

Computer Science Stack Exchange site is now up in public beta - yichi
http://cs.stackexchange.com/

======
Smudge
Going to rephrase a different comment I made earlier:

All of these stack exchanges seem to be trying to solve the same kinds of
noise issues that Reddit's subreddits solve, except Reddit does a much better
job. No question in my mind.

Thoughts:

\- Having to open a new account on each site (linked to one big virtual
account) is messy. I get why they may not want reputation/badges to carry-over
from site to site. Personally I believe doing so causes even more
fragmentation and makes the barrier to entry too painful if you have to repeat
it across several sites (I'd prefer to see a better mix of carrying over some
stuff while starting over with others), but the fragmentation of the
login/account itself is what really bothers me.

\- On Reddit, anyone can open a subreddit about anything. On Stack Exchange,
new sites have to be proposed on Area51 before they are beta tested and
released. All of this effort so... what? They don't have sites that nobody
visits? Would anybody notice sites that nobody visits? On Reddit, popular
subreddits emerge organically. Unknown subreddits are basically invisible. It
all just works. Stack Exchange should be more of a metareddit (.com). Stack
Exchange even has a great page for featuring their sites by size and category:
<http://stackexchange.com/sites>

\- On Stack Exchange, if I regularly frequent multiple sites, I need to visit
them separately. This results in several tabs that I flip between when I'm in
the mood for answering questions. On Reddit, all of my subreddits just feed
through my front page, or I can input a custom URL which lets me view only a
subset of my subreddits. I would love to do this with Stack Exchange.

~~~
icebraining
What do you consider painful about the account creation process? For me, I
just log-in to a new site (using OpenID) and it automatically detects the
other accounts and asks me if I want to combine them. Or are you talking about
not having karma from the start?

~~~
skeletonjelly
Except on reddit this step doesn't exist. You're already signed in. Granted
that's because of matching domains.

~~~
TheCowboy
It might also be considered a feature to have a small annoying hurdle to keep
those who aren't as interested or knowledgeable on a topic from flinging their
poos into the mix. Everyone is an 'expert' on Reddit on any topic, while
that's not the case for the different StackExchanges.

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switz
I feel there is almost an oversaturation of stackexchanges now. I often have
questions that could fit into a ton of different sub-exchanges, yet when I
post it on one I am usually ridiculed into posting it onto another. SO is one
of my favorite sites on the internet, but it needs to be clearer as to what
sites should be used for what.

~~~
frou_dh
I've checked out of keeping track of StackExchange. I'm sure for those that
can be bothered keeping track of evolving mechanics, meta-ness, and the Area
51 business, it's rewarding. Me, I only recognise the existence of
StackOverflow. Great site.

------
zengr
How is it different from <http://cstheory.stackexchange.com> ?

Update: And I answered my own question:
[http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/78/how-to-make-
ou...](http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/78/how-to-make-our-cs-
community-very-different-from-the-cstheory)

------
htf
Wouldn't it be simpler for Stack Exchange to have a single website for all
subjects and just use tags for classification?

~~~
Smudge
There are already tags. My thought is that they seem to be trying to solve the
same kind of noise issues that Reddit's subreddits solve, except Reddit does a
much better job. Having to open up a separate account on each site (linked by
one big virtual account) is really messy, in my opinion.

------
kandalf
For anyone who is confused about the purpose of this site (in contrast to
cstheory, for example), the distinction is that this is for non-research level
computer science questions, whereas cstheory tends to frown on such questions.

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minikomi
Interesting to see the first question tagged by the author with the qualifying
line (This is not homework.)... Does that really matter on this particular
stack exchange? I realize the disparity in the goal and action of someone on
stackoverflow asking for an implementation of an entire homework question
rather than a specific question on a single part they're having difficulty
with, but in this case I would think on this particular exchange, "homeworky"
questions would have to be tollerable..

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rnadna
Science is normally taken to be the study of nature. By that definition,
"Computing Science" is a misnomer. Sure, it's a misnomer with a long history,
but isn't the point of all the hand-wringing (beta status, area 51, ...) to
try to get things right?

~~~
wladimir
IMO comput _ing_ science is the right name. It is the science of computation.
Computation happens in nature as well as in computers. If it didn't happen in
nature, we could not build a computer physically.

However, comput _er_ science would be wrong name as a computer is a human
artifact and studying that is engineering not science.

------
JohnQPasserby
Does anyone else find that SO is great cor answering beginner level questions,
but completely inaccurate beyond that?

