
A Stack Overflow user's reply to Experts Exchange blogpost - sathyabhat
http://blog.williamhilsum.com/2011/02/response-to-experts-exchange-blog-post.html
======
redler
With all the interest currently focused on Q&A sites, Experts Exchange
actually presents an interesting turnaround opportunity. Despite the last few
years of squandering goodwill with their deceptive solution to the
findability/paywall paradox, they are still one of the longtime residents of
the space, and they still have a massive -- albeit creaky -- corpus of
questions and answers. They should hire a strong UX/UI team and do a clean-
sheet redesign: new logo, new zen-like appearance without all the noisy
clutter, logos, UI "junk", fake blurred out answers with "sign up now!", etc.
They should set up a strong information design and analysis team to mine that
huge corpus for opportunities to segment their product into paid and free
components -- and then update the business model to a legitimate "freemium"
approach.

I realize this is all easier said than done, but it does seem like there must
be real value under the barnacles. Every time someone scrolls down past screen
after screen of ads and blurred answers and has their "I see what you did
there" moment, goodwill is squandered and the community impression of
deception and spamminess builds.

------
Tyrannosaurs
Experts Exchange's need to talk about Stack Overflow is a sign of the shifting
dynamic between the two sites and that they feel the need to make it negative
indicates, to me at least, the relative strength of the two sites.

The issue is that EE is having to justify $12.95 a month worth of value over
SO and, as a user of both sites, it seems to me that for a vast majority of
people that value simply doesn't exist. Yes there is a free option but it's so
badly hidden that it's clearly not something they have any real interest in
and feels like it's there purely so they can say it's there. If that's not the
case then then put it next to the various paid options.

Like many companies before them, they've found that their market has changed.
What was previously a salable product is now something that is available for
free (or at least something broadly comparable is available for free).

To be clear I have no issue with EE's right to charge for their service, I
just think it's doomed to failure when the guy down the road doesn't.

There seem to be two options from here:

1) Tough it out and hope that SO doesn't last and that they can keep going
with their existing business model. Suggesting that SO is going to run out of
money sooner or later is fine. Maybe it will, maybe it won't but don't expect
me to pay for your service while they are there and don't charge. That's the
reality EE needs to deal with and if that's their strategy they need to hunker
down and dig deep because it's going to cost them in the short term.

2) Look for a new business model. Either something totally new or at the very
least a tweak to what they're doing now. No idea what it is, if I did I'd
probably be doing it myself, but it seems to me that a new reality demands a
new model and that simply denying that is railing against the dying of the
light.

Maybe there is another choice they can look at but whatever it is, I don't
think bad mouthing the competition is going to cut it.

~~~
pestaa
Bad mouthing actually works sometimes (read the plentyoffish story the other
day?), but I agree it won't succeed in this audience.

Would you think it could compete with SO if EE completely switched gears?
Like, releasing all the content under Creative Commons?

~~~
prewett
One of the things I hated about EE in the brief time I saw it before the
paywall was that it is really, really ugly. And cluttered. It's actually even
worse now... SO, on the other hand is clean and the content is easy to find.
Even if EE stopped being sleazy, my eyes would rather go somewhere pleasant.

(And what's up with the people without eyes? It makes the site feel really
impersonal. A little odd for a forum.)

------
cletus
There are lots of lessons here. Basically EE acted with hubris because they
saw themselves as the only game in town. SO came along and quickly dethroned
them in the programming arena (EE has a somewhat broader base than that).

Charging people for user-generated content is a shortsighted and doomed
business model. What's more it's sleazy. I'm reminded of the whole
CDDB/Gracenote fiasco from years ago.

Chris Dixon wrote a great blog post about this [1].

EE in this context (or the "evil hyphen site" as Joel calls it) is acting as
an extractor. They're simply putting up a barrier and charging a toll.

Compare this to companies like Dropbox and Evernote. These companies provide
pretty amazing services (particularly Dropbox) for free. I've seen many people
say they pay for Dropbox not because they need the space but because they want
to give them money for their amazing services. These companies are builders.

And let's not forget that EE earned a lot of bad will by once being free like
SO and switching to this hideous pseud-paywall monstrosity. Treat your users
like crap and they go elsewhere. Quelle surprise.

[1]: <http://cdixon.org/2010/06/19/builders-and-extractors/>

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
>> the "evil hyphen site" as Joel calls it.

Was there a reason that they stopped calling it the sex change site? I know
that the put the hyphen in there but it was still funny.

~~~
sachinag
One would hope because that was juvenile and completely unnecessary.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
They go hand in hand with a lot of funny things though and has rarely stopped
people.

Maybe it just got tired and having only heard it a few times I'm not there
yet.

~~~
taylorbuley
Years later I can still get a giggle or two out of WhoRepresents.com

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I liked powergenitalia, the Italian power generation company.

------
SeanDav
I used to just ignore any Experts Exchange items in search results, although
since discovering the ability to scroll down for the answer I do now find EE
worthwhile. However I feel far, far more fond of StackOverflow and wish them
continued success.

------
niyazpk
The reply from Brutus Lyon[1] does not even warrant a response because
everything about it feels wrong. Anyway here goes:

 _> > EE has always had a free registration at <https://secure.experts-
exchange.com/registerExpert.jsp> . That people choose to not use it isn't EE's
fault._

Your fault is hiding the link from users and sending them to
[https://secure.experts-
exchange.com/register.jsp?rsid=60&...](https://secure.experts-
exchange.com/register.jsp?rsid=60&redirectURL=/) when clicking on the sign-up
page. This kind of behavior is extremely offensive and hostile especially
considering the fact that your users are from a demographic who can easily see
through your BS.

 _> > EE's record, the last I saw, was seven SECONDS. I've seen at least a
dozen under 20 seconds. Sometimes you get lucky._

With StackOverflow, I always get lucky. With EE, I _have_ to get lucky to get
a good answer (or even to see the answer behind all your paywall and ads).

 _> > You think voting helps you get the right answer; I think it's arrogant
and rude that someone else tells you what works best for you._

WHAT? You ask a question because you want help and don't know what works for
you. How is answering that question arrogant and rude? (Voting is also an
special type of answering mechanism).

Sometimes the most voted answer may not solve your problem, but tell you that
what you are trying to do is wrong. I think votes let you know which of the
solutions to consider before trying out any of the solutions.

 _> > You think "everything should be free"; I think you charge for your
services, and EE has every right to charge for its._

Except that you charge for the content your users created not knowing in
advance that you guys will make it a closed system.

 _> > EE is successful because it only promises what it can provide, and keeps
that promise._

EE _was_ successful. You are not growing and will go down soon if you continue
with your attitude: <http://i.imgur.com/Vm1on.png>

And what promise do you keep? I didn't know that providing different content
to Google and to your visitors is your way of keeping promises.

 _> > When the $5 million in VC money runs out, then SO will have to get money
from someone -- which means ads or a paywall._

All of SO content is in CC license. If they go rogue, the community will just
create a new website with the same content.

Basically all this boils down to what kind of people run the site. I am sorry
that the people behind EE cannot see the future.

[1] [http://blog.williamhilsum.com/2011/02/response-to-experts-
ex...](http://blog.williamhilsum.com/2011/02/response-to-experts-exchange-
blog-post.html?showComment=1297831818465#c2487540992635813811)

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
>> >> You think voting helps you get the right answer; I think it's arrogant
and rude that someone else tells you what works best for you.

>> WHAT? You ask a question because you want help and don't know what works
for you. How is answering that question arrogant and rude? (Voting is also an
special type of answering mechanism).

>> Sometimes the most voted answer may not solve your problem, but tell you
that what you are trying to do is wrong. I think the votes let you know which
of the solutions to consider before trying out any of the solutions.

Yep, sometimes people up vote things which miss the point of questions (as
originally intended) but generally they don't and even when they do (a) the
information therein is interesting and useful and (b) the answer is probably
of interest to anyone else with a similar problem who might want more than a
single opinion on how to handle things.

Surely a fundamental part of these sites is that the person originally asking
the question is only one potential user of the answers and others will look at
the information after them? The advantage of SO is that it allows you to see
two things (1) what did the original questioner think most useful and (2) what
does the community think is the best solution to the problem.

The original asker is coming from a real world problem / solution perspective
which is great but may have specific reasons for accepting an answer which are
not stated in the question and are therefore unclear to me. On the other hand
the community judges on only what's there and because it's the voice of many
is less likely to be skewed by single specific factors.

But ultimately as someone reading the question after the event both of these
are useful to me.

Worst case scenario is you have to review two answers not one - the highest
voted answer and the accepted answer. To me that's a very small price which is
almost always rewarded with better information so I'm very happy with it.

As for thinking that others voting (essentially contributing their time and
experience to read an answer, check it against their knowledge and experience
and say "I think this is a great point which is worth reading") is rude and
arrogant then possibly he should extend that view to those who are so rude and
arrogant as to think they could possibly answer your question. They're both
contributions to helping people solve their problem as quickly and well as
possible and are basically the same thing.

~~~
mkr-hn
"Yep, sometimes people up vote things which miss the point of questions (as
originally intended) but generally they don't and even when they do (a) the
information therein is interesting and useful and (b) the answer is probably
of interest to anyone else with a similar problem who might want more than a
single opinion on how to handle things."

\---

I learn a lot on SO from reading responses that don't answer the question.

If I see "How do I do x?," I'm quite happy that someone answered, but I'll get
a lot out of that page long discussion on performance implications and
alternatives.

------
Tyrannosaurs
The one valid point in the original EE blogpost for me is what is the SO/SE
business model.

I'm assuming that there is one, I don't believe Joel and Jeff are stupid, it's
just not clear to me what it is.

~~~
ivoflipse
That's where we have Meta.SO for @Tyrannosaurs:

<http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/79435/130099>

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Doh, should have thought to look.

Interesting, though not 100% convincing for me. EE is riddled with ads and yet
clearly see the need to charge as well. SE and SO both benefit from the
ability to target ads really well but programmers in particular are notorious
for not clicking which will offset that for the core three sites at least.

In terms of the careers and CV model, it works fine for SO / SF but the rest
of SE contributes nothing in that area which begs the question how do they
support themselves (just low key ads?) and if they don't then aren't they just
an overhead? Or are they deemed to basically be a very cheap by-product of the
existing SO technology? In which case they don't really need to bring in much,
just enough to cover hosting and ad sales so maybe that's the answer.

But I'm still thinking that there has to be something more.

That said the point about the home workers basically being cheaper is well
made - there are two ways to be profitable - high revenues or low costs.

------
fizz972
Experts Exchange was the first site to come into my mind when I first heard
about Google's Personal Blocker.

~~~
daemin
I was actually thinking of efreedom and the other StackOverflow clones that
sometimes appeared ahead of StackOverflow.

------
wilhil
(Comment I wrote on my blog)...

Just got an anonymous email - no idea if anyone can verify the truth behind
it...

<http://i.imgur.com/BDuMM.png>

"here is no such person as Brutus Lyon, it is Jenn Prentice from Experts
Exchange. She always does shit like this under aliases."

I assumed Brutus was working or staff from EE, I don't see why a fake name is
needed or the reason behind it / how it changes anything.

------
pestaa
You know guys, I love Stack Overflow. It's always been an enormous help
whenever I had a question that someone had an answer for.

But because I earned more than 1.500 reputation scores (
<http://stackoverflow.com/users/69424/pestaa> ), I feel I have the right to
say, the atmosphere does not just feel right as the author states.

Here's how I feel (see the comments):

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4131707/mysql-i-have-
two-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4131707/mysql-i-have-two-large-
fields-which-when-records-are-looped-and-displayed-make/4131753#4131753)

If someone's astounded by seeing a sensible answer on SO, something's wrong.

Hacker News works so much better by putting far less emphasis on karma, and
that's why I decided to contribute to HN, and not SO anymore.

~~~
wilhil
One person out of almost half a million, I am sure it was in jest, anyway, you
were up voted the most showing that anyone coming to that topic will see that
you have the best answer. It obviously, in that specific example, is just not
what the asker was wanting.

Come back to SO! :)

~~~
pestaa
This person has 13k rep, my hunch is he saw at least a fair amount of corners
of SO.

But bringing up that specific page was not the basis of my generalization. It
was rather a direct case to my observation. It felt like racing, and not fun.

I'll definitely improve the stuff I find useful on SO, but I won't hunt
unanswered questions anymore.

------
mcantor
What I want to know is, did Lyon make that post because he has actually
deluded himself into thinking that EE is still relevant, or because he thought
someone would actually be oblivious enough to read it and stop using
StackExchange?

I'm not sure which one reflects more poorly on him.

------
yalogin
I don't understand why ExpertsExchange is still in business. How can a Q&A
site live by asking for a credit card?

------
fedd
simple questions are already answered (most of them on S.O.). unfortunately i
used to ask questions that has no answer so i just almost stopped asking them.

------
rick888
when did people start using the word "Whilst"? This guy's obviously not
British...

~~~
wilhil
I am British! It is the first thing that came to mind - I think I use both in
every day talk... Read the tag line on my blog! "Maybe not the best grammar or
writing style... but will try to get my point across!"

Oh well, I hope you still liked the blog post even if you don't like my
language usage! :)

~~~
rick888
I liked the post!

I just started noticing more and more Americans using it in blog posts and I
wasn't sure when this trend started.

------
GrandMasterBirt
Dude, I still don't see why such a response is even needed.

a) EE is the reason people wanted to block sites from google results.

b) EE never has useful info even if you scroll down

conclusion: IDK how EE even made money to begin with. I guess on the suckers.
Because I feel that if I sign up I am throwing my money away since nobody is
else who I want answers from is dumb enough to sign up.

Furthermore, seeing as how forums are Q&A places as well, and sites scrub
forums like mad to "generate content" I have zero proof that EE is in any way
genuine content.

------
dools
I find it astounding the level to which people _hate_ Experts Exchange.
Calling them "sleazy" and "slimeballs". Where does all this vitriole come
from?

Are you all feeling so entitled that anytime someone wants to charge you for
something your automatic reaction is hatred?

Here's the problem that EE solved (a long time ago): "How can I create a Q&A
site that runs on a subscription, not an ad supported, model?". The obvious
dilemma being that the content needs to be indexed by search engines which
necessitates giving it away for free, but when people come into the site you
want them to pay for the service.

The solution of having people scroll to the bottom of the page isn't
deceptive, it's just an imperfect solution to making people pay to use your
site. The fact that you can get the answers for free at all is the anomaly -
you're not supposed to be able to!

There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to charge for anything. If it
works, it works, if it doesn't work, your business fails. EE aren't breaking
any laws, hell they aren't even breaking any _guidelines_. If you don't like
it, you don't continue, there's a free trial.

This isn't spam, it's not hurting or hoodwinking or deceiving anyone! This is
just a paid service, get over it.

When Mark Bao created a viral marketing campaign to collect a few hundred
thousand email addresses and then sell them at private auction everyone here
heaped praise on him like he split the atom. Experts Exchange is just running
a business and charging a price. If their business sucks then it will die -
admittedly there is a hell of a lot of inertia there now because they've been
going for so long but WHATEVER! You can't just call people sleazy slimeballs
because they're charging for a service rather than giving it away.

Oh and for all you folks saying they don't promote their free signup page
enough, look at the fine print below the pricing on this page:

<http://highrisehq.com/signup>

What a sanctimonious and judgmental crowd we have here at HN!

~~~
wilhil
The whole point is, they used to be good, it used to serve a purpose... when
they have answers low down or tried to hide all together, they were
effectively spamming Google and forcing people to sign up /pay for an answer.

It served a purpose in its time, but SO simply does it better now and EE
haven't moved on in years.

And as an "expert" I would rather contribute to a free to ask site helping the
public.

~~~
dools
I disagree with that definition of spam, it's more like "freemium". Pay for
the convenience of not having to scroll to the bottom of the page? Or simply
pay for the answer if you want it and you don't know about the scrolling thing
- it's their right to charge for content. All they're doing is advertising
that they _have_ the answer and trying to make sure as many people as possible
pay to find out what that answer is, because that's their business model.

It's fine if they're irrelevant, it's fine if you'd prefer to be part of a
stack exchange community, it's fine if you block them in Google or only search
"site:stackoverflow.com how to shot codez" so you never have to look at them
again - but the scathing retorts treating these people as valueless carrion
who don't even deserve to be on the internet is completely unwarranted!

Really, what I object most to is that people are attacking the characters of
those involved and calling them slimy and sleazy because they chose a
subscription based business model for their Q&A site. A valid decision that
has obviously worked.

It's not like they're Jamster ringtone club tricking kids into spending
thousands on their phone bills to get an animated crazy frog singing the most
insipid song ever created, they're just providing a service and trying to get
money in return.

