Well, it is somewhat disappointing that I have to seemingly signup for another site (uservoice.com) if I want to point out that the signup form is broken (especially after I see a number of other people posting about this, and being declined) ...

Otherwise, you're missing a key word in your post: "unique."

Forget about everything else you said, if nothing else, it's a unique way to get an answer, and I think it'll work.

(Joel's post - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html - should probably be required reading ...)

Good job Jeff, I look forward to playing with it.

~James

If only we can devote 30 mins a week for contibuting, think of it as fraction of the time you devote to write a blog post.

congrats to *us*

Congratulations, Jeff!

Just with a 5 minute glance, I see tons of interesting questions on the site. I love it. Here's hoping that your site buries "Experts Exchange" in the search engines, and pops up some useful information when Googling for answers. Time will tell on that -- IMO you're really going to want to get a metric of how well your site's answers perform in Google against those crappy newsgroup aggregation sites.

Love it!

I've been a user for all of a few hours now, but it's strangely addicitve refreshing the question list and seeing if I can answer any of them. Usually by the time I pick one, google around a bit then come back, it's been answered 897 times over with answers much better than mine :-)

Good job guys!

Hey Now Jeff,

Wow Great post!

Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

Congratulations :) It's really active, just as Dan said above, by the time I want to answer something, I already see loads of good replies :)

I'm in the same boat as James. My Yahoo OpenID doesn't work (and yes, I'm using the form your menu suggests http://yahoo.com/id instead of https://me.yahoo.com/id which I use everywhere else).

The insightful ability to edit you answers (or even questions) is the single most amazing thing that answers the point you say critics are raising.

This means users have the opportunity to make the content as correct and as close to best practices as possible, leaving a great 'reference' for 'posterity'.

Stack Overflow, IMO, is a great idea, which is being nicely executed.
Keep up the good work and we'll all (or most) be very grateful.

--

I just don't understand the need for an OpenID, but maybe it's just me.

Your Venn diagram doesn't show Twitter, IRC, or email. ;)

I think and hope it will work. It looks great and feels great! I'm a total amateur so I'll stick around there for learning and hopefully I'll get to the point where I can also start giving answers!
Thanks!

Now if only you can figure out how to get ExpertsExchange out of my google search results...

I'm gonna go sign up for your site now... perhaps you shall see more of me there.

I like it. It's great. Looking forward to using it every week for the next 10 years.

Really enjoying the site Jeff. Would be nice to be able to provide specific feedback without a separate logon though...

Noah, I just logged in as

https://me.yahoo.com/eggsmclaren

which is an account I use for testing.

Ironically, for me at least, I think Stack Overflow is a victim of its own initial success. I tried subscribing to the RSS feed yesterday and there was just too much activity for me to try and keep up with. By the end of the day I had removed it from my feed.

I also found myself a bit reluctant to answer questions that had already been answered somewhat correctly. Yeah, I could elaborate or clarify an answer, but it seemed a small, incremental value add.

In one case, I found a questions with three 0-point answers. Two of them wrong and one correct. I tried to vote the correct one up, but alas, I didn't have enough "rep".

One potential improvements I can think of would be topic-specific or language-specific RSS feeds to filter down the volume.

And I'm with Bruno: supporting OpenID as _a_ choice is nice, but as _the_ authentication choice seems a bit limiting. Is it so hard to follow what 90% of the web does (email/password)? Is OpenID really any more secure? In the end, I had to sign up for an OpenID using - you guessed it - my email address and a password. So I jumped through a bunch of hoops to essentially prove to you the same info I would have with a simpler authentication scheme.

> One potential improvements I can think of would be topic-specific or language-specific RSS feeds to filter down the volume.

Already exists: there are feeds for every tag, though we have not implemented tag combination feeds yet (I will try to get to that today).

http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/mac

etc, etc, etc.

Jeff I looked around on the site and it's fantastic! I'm going to annoy ahem I mean ask people questions as soon as I can. Of course I'll also use my 'infinite' expertise to answer questions as well :-)

I think there is kind of strange dynamic developing on stackoverflow. Peoples are answering questions, any questions, all questions. Questions that should have been ditched/voted down in many cases. I think the reason behind that is that peoples try to find an opportunity to "increase" their reputation at all cost until at least a minimum level is reached. Thus choosing the easy/dumb ones for a starter.

The side effect is the noise and the quality of the questions. I mean there are questions out there that, on any typical forum, would have been flamed down fast and hard because the person asking did not (1) do his homework (2) check around for an answer (3) provide sufficient details for even the beginning of an answer to be elaborate.

I think that once the initial hype/buzz slows down a bit we will see less and less of those.

I think overall this is a great concept that ought to work.

Re: Yahoo: I'm also getting failed. I can see that I am logged into Yahoo, and I get a "let me in" button from Yahoo, but then stackoverflow says that I "failed to authenticate, returning Failed"

I'm looking forward to using the site. However, I too wish it didn't require OpenID.

I tried it out, but it won't even allow the user name I use here (periods not allowed in user names). Oh well.

Mind if I share a dirty little secret with you? Yahoo is a *terrible* OpenID provider. Their UI is awful for this.

Still, it should work. I'm logging in like crazy under every context I can think of with https://me.yahoo.com/eggsmclaren and that is a bone stock Yahoo account I created (minus "enabling" OpenID).

1. Hate the OpenID. HATE. HATE HATE. It's a b0rken concept. Please let me use another throwaway account and password, just like I do everywhere else.

2. 81 pages of tags? Really?

3. Can you compact the look vertically? On a 1280x1024 screen, I can see... only 4 questions at a time while browsing. I can't imagine looking at this on my laptop where I've only got 768 pixels.

Otherwise, not too bad. It has a PerlMonks arrangement to it (except PerlMonks is hokey, and unbelievably poorly implemented).

[
Above points turned in to stackoverflow.uservoice.com as well.

Nevermind. Because:

4. The "Uservoice" feedback mechanism doesn't share authentication with stackoverflow. UGH. Lame. Fuck it. One barrier too many.
]

May I suggest that the accepted answer does get the check but is not moved to the top?

That way you have the most helpful answer (as voted by community) at the top, but the accepted answer is still shown prominently.

Giving the accepted answer too much promotion tends to cause the answers to lean toward the specific bias of the asker.

Just an idea.

OK, I just created a new yahoo account and enabled OpenID. Works fine.

Don't believe me? Try it yourself. Here's the credentials:

OpenID: https://me.yahoo.com/stackoverflowtestguy
email: stackoverflowtestguy@yahoo.com
password: opensesame!

Works like a champ on http://stackoverflow.com

Works On My Machine(tm)

> The "Uservoice" feedback mechanism doesn't share authentication with stackoverflow.

IRONICALLY BECAUSE THEY DO NOT SUPPORT OPENID!

Just sayin'. :) I did vote that request up on http://uservoice.uservoice.com , but who knows when they roll out new features. I haven't seen a thing change there in months.

Best luck with everything. So far I find it very helpful.

I posted a question and a couple answers yesterday. Went back today and searched for my name and it returned no results.

Besides this, thus far, I do like the structure of the new site! Good job!

i've looked into the site yesterday (after Joel's post) and i think it's great in MANY MANY ways, but not just for programmers.

I'd love to have the software installed in the company i work for, to have Q&A for CMM, sales, human resources, etc. For some reason wikis don't seem to work, but perhaps the "reputation/votes" will create e better incentive.

Are you planing to open source this?

The site is great! I'm really surprised. I thought it may not be work but I think it's doing great and this point system is a very nice way to encourage people to answer and participate.

I've one complain. OpenID. It sucks!

A better solution would be to support OpenID for those who love and provide a "Register" facility for those who don't mind registering on StackOverflow, like me.

Congrats Jeff and thanks.

Yahoo works for me too. Although I'm not going to share my account details for you to try ;-)

Alternatively you can use your Google login via the Blogger Open-ID.

-Perros-

"Sorry! We have encountered an error that prevents us from fulfilling your request. Things should return back to normal soon, so please try your request again in a few minutes."

If Yahoo OpenID sucks so bad then maybe it shouldn't be in the list of example providers. Out of the example list it was the only one where I already had an account, and was the most recognizable. It worked for me Monday morning, once, and has not worked since then, from home or work. Now I will need to sign up again at another place just to get an OpenID that might work. Maybe myopenid.com is trusted and will work better.

Indeed, my three biggest problems with the site all center around openid.

1) I get auto-logged out all the time. I don't know if this is an openid/blogger problem or what, but it is extremely annoying.

2) I can't transfer my stackoverflow account to a different openid provider if that would offer fewer auto-logouts

3) I have to go through a multistep process every time (so login, openid login, then finally I get to do what I want).

The openid naziism is annoying, imo.

Ummm... am I the only one who sees the Kurt Vonnegut reference in the middle of that Venn diagram?

>OpenID: https://me.yahoo.com/stackoverflowtestguy
>email: stackoverflowtestguy@yahoo.com
>password: opensesame!

That's NOT my password. ;-)

[it's now opensesame!!!!]

How can I find my stuff (my questions, answers, what I upvote)?
I would like to be notified of what others write.

The site is good. Keep up the good work.

Congratualtions. I have used it to ask a couple of questions and helped others with some feedback. I like the high quality.

However just a caution that the site could suck your time if you're hooked to collecting badgets, earning reputation, voting up and down on questions and answers stuff... etc.

Just curious, are you planning to make the site's code open source?

Jeff, I get the same failure with stackoverflowtestguy@yahoo.com as I do with my own yahoo account.

Dunno if it's an IE 7 problem or what.

I registered last night and helped answer a few questions. So far, so good. I think you guys did a great job.

Now that StackOverflow's working so well, has comments and voting working smoothly, etc., have you given any more thought to just dumping uservoice and moving feedback/bug tracking to StackOverflow? It'd get rid of the tiresome "hey, this question belongs on uservoice" replies, it'd use the same authentication, and it'd all work together a little more smoothly.

What's uservoice got at this point that stackoverflow doesn't?

I like the site so far. The downside is that it's a bit overwhelming. I don't know how well it's going to work when I need to find a specific answer.

The only real bug I've found is after I login using my Yahoo OpenID and then fill out my profile information and Save it, the profile doesn't stay saved. My profile information keeps getting lost.

Also on a personal note Jeff, you seem a little hostile to your users about this Yahoo OpenID thing. It may not be your fault but it would behoove you to do all you can to help the users that are having problems.

Cheers!

I'd like to add to the call for fixing the OpenID please.

If I go to sourceforge's login page and type blog.billpg.me.uk into the box on the right, I'm taken to blogger's login page. (So I know my OpenId works this far.)

If I do the same on the stackoverflow login, I'm told
"The remote name could not be resolved: 'blog.billpg.me.uk' "

(Try it out everyone!)

Hope this can be sorted. Many thanks.

The new website looks good, congratulations !

Now ... to start a few trolls about PHP ... mwahahahahaa.

"Badges" ? Very nice idea !
It works for videogames ... :)

The openID thing worked okay on signing up...but I really don't see the need for it.

I would prefer just a simple signup like every other site.

"It's a place where a busy programmer can invest a few minutes... "

Yeah, right! CrackOverflow is my new favorite lurking place on the internet.

Nice article on the launch in infoQ:

"Stack Overflow, a web site for programming questions&answers, has been made public while still in beta. The site offers programmers the opportunity to ask questions and receive answers from fellow coders for free, and intends to become the right source of answers for any programming question."

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/09/stackoverflow-programming-QA

Besides the immense informational potential, I must admit StackOverflow is FUN. Now instead of lethargic Digg browsing I can peruse questions; some of them I can answer and some of them I never thought to ask but feel smarter after having read them and others' answers.

Awesome.

> What's uservoice got at this point that stackoverflow doesn't?

I agree. The "belongs on uservoice" police belong on the top annoyances of SO.com list as well. Ugh.

I was an initial skeptic, but after a few weeks of using the site am a true believer now. The vote system will generally sink the weak and elevate the strong.

Overall, it is a great resource and you and the team have a done a great job.

rp

Jeff:

The problem with Yahoo is that when you select that option from the drop-down box, the text box is populated with:

http://yahoo.com/|

not:

https://me.yahoo.com/yourname

as suggested in the text.

The first way does not work.

Jeff:

I wish you'd let us in on why you chose UserVoice as a bug/feature tracker. It's downright perplexing.

I was very excited about this site... until I saw the OpenID login. I can't use it. I'm not going to sign up to a service I wont use just to log in to your site (I'm sure you understand that). Please please please give us another way to use the site!

Dude, Jeff. Not to be rude or anything, but several of us have spoken on the issue with Yahoo. I've posted on uservoice and I'll tell you here with the rest of these guys who are having problems, I can't log in with my Yahoo OpenId. I've used it for other sites. Heck, I got in on the private beta once, but when I've tried from my work machine (actually going to use it for what it was designed for; not test it!) I can't use my OpenId to authenticate.

Sorry, man. I haven't tried lately but I get a URI error with the prettiness of .NET's yellow and white error page.

Mike

> I wish you'd let us in on why you chose UserVoice as a bug/feature tracker. It's downright perplexing.

It is starting to bug me. Tickets just disappear (deleted? lost? what???), now editing abilities of old posts, periodic email repeats itself, and it will let you type in a new ticket even if you have no votes left...but then tell you "slow down". Grrr...I cannot be bothered to beta there site too :P

Jeff, your Venn's diagram for 4 sets is incorrect. You can check Venn's original construction for 4 sets at the Wikipedia's entry for Venn's diagrams, as well as Edwards' re-constructions of the Venn's diagrams (prettier than Venn's original ones for more than 3 sets, in my opinion)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_Diagram

@Joe:

The reason Jeff's doesn't work is the union of Wiki and Forum and the union of Reddit/Digg and Blog are not represented, right?

I think jon's comment above hits on the key problem with yahoo openid's "not working" on Stack Overflow. I think it's mostly a usability issue, I've posted an answer on the site, and made a comment on the uservoice site (though it has a very short comment size restriction) with some helpful pointers:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/65201/unable-to-login-with-your-openid-provider#76140

Most importantly, the Stack Overflow login control prompts you with the wrong partial identifier for yahoo accounts. However, the example listed below the login control, https://me.yahoo.com/yourname, is accurate.

Also, when activating openid for your yahoo account yahoo will default to some gibberish identifier, you have to select a more sensible identifier manually.

I must say that I hate openid, their login and register method are pretty annoying. I guess I will change my mind once I start frequenting other website besides stackoverflow that uses openid.

Eureka! If you just use "http://yahoo.com" (no username!), Yahoo will log you in automatically. The https://me.yahoo.com/yourname form works iff you have set up your OpenID identifier to match your username. If you haven't, it will generate one like: https://me.yahoo.com/a/yZ.eMJoai5f0RW3HGHKh_pqzaF.A6g--, which is the one I have now.

So Yahoo OpenID is a complicated mess. And the StackOverflow login screen doesn't help matters.

When neither my yahoo or flickr ids worked, I got a claimId. It didn't work either.

All three of these id's take me to the kitten fixing a tv page.

It's a great site, I'll be happy when I can log in.

I've been addicted to (stack|crack) overflow for 45 day, and lovin' each one or them.

Nice way to exclude 99.8% of web users with this cumbersome and useless OpenID huh!

My openID isn't working. Lame.

Nice going! I think a blog post of what is behind the site and what it took to create would be a good read :)

See, there's a problem with Podcast responses.

That problem is that *nobody fucking listens to Podcasts*.

To use OpenID with yahoo just put yahoo.com in the OpenID box, log into Yahoo, and then it's done.

Then just edit your profile on Stack Overflow to put a name in instead of the ugly URL and Bob's your uncle.

I can imagine preferring something else to OpenID but actually 'hating' it is a bit desperate.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/74430/random-in-python-25-not-working

I could give almost no information on the question and still got it answered correctly. It took me almost no time too. I think that this is going to turn out pretty well.

Adding to the chorus: I hate OpenID. I like the idea of SSO. I think OpenID is a horrible attempt, has been since the beginning and has shown no signs of getting better. I actually think that using OpenID *hurts* the SSO cause, because it will taint peoples' impressions of other solutions. Believe it or not, I actually do think that having different credentials for each of thousands of sites is better than OpenID. Please, please, please drop the requirement of using OpenID. Leave it as an option if you must, though I'd personally prefer to never have to see that icon on my screen...

If you're really desperate to get a solution off of Experts Exchange, simply open the site and open up the view source page in whatever browser you are using. Search down until you hit the responses. They're actually embedded in the website itself. If someone were ambitious enough, they could actually write a script to grab that information (it's not stealing, it's being served up to your computer legitimately).

However, it is tedious looking through all those html tags.

Jeff, I just tried Stack Overflow and already I'm hooked!

Great layout and intuitive functionality: more power to you!

I've got no complaints with OpenID, except that more sites don't use it.

About 2/3 times I post a question, I get multiple _fantastic_ responses quickly. About 1/3 times I get only lame early responses and then my question never gets voted up or apparently looked at again by a human being. Overall, it's been very helpful. Definitely worth the price of admission (setting up an openID account.)

For those complaining about having to create another set of credentials for Uservoice, you can use the uservoice site anonymously with almost all of the functionality you get if you're signed in. I used it anonymously for about a week at the beginning.

I truly love the site, you have plenty of reason to be proud of what you've achieved. congratulations!

I do have to agree that openid is terrible. I think it fixes a problem that doesn't exist. Why not just have a simple registration where you can register an email address and a password (we can handle keeping passwords in sync ourselves).

You wrote a brilliant post a while ago about automatically creating the account and letting the users 'fill in the gaps' (eg username, password) later as they decide the site is worth the effort. It would have been great if you'd done that here.

OpenID for authentication (and not as a second-class method).

Image-light, structure-rich, CSS for layout.

Atom for syndication (and not as a second-class method).

Actually-free license terms (CC BY-SA, avoiding the non-free NC and ND).

You've hit a whole lot of high notes even before I begin using the site. Thanks! :-)

Flickr openid no worky? Do I need to go sign up with another openid provider? I have been banging my head against a wall trying to get this to work.

I think the site works great. I had to create an OpenID. No problem.

Great work Jeff, this ROCKS. The site is so active that the question I asked was way down the list, just after asking.

Hi Jeff,

I like this site really much. Great high quality answers to all sorts of questions. I wanted to register, but then OPENID.

Can't stand the idea of an "ID" for the internet. This is the reason I only read the answers without having the chance to participate.

Are you going to implement an alternative Login? Please let us know!

wisa

So Jeff, when will you start giving out stackoverlow stickers? :D

Great site and congratulations.
One suggestion - Please make the site valid against XHTML 1.0 ( Please check with http://validator.w3.org/ )

Fine layout. Easy to use. Great idea to edit own answers. Nice gimmick of badges. Search function great. Already enough users to build a broad base.
Some problems:
- Both highest rated answer and accepted answer should be shown.
Some people ask hasty questions and accept answers which are a bad
solution (unsupported hacks etc.).
- philibertperusse has already mentioned it: People are eager to
earn rep and therefore are not inclined to downvote questions.
Idea: Only people who haven't already answered may up- and downvote
a question. If question is upvoted, every answer earns an extra
point, if downvoted, every answer lose a point. So good/bad
questions are marked out, but the very small gain for everyone
stops people from cheating (socketpuppetry for questions and
answers).
- The identity is irrevocably lost if you edit anonymously. And I have
something to say you possibly don't want to hear:
I.don't.want.OpenID. OpenID.bugs.me.It.is.a.real.pain.
It is a solution for a non-existing problem. Joel has already wrote
an article about synchronization platforms like Windows LiveMesh
who wish to fulfill "one place for all my files".
OpenID wants to fulfill "one identity for the whole web". Guess
what, noone needs both of them.

If you always use the same identity, you can already auto-login
with the browser (and you don't care about security
anyway). If you don't use the same identity, OpenID is wholly
pointless. Please give an alternative. *Please*.

I must admit that trying to use OpenID for the first time - it sucks big time.

I have an account with wordpress.com but don't have a blog there, I just use it for stats, I host my own wordpress. After logging in at stackoverflow with wordpress.com as openid provider I get redirected to some ugly wordpress page saying "You need to sign in to wordpress.com to complete this process.". If I go to wordpress.com i see that (as far as they are concerned) I'm logged in. So, OpenID does not help you guys....

OpenID is working well as an anti-goof CAPTCHA... If you can't figure out how to log in, don't have an account on any of the major web sites, or can't be bothered with a 1 minute setup process, you might not be a great source of information on a tech Q&A site.

Unfortunately it's impossible for me to log in to Stack Overflow from work, where it would probably be the most use to me. We're behind a proxy server, which combined with our faily slow Internet connections means that OpenID simply doesn't work reliably. And of course every time I log in to the site from home I get logged out from work.

Also, I added OpenID support to my own website, but if I log in directly using myOpenID it doesn't recognise me as the same person. So I have to use the site anonymously from work, which is a PITA.

> OpenID is working well as an anti-goof CAPTCHA...[...], you might
> not be a great source of information on a tech Q&A site.

Wonderful. Finally I met a person who I can ask to improve my own inferior solutions (because Stackoverflow is presumably out of bounds). Well, quick:

-How do you compute transcendental functions in arbitrary-length
math with, let's say, more than 1000 bits precision in binary format ? You know, ln, exp, sin, cos, tan ? Please explain in
detail.

-Is there a problem with the power function x^y and if yes, what exactly is/are the problem(s) ?

-You compute exp(x)-1 which is common in physics and engineering. Which problem occurs and how do you solve it if you don't have an
handy routine (like in IEEE754r) ?

I am convinced that these petty questions are not a problem to a man who obviously belongs to mankinds elite.

hi jeff, didn't know where to post it, but i would like to point out that one of the most active users, the user aku, has ussr's hammer and sickle in his icon, which is a little bit offensive for some people, like using nazi's swastika as icon would be offensive for jews.

I vote for OpenID too, its great. (admiteddly I do not use Yahoo's implementation so I might be using it right)(Hint: go to myopenid, they've done a lot right).

What I cannot understand though, is all the people asking for a 'throwaway' login id. Isn't OpenID exactly this? You don't need a single openid account for all sites you know, you can have as many as you like. So go to myopenid, create your throwaway userid/password (or certificate, or phone callback) there and use it to login to stackoverflow.

I reckon they're afraid they'll realise they can reuse the same id on other openid sites and then start liking it. Won't that be a terrible thing!

I hope it will kill ExpertSexchange.com

"To use OpenID with yahoo just put yahoo.com in the OpenID box, log into Yahoo, and then it's done."

This worked, thanks.

Sorry, but openid is a tall cold glass of fail as far as I'm concerned. If that's the only way to properly get to grips with stack overflow then I won't be getting to grips with stack overflow.

It's pretty fun to go through all the unanswered questions, but as a few people here have said, they get answered pretty quickly, usually while you are in the middle of trying to answer them. Since there are so many people eager to earn reputation, questions very quickly lose their 'unanswered' status, even if none of the replies really adequately answer the question. I would suggest being able to filter unanswered questions a little more leniently, such that, say, if none of the answers have been upvoted at all, it will still be considered unanswered. I'd suggest filtering by ones that the original poster hasn't marked as The Answer, but it seems like the majority don't ever get that marked.

Maybe if the original poster can check an option that negates its 'answered' status, even if there have been responses, if none of them are appropriate, so questions that genuinely haven't been answered will still be easily found. Sort of like bumping their question, but without having it bubble to the top again. Maybe they could be allowed some small number of times they can perform that action per question, to limit it.

So I'm all for "programmer" art... hell, I have lots of programmer art.

But you've got to do something about that layout. As it stands, I can't stay to look at the site for more than a few seconds because it's designed so terrible. I see a lot of the comments about that have been shut down immediately with little to no explanation.

Listen, while I hate, hate, hate Expert's Exchange, this site is not going to be the EE killer unless you do a far better job with design.

@ant

The method I found for addressing this problem is to put an item on UserVoice. For all it's flaws, it seems Jeff does read each item there.

It seems the issue of offensive gravitars will be addressed on a case by case basis.

Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters...

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2003/05/58790

In a way that is what SO feels like. A bunch of monkeys banging away on keyboards, with the hope that the sum is greater than the parts.

Now yes, we are all smarter and more capable than monkeys, well some of us are :-).

Here is my biggest grip about SO. I have seen questions that have accepted answers, and the accepted answer is not necessarily the "most correct". Who should judge the correct answer? The one who asked the question? I think in some cases the "asker" is not always able to make that judgement, as they may have just gotten a bandaid for a specific ailment.

Granted I suppose that the community will eventually even this out, with other "more correct" answers getting up votes the the "less correct" accepted response receiving down votes.

Anyhow, I am experiencing what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Because at the same time, I am addicted to SO, and have actively used it almost every day since joining.

Via the reputation score, I think Jeff and Joel have cleverly tapped into a trait common to nearly all developers: hubris. Brazen honesty, I think that is why I am addicted, I want to see my reputation score go up.

Here's another tidbit I find interesting. The hottest questions on SO are generally subjective:

http://stackoverflow.com/?sort=hot

For some reason, I find this strangly ironic.

Tried it, liked it. Found myself answering questions that over-zealous moderators had removed before I could hit submit. Found comments from moderators closing questions they deemed too "subjective" or "off-topic". Trying to force the group, rather than filtering your own view, is fail. Won't be going back for some time.

God, finally! Looks like a good idea, can't wait to test it out next time some language gives me guff.

As for critics, as Jay-Z put it, "oh—you're not feeling me? Fine; it cost you nothing—pay me no mind."

If Software Development is a game, then that makes Stack Overflow the new World of Warcraft.

OpenID works well with me in SO but I am seeing a lot of complaints from others about OpenID. Therefore SO should not rely solely on OpenID for authentication. A regular username/password should also be used. OpenID should be an option but not the only option.

Nice site there. Though I wish there was some way to organize and create hierarchy to the tags.

I went to stackoverflow.com, and the very first thing I clicked on was the top article entitled "What is a realistic starting salary for a C# programmer?" The link went here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87153/what-is-a-realistic-starting-salary-for-a-c-programmer, but I got a "Page Not Found" error.

By the way, the topic I clicked on was only 11 seconds old when I hit the link, so maybe I got tossed to a different server that didn't know about the content or maybe I ran into some other sync error?

@Jon Ericson
Yes, exactly: Jeff's Venn diagram is incorrect for it doesn't represent all the possible intersections between the 4 sets, only some of them.
It couldn't show apps that lie in the intersection of Wiki and Forum but have nothing to do with Blog or Reddit, nor the ones at the intersection of Blog and Reddit which are not even remotely like Wikis or Forums.

Jeff: if you don't like the models shown in the Wikipedia example, projecting this image of yours onto a Sphere would render it correct (the 4 circles would over the "North Pole" and intersect again at the "South Pole", showing all the possible connections at the cost of a little redundancy).

The incompleteness of the n=4 Venn diagram (yes, I noticed too, heh) is a non-issue if the emphasis is solely on the region of complete intersection, though. If Jeff wants to make a point of mapping, graphically, the intersection of Digg and Blogs that intersects <i>neither</i> Wiki nor Forum factors, then he's got a problem, but otherwise we're just overnerding things.

And if we're <i>gonna</i> overnerd this sucker, I'm wanting to see at least one site/application that fits each possible region of intersection.

(Or a compelling argument for the impossibility of pure-opposites intersections, which would justify Jeff's diagram as functionally complete after all. In other words, establish why you <i>can't</i> have a Digg/Blog/No-Wiki/No-Forum site or a Wiki/Forum/No-Digg/No-Blog site.)

By the way Jeff: when posting an answer here using Firefox 3, I'm always getting a message saying "in an effort to curb malicious comment posting by abusive users... before being able to post again".

If I go back to the original page, I can see my comment has been posted. If I wait and post again, I get a double post.

Somehow, Firefox is sending TWICE the post to your site. I investigated on the net if anyone else was having the same problem, the closest I could get was this:
<a href="http://eggbung.blogspot.com/2008/05/firefox-double-page-load.html">http://eggbung.blogspot.com/2008/05/firefox-double-page-load.html</a>

Are you using an IMG with an empty SRC tag?

Nice to finally see the site after hearing so much about it. I had some interesting answers to my question that had no right answer. You did a nice job on the UI. I missed a couple of features because I wasn't expecting it to be that user-friendly. This will definitely be a site I check regularly for some food for thought, and a site on which to bounce off my periodic software neurosis.

The only problem I've seen is that I think I saw one of the answers to my question disappear. Can users retract their answers?

Kudos on the site, Jeff. I've found it to be quite nice.

For me, bang slap in the middle of your nicely-shaded venn diagram is where IRC sits ;)

But it's a fun site, I've had a go on it this evening, but I can't see it replacing IRC for usefulness.

Plus the server appears to be dying on its poor overworked arse at the moment ;)

Congratulations, the page is beautiful and useful.

You guys need to allow image uploads and QUIT PIGGY-BACKING.

I typed &nbsp; in my answer, and the ampersand didn't get HTML encoded!!

Jeff:

I hope you acknowledged the people at despair.com for borrowing their "None of Us is as Dumb as All of Us" poster design.

Regards,
Sean

where did you get the comment setup like this?

I can't bow down to OpenId yet, but it appears you are after a self-healing/blog/wiki/twitter upgrade/ source of info, which I think is a good concept.

Execution will be rough for a while while those who can/cannot refine the answers gets sorted out, and you separate fluff from "that's nice" from solid bottom line info.

I m really addicted with this great site and your are my ASP.net MVC hero.

You raise good questions. Success and failure are both in your hands...

I think there's multiple issues and multiple opportunities. From an information standpoint, the challenge of having multiple chefs in the pot can break conceptual integrity. But it can also lead to a sum that's more than the parts.

When Ward Cunningham (father of the Wiki) was on my team, he taught me lots about Wikis and community. Lots of little insights that add up. For example:
- page names matter
- think one great page at a time
- garden tenders matter - a lot
- the community becomes self-maintaining eventually, if you groom the right rules
- your best community members become your best garden tenders
- forums are about time; wikis are timeless

What surprised me is how much that the network behind the community matters more than the online site itself. The online becomes a reflection of the connection.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Wikis. I've created many dozens, in many shapes, sizes, and platforms. My personal favorite is still Wikimedia. I created Guidance Share (http://www.GuidanceShare.com ) using Wikimedia to experiment different ways of organizing massive amounts of information. There's no way I could get that experience in a book or blog. But, blogs and books have their purpose. A blog is great as a chunked stream of value over time and for news. A book is a great path through a bunch of information. But I would expect the book to be focused on the durable, evolvable frames and key principles, patterns, and practices -- not the volatile information that's better in a Wiki.

Which brings me to the other success factor -- the information structure itself. I won't claim to be an information management guru. But I have managed several thousands of pages over several years. What I learned is that the most important thing is to treat a body of knowledge as a catalog of types and topics. If you find the right information structures, it's very easy to share knowledge effectively. For example, I make heavy use of how tos, guidelines, checklists, explaines, practices at a glance, ... etc. At a high-level, I factor reference from action. I put reference into nuggets I call Explained. I put action into step by step How Tos.

My favorite approach is to slice a domain into a knowlege base (KB) of nuggets and a guide. Here's examples:
- KB - VSTS Guidance (http://www.codeplex.com/VSTSGuidance)
- Guide - Team Development with TFS (http://www.codeplex.com/TFSGuide)

I've tried to explain as best I could, in short form, how I build books in patterns & practices, so this may help you structure your knowledge (http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2007/12/24/building-books-in-patterns-amp-practices.aspx)

You might also want to experiment with Guidance Explorer (http://www.codeplex.com/guidanceExplorer). Customers call it "ITunes for knowledge." You can read, author, and share guidance nuggets. You can build customized views of guidance as well as build your own guide on the fly. It's actually a mini platform of a "guidance store", a "guidance feed", and an offline client "guidance explorer."

I think your model of bringing together a KB (wki), news (blog), people (forum) and user sharing (digg/reddit) makes sense. I haven't tested the full enchilada, but it matches variations of models I've had success with.

I have some information on what I call "guidance engineering" which may help you in terms of thinking through models as well as figuring out practices (for example, one of my favorite practices is "sweeping" the KB -- knowledge isn't static. Over time it gets out of whack. A periodic sweep makes a big difference). You can browse my guidance engineering posts here http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/tags/Guidance+Engineering/default.aspx.

Good luck (where luck is when skill and opportunity come together)

PS - sorry so long, but I didn't have time to write a short comment.

Averaging about one post a week. Impressive.

1) Don't understand the issues with openid. I struggled at first to learn the system but since have had no issues.

2) The site is a bit elitist. I consider myself a crappy programmer and am still learning (even after 5 years out of school). The technologies are moving quickly and seems as soon as I picked up the nuances of vs2005, vs2008 came out. Anyways I've asked basic how to questions and received very little in the way of votes. Although I think they were valid beginner/intermediate questions.

"If Software Development is a game, then that makes Stack Overflow the new World of Warcraft."

If StackOverflow is the new World of Warcraft, then I'm a undead shadowpriest.

What a great idea!
I wish you all the success in the world.

I've never been that interested in grind based MMORPG:s, but this is different. I'm actually interacting with other players all the time, and it's not just about grinding mobs or something: We're questing to find real world coding answers to gain Badges!

I just can't stop refreshing the front page to see if I've earned some more 'rep' :))))

Seriously: good show. I really hope this works out ok, and it's looking phenomenal so far.

I like Stackoverflow. I still think it has a ways to go, especially in the areas of accessibility to new users (the FAQ has almost nothing in it!) and finding questions to answer (ok, there's an "unanswered questions" tab, but how about questions with no *accepted* answer, or questions with no answers over 1 vote?), but I find that even at this early stage I've gotten a lot more help there than I have elsewhere.

I am now in a quandry... I endeavour to be a good Stacker and am remaining anonymous because people are abusing their "power".

One thread was closed using "not programming related" when the question was in reality a design related question.

The person who closed it had posted "about what mouse should i use" (superfluously added a "as a programmer" like a mouse helps you code - or - What workplace exercises do you do?

What's good for the goose is good for the gander ...

On the other hand give Justin a Platinum Badge ... and list his rep as a mobius ... :)

Look promising. Only snags now is not having some filters (boolean or tag-cloud navigation) for the vast amount of questions. I also hope the use of OpenID gets re-evaluated.

As mentioned above, a seperate login for stackoverflow.uservoice.com that's not using OpenID somehow beats it's purpose?

Opso70, you say "1) Don't understand the issues with openid. I struggled at first to learn the system but since have had no issues."

You _do_ understand the issues with openID then.
Why should something as simple as logging onto a sodding website involve struggling and having to "learn the system"?

It staggers me that people say that then say they don't see what the problem is.

I know StackOverflow is for programming questions - and it's pretty good for that - but is there any chance we could have something similar for sysadmin questions?

I have fun questions like "I'm running <obscure third-party addin to Word> and <other obscure third-party addin to Word> at the same time and they don't seem to like each other. Any suggestions what kind of trace I can run to see where the problem is?"

I've always felt guilty about having taken from the community more than I've given. I want StackOverflow to succeed and will do what I can to help it succeed. Thank you for making it available. I've tried posting to my blog answers to problems that took me a while to resolve. I'll start posting to StackOverflow as well. I think the site will improve as more "editors" get their wings and start cleaning up the mess. The mess being partially, all the subjective questions that aren't in the spirit of the site, that encourage "discussion" but creates noise.

I really love this article.Its so well written.Nice statement

yeah well said..liked your topic pretty influencing :D

I simply love your blog. I can say, I feel always like beginner with coding.. Being humble and admitting one's own stupidity is good also. For me, it came to be the problem: "What to program, if I hold onto teaching of Code-Reuse."
Vast world of learning, a never-ending play box, I would say. About internet and related technologies. Also this information technology changed my way of seeing.. there was nobody I could represent all I know. As you said, good rule is: "Aim for brevity."
Well, but dialectics is only way to find truth. You must say what you think, otherwise it does not exist. I think the form internet takes, comes by itself, we must just code to adapt to these changes.

I see the point and value in this website, but I thought it would be handy also to be able to contribute a nugget of information to add to the knowledge base so it would be searchable by people with the same problem. There's no way to do that, that I found so I asked a question then answered it. That didn't go over so well.

thanks for contributing to the utter drivel here in cyberspace

'Bit late to reply. Can't keep up with my feeds. This is also why I prefer StackOverflow the Website to StackOverflow the podcast. Who has time to listen to opinionated techies babbling on radio, anyway? Who cares?

I actually browsed through SO it today. If you were looking to build something really practical, I suppose you missed the mark. When I'm looking for a solution, I just want the facts, and eventually some understanding -- not a social forum. But I personally enjoyed the stupidity. There's a wisdom that grows out of it. This is certainly worth something.

Geeks tend to focus too much. Some grow so proud of their know how and loose perspective of what needs to be known in order to solve problem X. Making a point turns into a battle of ego. When you mix all sort of people in a place like this, the law of average injects some sanity into the lot and you get some direction to navigate by.

There's nothing wrong about solving the wrong problem. Not here, anyway.

Execution will be rough for a while while those who can/cannot refine the answers gets sorted out, and you separate fluff from "that's nice" from solid bottom line info.
http://megavibor.ru/