

Did StackOverFlow just lose it to MetaOptimize? And is it good or bad? - bravura
http://www.r-statistics.com/2010/07/statistical-analysis-qa-website-did-stackoverflow-just-lose-it-to-metaoptimize-and-is-it-good-or-bad/

======
bravura
The main reason I launched my Q+A site is because, if Area 51 had their
druthers, they would have fragmented the community into five niches:

machine learning ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-
learn...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-learning))

NLP ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-
langu...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-language-
processing-and-computational-linguistics-nlp-cl))

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

data mining (<http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4229/data-mining>)

AI ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-
in...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-
intelligence))

This niching is completely wrongheaded. As I wrote in a comment on this blog
post, the last thing we need is for ML people, NLP practitioners, and
statisticians to communicate less. _The fact that these groups attend
different conferences is a BUG not a feature._ My site was designed so that
these adjacent fields can crosspolinate information.

As we’ve learned from StackOverflow, it’s better to pick a broad topic and
have a lot of experts in one place, communicating and helping with each
other’s problems.

~~~
spolsky
I don't think that it's a foregone conclusion that Area51 generates niche
sites, just because it generates niche site _proposals_. I for one believe
that it's the big blockbuster stackoverflow-size sites that will actually make
it to the end of the Area 51 process and will actually get created.

And, if I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet against StackOverflow's monthly 7
million users. In fact I would be betting on the statistics Stack Exchange
site launching in the next couple of weeks and getting critical mass very very
quickly.

~~~
blasdel
Not without an existing community to build off of you won't. You'll fail
miserably. The people in the Area51 proposals are generally meeting there for
the first time — they didn't know each other already.

MetaOptimize is building on top of an existing well-targeted community like
MathOverflow did. Really, just like you did originally with your and Jeff's
blog communities. AskMetafilter is successful because it was an outlet for an
existing community — it wasn't attempt to start a new one.

Area51 is scavenging small clumps of people that happen to overlap with your
existing main sites. That your sites are so QA-focused makes it very difficult
for an actual community to grow within it — there's no outlet for chat and
friend-making, for fucks sake even your moderation site is the same QA format!
At least you've integrated it a bit more so that Meta isn't a completely
separate community with it's own account system…

~~~
TalGalili
I also wonder when will they incorporate more "social network" features into
SO. I feel how it is needed...

------
naner
> I do believe that the stackoverflow people have (much) more experience in
> handling such websites then Joseph. I can very easily trust them to do
> regular database backups

Except, you know, for that time when the stack overflow guys lost everything
on their blog due to "catastrophic data loss" and also subsequently found out
that their backups were toast, too. :P

I kid, I kid...

Just use the site that is currently operational, this isn't really a life-
altering decision. (Right now I am agonizing if I should submit this comment
to hacker news or reddit.)

EDIT: On an unrelated note, my IP appears to be banned from StackOverflow.com.
I have never used/abused the site (I don't even have an account there) outside
of browsing a few times. It has been banned for at least half a year. Very
annoying. Even the big guys get stuff wrong sometimes.

~~~
replrepl
I believe the data loss was on Jeff Atwood's personal blog codinghorror.com,
not Stack Overflow, and it was due to outsourcing the hosting/backup to an
(incompetent) third party.

~~~
AgentConundrum
It wasn't just Coding Horror that got hit. The StackOverflow blog was also
gone for days. StackOverflow (meaning the QA site itself) wasn't affected.

Also, the point still stands that Jeff should have had his own backups as
well, rather than assuming his provider had it properly covered.

Part of a good backup strategy is testing recovery which is apparently nobody
associated with StackOverflow had bothered to try before that incident.

------
petercooper
Having listened to Joel and Jeff go on about the new StackOverflow ideas on
their podcast, as well as in blog posts, it seems they're being utopian with
the whole "people don't care about money or control, they just want to help"
bit.

Running your own site and having control over how it works is important for a
lot of people. If it weren't, geeks wouldn't self host WordPress for their
personal blogs - they'd use Blogger or WordPress.com.

I'm glad that pg developed HN as a new, separate thing instead of rolling it
out on Ning or whatever system was flavor of the day 1300 days ago. Likewise,
it seems good that _someone_ has a deep enough passion to set up MetaOptimize
as a separate site, because they might actually bother to keep it up to date
whereas SO might become the next Ning or Blogger over time.

No matter how bouncy SO's castle may be, true geeks like to build their own
castles, even if they're not quite as shiny.

------
code_duck
I'd be rather offended if I designed Stack Overflow. I've had my work
carefully copied in the past, and even aside from the economics, it's not a
good feeling.

This site needs to step back and decide which of the design decisions they
made were because "we're duplicating stack overflow" and which are simply the
straightforward way to accomplish whatever. It has the exact same layout, the
same format, the visual similarity. Even the footer. Come on... at least
design your own footer.

~~~
TalGalili
I get what you are saying. I do wonder if they ever responded to that...

------
billstr
probably not given that MetaOptimze has a whopping 300 users, submitting 59
questions and 129 answers.

~~~
bravura
Which is just slightly shy of the 360 that are "committed" to the statistical
analysis Area 51 site:
[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-
ana...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis)

and is far more than 69 for AI
([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-
in...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-
intelligence)), 40 for ML
([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-
learn...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7607/machine-learning)),
16 for NLP ([http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-
langu...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2761/natural-language-
processing-and-computational-linguistics-nlp-cl)), 5 for data mining
(<http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4229/data-mining>).

(The original blog author means Area 51, not StackOverflow per se.)

~~~
michael_dorfman
And this is the crux of the biscuit.

A large measure of StackOverflow's success-- perhaps the most significant
factor-- was the immediate traction that came from readers of Joel and Jeff's
blogs. SO had a ready-made audience, due to the notability of its sponsors.

It's not at all clear to me that this is scalable via the Area51 model.

Clearly, it takes more than 360 people to make a site successful. The question
is: who is in the best position to attract the attention of the prospective
users quickly and effectively? Time will tell, I suppose.

~~~
_debug_
I think you are mixing up the fact that IT has a large userbase, while ML,
NLP, etc; are more niche (relatively speaking). 360 users IS immediate
traction for this area.

> Clearly, it takes more than 360 people to make a site successful.

Successful for it's founders, yes. But for me, the reader, I'm quite happy to
have only the few thousand most-active researchers and professors and their
students of Machine Learning, NLP, etc; post on metaoptimize.com. Otherwise, I
might as well go to Yahoo Answers for generic, watered-down responses.

~~~
robryan
Yeah, I dunno if this area is pretty going to be successful for the SO guys,
it makes a lot more sense for the community to run their own not for profit
system.

One of the problems with the area51 process is that most of the people
participating are from the current SO sites, meaning that it is always going
to be very biased towards tech based setups without looking at what could also
be mainstream successful.

------
bravura
UPDATE: After email exchanges with me, Tal (the author of the post) updated it
to include a more balanced discussion, and posted some quotes by me explaining
my side.

------
ck2
r-statistics.com needs to turn their text to black.

There is zero contrast with light grey text on white!

~~~
TalGalili
Thanks, you are the first to note me to that. I fixed it (hit SHIFT+refresh if
you don't see the update).

~~~
aw3c2
Please also do not overlay a grey "JavaScript for Mobile Safari is currently
turned off" layer that you cannot remove without Javascript. The site seems to
render readable in the background. I am using Opera and only enable Javascript
if necessary for crucial things.

~~~
TalGalili
I am not sure how to do that. I'll look into it in the near future. Thanks
again!

------
Aaronontheweb
Probably not given that precious, precious StackOverFlow karma is
nontransferable :p

~~~
jasonlotito
I know it's not on-topic, but karma and SO's structure and design makes SO the
PHP of help sites.

Make of that what you will.

~~~
mattmanser
c'mon dude, SO is pretty amazing. Poor answers are usually pushed to the
bottom (though I have seen a fair few basic questions on SO with odd answers
that no-one's bothered correcting).

The equivalent of php is dodgy bulletin boards that still doggedly come top of
some google searches. And boy do a lot of them have the entirely wrong
solution.

I'm starting to get to the point now where I ask SO first and then google,
apart from Html questions.

~~~
duck
You can ask <http://www.duckduckgo.com> first now and get the best of both
IMHO, since it started to integrate SO answers into its zero-click area.

