
Stack Exchange 2.0 - babakian
http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-2-0
======
bonaldi
They realised that StackExchange was failing, but because they don't realise
the reasons _why_ their attempted correction is only making it worse.

Their software is a hideously complicated and over-engineered attempt to twist
human relationships into math. It only works on StackOverflow because: a) The
tech community was _desperate_ for an alternative to hidebound mailing lists
on one hand and expertsexchange on the other b) How to put this? A whole lot
of nerds really would like to be able to reduce the complexity of human
relationships to math, too, and willingly participated.

But without a userbase that's dying for a solution, any solution, and
especially a userbase prepared to put up with convoluted ranking-rating-have-
I-got-enough-points-to-change-my-profile-picture-yet point-scoring games the
software is actually a millstone. You're not going to get a liberal arts Q&A
site that takes off with those restrictions. This is why StackExchange was
such a dud.

By not realising this, their solution is more of the same! "Sure, you can
start a site, you just need pi+4 users to seed your initial contract bounding,
then that will need to be ranked to 6 by a quorum of level 3 users, and after
an initial 26-day period of zzzzzzzzzz <click>".

You want to create a good Q&A site, you need to have a community, and it needs
to be well-tended by empathic people who know how and where to prune. The
software is pretty much irrelevant. Look at <http://ask.metafilter.com/> for a
success story: totally flat, forum-esque, but answers are obvious, there's no
chatter or bullshit, and it works on the most amorphous and wide-ranging types
of questions.

There is no shortcut solution to this problem. There is no way to
mathematically manage human connections like this that works in this space.
The route to success is careful relationship management, not yet more
programming.

~~~
spolsky
Sounds like you have a great business plan. In the meantime, I think that the
Stack Overflow model has proven itself among nerds, and I think that your
assertion that nerds are weird in some way and need completely different
software than the rest of the world is not backed up by any evidence.

I disagree that the software is irrelevant. Discussion groups that don't allow
voting have no way to distinguish answers that the community thinks are good
from answers that the community thinks are bad. Discussion groups that don't
allow editing have no way to change answers as the world changes, so wrong
answers stick around. Discussion groups without tags are forced to splinter
communities into smaller and smaller fragments because they have no way of
dealing with overlapping communities. Discussion groups without reputation
systems are overrun with spam.

I can't think of anything I disagree with MORE than the concept that "the
software is irrelevant." The software DEFINES how the community works with
each other and is absolutely critical.

~~~
bonaldi
I didn't say that nerds _need_ completely different software: I implied that
nerds were the only people who would put _up_ with SO-style numbers games,
because their need was so great and they can grok the system.

Nor did I say the software _per se_ was irrelevant: I agree it's _vastly_
important to how a community interacts. But when it comes to community
building it's beside the point: phpBB is _very_ bad software for discussion,
yes, but some excellent communities have formed nonetheless.

Good software facilitates communication and -- crucially -- it enables readers
to use their established social skills. It stays out of the way, in other
words. Metafilter, for example, has none of your "requirements" apart from a
basic tagging system, but avoids every one the problems you think will result
-- and it does it from nothing more than good relationship management and
community stewardship.

By trying to automate away (or disperse to the "crowd") the hard work of that
relationship management, StackOverflow has boxed itself into a niche where
only nerds-with-a-need could bear to live. The rest will turn away and keep on
searching, as the experience of StackExchange has shown.

[edit: first attempt made no sense!]

~~~
spolsky
Maybe you have different goals than us. You're trying to build communities...
we're trying to make the Internet a better place to get expert answers.

~~~
bonaldi
Surely you have to build communities to do this, though? Your earlier answer
mentioned how you needed voting so the "community" could choose best answers,
you needed tags to keep sub-communities separate and so on. And one of the
rating criteria for the new SE sites seems to be how much of a community they
manage to create.

If it is the case, I think this is the fundamental tension: You've built
software geared to rating and creating answers, but to get those answers you
need vibrant communities -- and the resulting software is so complex and
strictured it is effectively _anti_ -community.

~~~
netcan
I'm siding with spolsky here. The ultimate goal you have in mind is defining.
Since building a community is hard and is the hurdle that kills most attempts,
people will often see it as the goal. In many cases, it might be the goal.

Take Wikipedia as an example. Community is necessary but it is not the goal.
The goal is encyclopaedia making. Most online communities do not produce a
wikipedia.

What this adds up to, in theory, is sacrificing some community building
ability (more sites will dies from under participation)for more Q&A ability.
While more of the remaining will produce a good archive of useful answers.

*This doesn't directly answer your original claim that the software is good for SO specifically but cannot be widely applied. But, if what I suggest is true, then you would expect it to appear that way.

------
tptacek
_This harks back to our corporate goal to “make the Internet a better place to
get expert answers to your questions.” A ghost town, without traffic, does not
get people answers, but it does draw a few people away from other sites that
might do so. We do not believe that the Internet benefits from putting up
placeholder sites with negligible traffic that do not attract high quality
communities. And we want the Stack Exchange brand to be synonymous with great
community Q &A sites, even if we don’t necessarily cover every topic under the
sun._

If Joel Spolsky somehow managed to actually touch Jason Calacanis, would some
kind of catastrophic cosmic event occur? Or would they both simply annihilate
each other?

~~~
spolsky
I consider Jason a friend
(<http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/podcast-56/>), a very smart guy, and a
great entrepreneur, although I have a different philosophy than he does on how
to build a Q&A site.

~~~
tptacek
So then, do you think that Mahalo has a bum rap? Because the rep they have
here is pretty close to "Google spammer".

~~~
spolsky
I do the best I can not to comment on competitors, although I can't always
live up to my ideal.

There are a lot of companies built on the business model of making low-cost,
low-quality pages for long-tail Google search results, either algorithmically
or with low-paid humans. There's clearly an arbitrage opportunity there,
providing some kind of semi-crappy web page on a topic so narrow that there
isn't anything on the web yet, but low quality content doesn't interest me at
all.

~~~
gnaritas
> low-cost, low-quality pages for long-tail Google search results

It's called spamming. Mahalo is spam, Jason is a spammer; friend or not that's
simply what he does.

------
petercooper
I think he's taken too much inspiration from politics. Turfing out the simple
"pay X, get Y" idea, we now get ~1000 words explaining a concept, its
bureaucratic underpinnings, and a rationale of how something that offers less
is, in fact, offering a lot more. Yet no longer do you "own" a site you can
invest time into, you're instead a caretaker for a site that stays in the SO
fold for them to monetize.. a bit like a sub-Reddit (except Reddit's source is
open so you can take your toys home, if you wish).

Having people vote for stuff within a framework they ultimately don't control
is crazy. We maintain a façade of democracy in politics because it keeps the
populace happy, but with Web sites, online communities, and programming
languages.. good leadership typically comes straight from the "owners" - at
least to start with.

At the end of the day though, I guess Stack Overflow is his baby and he can do
what he likes. If Apple can change the rules mid-game, so can Spolsky ;-)

------
ajg1977
Frankly I think this sounds terrible.

Instead of providing a service that allows people to create, maintain (and
yes, perhaps fail) their own community Q&A sites as they see fit, the Stack
Exchange team now seem to be aiming to crowd-source the creation and
maintenance of Q&A sites deemed interesting enough to exist. And if you've
listened to the past few podcasts, "interesting enough" generally means
"contains pages likely to rank well in Google".

~~~
tptacek
If that was the case, they wouldn't be (a) creating huge barriers to creating
new communities, and (b) tearing down sites that failed to attract a threshold
amount of participation. It's clearly not simply a Google spam scheme.

------
cryptnoob
I find myself emotionally torn about this.

This is sharecropping, pure and simple. That's bad, since it's not me doing
the share cropping. I suspect they can be very successful. Usenet was
wonderful .. until it wasn't. A network of sites that can give us high value
information instead of the adwords dreck that is polluting the web, should
indeed, be a net positive to the world.

Much like an interstate highway is a net positive to society, I suspect this
network of sites will be also. It doesn't always work out so well for the
little towns the highway goes through, however, and I fear the carnage that
might result from this as well. Creative destruction is still destruction,
hence my torn emotions.

~~~
billybob
It is sharecropping to the extent that StackOverflow is sharecropping, but not
as much as Yahoo Answers, Experts Exchange and others. Yes, you provide
content and someone else makes money. On the other hand, you get answers and
the content you provide is Creative Commons. You can download it all and start
your own site if you like. I'd say that's a pretty open-handed and friendly
approach.

Does a better alternative exist?

------
latch
Not a fan of the SX family, but you _have_ to give them credit for recognizing
relatively early on that something wasn't working, and actually implementing
the significant changes to try and make it better.

~~~
ajg1977
Actually it sounds more like they have completely changed their business plan.

Before: Provide communities and companies the software and hosting that
enabled the creation of high-quality Q&A sites.

Now: Create a carefully cultivated garden of user-maintained Q&A sites with
active communities and minimal overlap.

And that's fine of course, but it seems a little odd to judge the former was
failing (after what, six months?) by using the goals of the second as a
criteria for success.

~~~
xelipe
Their new business model is more complicated than their previous business
model. The five steps to citizenship seems like a weird concept. People that
want to host a Q&A site like these don't want to be told they aren't good
enough to have a top-level domain. Imagine wanting a blog and WordPress or
Tumblr thought you undeserving of a top-level domain. Stack Exchange 2.0 has
more steps to have a top-level domain site than the Chinese government has for
it's citizens to acquire a domain. I'm sure there is a good Rails/PHP Q&A
clone webapp.

~~~
thenbrent
Hear hear.

A Q&A site is not a piece of legistlation; it's an entreneurial endeavour.

It's best to leave entrepreneurs to be free to create, experiment and adapt.

Stackexhange will miss out on some great sites by rejecting them before they
even get a start. The best sites will be those where the founder/s constantly
adapt the site to demands of the community, not those who have the best idea
upfront.

But as you say, that's where the OSS optios come in. :)

------
fady
Fellow Stackexchange admin for <http://sfanswers.com>. I'm glad I waited for
beta to end, before spending thousands on marketing, shirts, stickers, etc...

I emailed them as well. SF Answers is my baby and I will do whatever it takes
to keep it alive. SF Answers has huge potential, esp for our city folk, and I
hope it can remain a site. Not really happy about this, but I'm a team player
and would work directly with them on keeping this site up. Otherwise OSQA
seems to fit the bill.. Fellow San Franciscans come join us!

I will continue to use SE, until they officially shut me down :(

~~~
johns
Why not jump ship to Shapado?

------
cantastoria
This seems like history repeating itself. Joel's first foray into the consumer
market (CityDesk) was a failure but he was able to fall back on the large
community of programmers his blog attracted to make FogBugz a success. With
StackExchange it seems like things are happening in the reverse order.

It must be frustrating to not be able to break out of the programmer oriented
market. I'm not saying this will be a failure but without the large audiences
from Joel and Jeff's respective blogs they've got some serious mass marketing
to do. It might be time hire a marketing firm.

------
pclark
So it's free? Doesn't this fly in the face of Joel "charge for software"
Spolsky? Venture Capital rules!

~~~
rguzman
I doubt that it being free has much to do with "VC rules!". Given the success
of fogcreek, I'd guess that they could've made stackexchanges free from the
get-go. They just found a new business model. Maybe with the help of their
VCs.

~~~
frederickcook
"We believe that if our platform creates value for a large number of users, we
will have opportunities to make money."

That doesn't sound like a new business model, it sounds like wishful thinking.

~~~
nl
um... Advertising? Seems to work for a few sites around the place.

------
benofsky
This sounds immensely complicated, maybe they should have worked out a better
way for selling the software. Making it free and having this stupendously
complex proposal system seems kinda short-sighted.

------
nopassrecover
If quality is so important they need to get designers to look at their sites
fast. StackOverflow is fine (especially as it's for programmers) but the
original clone sites (the PC and Server ones) have terrible colour schemes
that are both hard to interact with and simply reflect badly on the brand.
Getting a UI expert or two to work on optimising the UI for non-programmers
wouldn't go astray. Getting someone like Smashing Magazine or someone involved
in a design-shard of StackExchange would be a good start.

------
billybob
I'm surprised at the negative reactions here. I thought it sounded brilliant,
honestly, and I look forward to seeing more sites blossom.

~~~
yequalsx
Me too. I suspect their goal is to form trusted Q&A sites. Their goal, I
think, is to make the brand synonymous with trusted information on the
internet.

------
AndrewWarner
I did an interview Joel, the site's co-founder, about why they made this
decision. It should be done processing in about 25 minutes.

~~~
alanl
where can I listen?

~~~
jackowayed
<http://mixergy.com/stack-exchange-joel-spolsky-interview/>

------
callmeed
I don't quite get this. I was actually just about to create a SE account for
the purpose of building an audience for our niche startup.

So, now my idea has to be vetted? Lame.

------
Tawheed
Q&A SITE != COMMUNITY

------
pkaler
So, Weblogs Inc meets knowledge exchange. What I don't quite follow is why
contributors would want to propose a Stack Exchange.

For example, imagine I'm a shoe cobbler. I may want to contribute to a Stack
Exchange so that it positions me as an expert and drives more traffic to my
business.

That's the point of Stack Overflow careers. I'm not sure how that works for
shoe cobblers.

------
richardburton
The people behind phpBB don't decide who can and, more importantly, who can't
build a forum in case it doesn't flourish. They just put the software out
there.

If anyone feels like building a Q&A site for free without having to go through
an approval procedure they can also check out <http://www.qhub.com>

------
euroclydon
There's a lot on money on the line with programming. The quicker we get
answers, the faster we get our job done. I can't think of another field where
_answers_ are even so possible as in programming. If it were possible with Law
or Engineering, I think you would see those type of professionals flock to an
SE type site too.

------
SandB0x
If there were an easy way to have a StackExchange site running alongside an
old established forum it could really kick off. For example, I think the
Ubuntu Forums would be dramatically better if I didn't have to wait through 8
pages of posts to find the best solution to a problem.

------
ErrantX
My first thought was "woah that's a laborous process". But then I guess that
is the intention.

------
jswinghammer
I'm a pretty big fan of Joel, Jeff, and Stackoverflow so I was really hoping
for something other than what I got here. I was hoping to try using a
stackexchange site for software support. Instead what I'm looking at seems
very complicated and pretty much useless for all but the largest business
applications. It may or may not work for personal interest sites but it seems
like business users lose out in this scheme.

I wish them the best but this seems like a pretty bad idea. They can obviously
change course and I hope they do. Fortunately it seems like shapado.com offers
what I'm looking for.

------
Kilimanjaro
Like Usenet, Google Groups, or Reddit, just get one nice name and let
everybody open their groups and compete for traffic.

Then you get millions of visitors and then you monetize it as you please.

The time is ripe to replace google groups.

------
ck2
I see an impending problem with using a 3rd party service like stack exchange,
not just for hosting but for operating the content you create. Just like there
is voting to enable a site, they could just as easily take it away from you
someday.

It's like the few hosted forum services out there, or an even simplier model,
wp.com blogs vs. a blog on your own vps.

If it's important to you and you want control over quality, content and
features, build it and host it yourself (yet another reason why I am not crazy
about clouds).

~~~
netcan
Don't you see any advantage in lowering the bar for having a blog, forum or SE
site?

------
bluethunder
I would argue that some tweaks to their original plan would have make it work
much better, plus some plain old evangelising.

The pricing for one thing was too expensive and should have more slabs (say
starting from something like 10$ a month). $120/month is a serious commitment,
expecially on something which might not really take of also.

imho the new plan is extremely complex and there is really no reason why i
would want a community to 'approve' of my new qna site. Just plain wrong at
the roots wrong.

------
netcan
_During this phase, people who are interested in a potential site are asked to
electronically “sign” a commitment to help make the site a success. They are
committing publicly to participate actively in the site, by asking questions,
answering questions, developing a system of tags, and generally helping the
site get off the ground._

I really like this behavioural economics stuff that stackoverflow are in to.
They should get Dan Ariely on their podcast.

------
kbrower
I have a stackexchange site. This is what my admin page says:

This site will remain free and operational until at least Tuesday, July 13,
2010.

What is the best drop in replacement?

~~~
zapc
Shapado looks good, and its Rails based. However it has a dependency on
MongoDB , which makes it less suitable for widespread deployment, as well as
being licensed under the GNU Affero General Public license, which is something
to be wary of.

------
richardw
All your (good) answers are belong to us.

Here's the deal: SE sites either work, or don't. When they don't, they bring
in $129 until the owner gets bored. When they do work, SE loses all the extra
revenue they could be making if they owned it. This way, they get every extra
advertising cent. Basically 'we can make more if we keep all the money in-
house'.

------
almakdad
Glad to see my thoughts come true!
[http://malnakari.tumblr.com/post/519276165/stack-exchange-
is...](http://malnakari.tumblr.com/post/519276165/stack-exchange-is-free-a-
hopeful-prediction-comes)

This is the best way to clean up the Q&A and Forums landscape.

------
matrix
I don't understand all the naysaying on here. I think this new plan has a
pretty good chance of growing the business well.

Mind you, I'm a bit unclear exactly what the sources of revenue are. I'm sure
very targeted advertising would be one revenue stream.

------
andrewvc
And why would I put myself through this when I can setup one of the many stack
overflow clones on a VPS right now?

~~~
jwtanner
Because the stack overflow clones aren't exactly finished

[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/stack-
overflow-...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-
clones)

~~~
andrewvc
Perhaps, but its inevitable that they'll improve, and the second they do, no
one will want to subject themselves to this review process.

------
chanux
I see the gates opened up. I walk in. And see some other gates half the way.

------
papachito
Just so you know, I have an open source alternative to stackexchange and we do
free hosting too <http://shapado.com> we also import stackexchange sites
(beta).

~~~
vaksel
i have one of the bigger stack exchange sites...and I'll be moving to Shapado
if Stack Exchange kicks me off. I was already looking into them, since their
rates were almost 3 times cheaper $50/1mm page views vs SEs $129/1mm
pageviews.

If you don't let the admins make money, there is no reason for them to bother
building a community.

~~~
netcan
How would you make money from an SE site?

~~~
vaksel
ads and affiliate links...same way you'd make money from most sites.

------
suckafree
The success of StackOverflow was built on the backs of smart programmers who
don't say anything unless they have something good to say. I've been to a few
of the other StackExchange sites and the communities were not the same. Mostly
the blind leading the blind.

StackExchange 2.0 is a weak attempt at still trying to replicate the
unreplicateable (I know this is probably not a word). It will fail because few
of these "new" sites will not pass muster during the beta phase.

~~~
tptacek
Huh? They built StackOverflow too. From zero. Are you saying there aren't
other communities of with good S/N ratios, or that SX2.0 won't be able to find
them?

~~~
suckafree
I forgot to add the word "community".

It should read: "The success of the StackOverflow community was built on the
backs of smart programmers...

And yes, SX2.0 will have a hard time building the critical mass around
anything other than programming.

------
commieneko
I was hoping this link was Hypercard related...

------
zavulon
I'm really tired of political bias sipping into everything I read on topics
not related to politics. It's such bad business too. Why would you make a
snarky comment risking pissing 50% of your readers off, when you can simply
contain yourself and _stay on subject_ instead?

~~~
telemachos
I looked and looked, and my first thought was "He doesn't like Schoolhouse
Rock? Schoolhouse Rock isn't political."

Then I noticed this from the start of the article, "Like the small-town mayor
who suddenly finds herself running an entire state, our ambitions for Stack
Overflow keep growing."

I have a hard time finding that to be anything but a casual and not very
detailed analogy. Sarah Palin -> lots of ambition::the SO team -> lots of
ambition. How is it snarky? (If anything, he's comparing himself and his team
to Palin, so how snarky could it be.)

You're overanalyzing, I think.

~~~
wwalker3
They also mention running for Vice President of the US, so it's not exactly
subtle.

I just don't see the upside to bringing in such a polarizing political figure.
Regardless of what you think of Sarah Palin, it hits a sour note to find her
in a product pitch.

~~~
jawngee
Get over yourselves, have a laugh once in awhile.

(Unless, of course, you are pro-Palin, but I'm assuming because you are able
to type that you are not).

~~~
axod
I have a really hard time believing anyone on HN is pro-Palin :/ That would
just be bizarre.

~~~
zackattack
I am admittedly pro-palindrome.

