-a-service form of the StackOverflow engine called StackExchange to support any topic you want. The software is currently in private beta, but the first few beta sites have surfaced. Topics include business travel, the home, parenthood, the environment, finance, and iPhone game development."
While I wholey appreciate the community and efforts of people involved in StackOverflow, I believe that Joel is subject to entirely too much fanfair and hero worship. I'd line him up right next to Dvorak in the grouping of "Right about as often as the sun shines on my dog's ass."
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Great idea to branch this into other areas, but I wonder how many dedicated users you'll see like jon skeet when it comes to a parenthood advice website.
If parenting websites are any indication: a lot. There are many people in knowledge domains that are as dedicated to their chosen pursuit as hard core programmers are to theirs. It's just easy for us to forget that machines can be used for other things despite our jobs being about making them do other things.
First, I never heard of the site before. Is it really popular? Am I just out of the loop? It's not come up in my daily searches for technical info.
I mean, it looks good, like somebody finally created a replacement for the community in usenet and what Expertsexchange was before they turned into a nag-site. It's not original, just re-creating stuff which was destroyed in the past by spammers and misguided business models
But looking closer, it seems to be a showcase for their business selling the software to run the site. Could it really be any different?
This is the most obvious Slashvertisement I've ever seen.
However, the difference is programmers usually know how to -ask- questions that make sense to other programmers. Look at http://answers.yahoo.com/ for a moment, most of the questions there are either A) Obvious "do my homework for me" questions, B) badly worded questions or C) Simply stupid questions. Also, most programming questions are easy, either it works or it doesn't, on the other hand how exactly do you define "how hard it is to open a liquor store in Texas"? Its easy to answer programming questions because its very easy to figure out if it works, but parenting advice? You won't see the results of that for years down the line (if even that) and its impossible to determine what exactly went wrong/right.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
In many disciplines people don't ask questions to find the direct answer of how to do something. Especially in parenthood, people ask questions to find out their options and to get other people's opinions. Then they'll consider what they've heard and come up with their own result.
Actually, with regards to programming, I find the more interesting questions on the net to not be, 'how do I do X' but rather, 'which is a better way of doing X, Y or Z (or N)' as they seem to spark more debate and thought.
We like to think that way, but look at Yahoo Answers or WikiAnswers, they don't really work that way. Most people don't want a thought out answer unfortunately. They want to ask for X and hear X.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
/.'s karma system and stack's rep. points both have real web uses. It would be cool to see a standardization of this idea and have it follow you across the net. Granted it could be abused, gamed, misused and just worthless to some. But no system is 100% useful. I could easily see where a standardized web karma could be very useful.
I'm still trying to figure out if this would be make for a utopian or dystopian internet.
It's very well designed. Compared to anything else in the same category, it's like the iPhone to a generic WinMo phone. It's easy to use, it's intuitive, it's powerful, it's fast, it's obvious and yet nobody comes close.
I've heard many people make fun of Joel, and I would have been a bit skeptical but stackoverflow is an undeniable success.
Is it true what they say about under-30s in America, thinking they are so smart when in fact, they're not?
That's true of everyone everywhere.
You can't take the sky from me...
The mods at Stack Overflow know what they're talking about.
Fixed it for ya.
I am the lawn!
Jeff Atwood has said a number of times one of the reasons Stack Overflow came about is because he hated all of the BB systems around. And he was right, the existing BB systems are terrible to use, especially so for a Q&A site.
The site is also better than a wiki for Q&A, because it has really well thought out community moderation aspects. You get more duplication than you would with a wiki, but it works out because you also get heavy user moderation redirecting you to better questions. And because it's a cross between a wiki and a forum, you have a much better ability to have different viewpoints of solutions expressed - for instance a user asking a question can accept an answer as valid, but other users can all vote up other answers as being more correct and those get prominent placement too.
If BB software and wikis are all so good, why is it nothing with the popularity and update of Stack Overflow has existed until now? I've never seen a programming site with such traction and quick uptake, never mind one that covered such a gamut of subjects! It's not just at the top of the list for C# (which is to be expected given the pedigree) but also iPhone development, and is the first place I would go for Emacs elisp questions... even Java.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
However, the difference is programmers usually know how to -ask- questions that make sense to other programmers.
That's more true than average. But it's not wholly true, as another poster noted you get plenty of ill-formed questions on Stack Overflow.
So why does stack overflow work so well? Because unlike the site you mentioned, the community can upvote good questions, and close or cancel bad ones. Users who have gained a lot of credibility with the system by way of points awarded for good questions or answers, can edit a question they feel in fundamentally decent but badly worded.
So a good question is important if you are asking, because it's more likely to be answered or voted up (which again makes it more likley to be answered), but the bad questions will generally fall of the map and not really matter to the system as a whole. It's a great system for discarding the noise which is ever-present in any forum.
Furthermore, people who post good questions and good answers, get rewarded for doing so via points and badges, which keeps them coming back to offer more good questions and answers. The Stack Overflow model is very good at retaining exactly the members of the community that offer the most value, while subtly deflecting those who are not as useful by lack of reward. If you've listened to the Stack Overflow podcast much, you'd realize every part of the system is designed to encourage healthy behavior on the part of users and generally the approach pretty much scales.
Never as there been a more civil programming website, with very little in the way of language wars and so on because people are more motivated to help than to hinder.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
beauty is subjective, but a bad interface is not
Hence how we all agree about vi vs Emacs, right?
I like SO's interface. What do you find wrong with it? Especially, the markup language is terrific.