

Stack overflow knockoff for machine learning, NLP, AI, ... - finin
http://metaoptimize.com/qa/

======
bravura
Already the site has its first scoop!

 _Question: What little-known non-convex optimization trick has been used in
most Berkeley NLP papers since 2006?_

 _Answer:_ [http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/14/what-are-the-
state-o...](http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/14/what-are-the-state-of-the-
art-optimization-algorithms-for-problems-with-numerous-local-minima#74)

I am the person that built this site. I wasn't planning on announcing the site
yet, until I disseminated it more widely in academic circles, because I wanted
to establish a core highly technical user-base, but I guess this is fine. The
quality of the users coming from HN has been great.

What people are saying about MetaOptimize Q+A:

Ryan McDonald (Google): "A tool like this will help disseminate and archive
the tricks and best practices that are common in NLP/ML, but are rarely
written about at length in papers."

Aria Haghighi (Berkeley): "Both NLP and ML have a lot of folk wisdom about
what works and what doesn't. A site like this is crucial for facilitating the
sharing and validation of this collective knowledge."

Bob Carpenter (Alias-I): "Par for the course, it’s a mix of wildly general
(non-convex optimization) and reasonably specific (testing a random number
generator) questions." ([http://lingpipe-blog.com/2010/06/29/training-
examples-a-stac...](http://lingpipe-blog.com/2010/06/29/training-examples-a-
stack-overflow-for-nlp-and-ml-and/))

I'm targetting machine learning, natural language processing, vision, AI,
statistics, data mining, neuroscience, etc. and other data-driven fields. As
we've learned from StackOverflow, having a broad topic means that information
cross-polinates between groups that don't normally communicate. This problem
is particularly acute in academia.

It's a site for scientists to share knowledge and techniques, to document our
ideas in an informal online setting, and to discuss details that don't always
make it into publications.

Also, I've gotten a handful of job offers through answering questions on
Quora. So hopefully this will connect people with gigs they like.

Why should you sign up and post a question or answer?

* Communicate with experts

* Crosspolinate information with experts in adjacent fields

* Answer a question once publicly, instead of potentially many times over email

* Share knowledge to create additional impact beyond conference or journal publication

* Find new collaborators

* Get job offers and gigs

The site is powered by OSQA. (<http://osqa.net>) I think it's unfair to the
core developers to call it a StackOverflow knockoff, given that StackOverflow
is---like most software---itself derivative.

~~~
timr
Your email validation links appear to be broken -- I keep getting a 404 when I
click mine.

~~~
bravura
Sorry about that. I will contact the OSQA developers upstream.

The software wasn't designed to work out of a subdir, so we're still ironing
issues out on that front.

[edit: This happens for reasons that neither I nor the core devs understand:
<http://jira.osqa.net/browse/OSQA-204> ]

~~~
a1k0n
Yeah, there's an extra /qa/ in the URL. Removing that works.

~~~
sundarurfriend
Thanks a lot for that info. It worked for me too.

------
fady
Very unfair to call it a knockoff, its waaaay more than that. The OSQA project
is awesome, and rick & heranin (devs) are great guys, and always looking for
more help. My ex-SE site will be using osqa, or is :) , and I will soon make
the final migration soon. If you're local to SF, visit SF Answers! Good job
bravura - debug

~~~
finin
I didn't mean "knockoff" to be disparaging, just that the design and
functionality are very similar.

~~~
fady
ok, thanks for the clarification :)

------
spoiledtechie
Why does it matter if its a knock off or not. If Stackoverflow can't get this
type of deep dive into this community, why can't someone else try. Some times
you just have to take things into your own hands. Its Joel and Jeffs fault for
not opening their code to others like they said they would...

I fully support the decision to make this site especially if its not around
yet.

------
adi92
Awesome! Really excited about this.. Stackoverflow hasn't been that great of a
place to ask ML/IR/NLP questions and expect good answers

Maybe this site will bring together all the ML people and do a better job.

Visually, the site is not that great. The logo is unreadable at first attempt

~~~
thewhitewizzard
I liked the logo, especially the Idea behind it, I think a darker color or
thicker lines in the circles might help though

~~~
ogrisel
Or change your feature extractors :)

------
kevinpet
This is being referred to as a knockoff, I assumed this was actually based on
stack exchange. Can someone clarify?

~~~
klochner
Joel & Jeff are selectively rolling out new StackExchange sites.

The selection process for new sites is community-driven:

<http://area51.stackexchange.com/>

. . . but it looks like a stats site is close to being a reality:

[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-
ana...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis)

~~~
bravura
There are several problems with that approach:

As Chris Manning (Stanford NLP professor) says, Area 51 hasn't gotten any buy-
in from the academic community. I have focused on getting academia to be the
immediate core of the community, so that the quality of Q+A is high. I am able
to do this because of my academic connections.

They are fragmenting the Q+A sites into four:
[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-
ana...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis)
[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-
in...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-intelligence)
[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-
langu...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-language-
processing-and-computational-linguistics-nlp-cl)
[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-
learn...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-learning)

The _last_ thing we need is NLP and ML people communicating _less_. That's why
my site encompasses all of these proposals, as well as adjacent fields. As
we've learned from StackOverflow, having one site for a broad topic leads to
cross-polination of ideas between groups who don't normally communicate.

Most importantly, OSQA (which powers my site) is an open platform, built on
Django+Python. That comes with all the benefits of open software. In
particular, because the site is open-source, I can experiment with adding NLP
to it. I can improve the Related Questions, I can automatically infer tags,
and I can implement techniques for helping you organize and navigate
information.

~~~
ogrisel
"Related Questions": tokenize => random hash/project (tokens) => TD-IDF => KD-
tree lookup

"automatically infer tag": tokenize / shingle q&a, ORDER token+bigrams BY TF-
IDF(token + bigrams)

In both cases a global IDF estimate can be held in memory using a Counting
Bloom Filter (or a traditional solr index).

------
albertzeyer
I tried to register and the verification link from/for the mail gives me a
404.

Edit: Easy to fix. Replace <http://metaoptimize.com/qa/qa/account/validate/>
by <http://metaoptimize.com/qa/account/validate/>

~~~
bravura
Tricky to fix, actually: <http://jira.osqa.net/browse/OSQA-204>

I am getting complaints that validation email links don't work (they have the
subdir twice, as you mentioned), even though welcome email links work just
fine.

This is weird because they both use the exact same link in the template:

forum/skins/default/templates/auth/welcome_email.html: <a style="{{ a_style
}}}" href="{% fullurl auth_validate_email
user=recipient.id,code=validation_code %}">{% trans "Validate my email
address" %}</a>

forum/skins/default/templates/auth/mail_validation.html: <a style="{{ a_style
}}}" href="{% fullurl auth_validate_email
user=recipient.id,code=validation_code %}">{% trans "Validate my email
address" %}</a>

~~~
sundarurfriend
Perhaps you could include instructions to remove the extra "qa/" in the mail
you send? Ugly, but much better than having the validation link 404 in on the
face of new users. I immediately got a bad impression of the site when I saw
the 404.

------
RuadhanMc
Jeff/Joel really buggered up. They did a bit of course direction and ended up
even further off course. Oh well. The platform is important, but having the
skills and personality required to build a bonza community are more important.

------
billpg
Do we have a reasonable measurement of an HN "weekend" now?

