
StackOverflow for private teams in beta - davnicwil
https://stackoverflow.com/channels
======
captainmuon
This would be great for CERN. We do a lot of software development, but most of
it is very bespoke, and you are often not going to get an answer on
stackoverflow. Also there are confidentially requirements (it would be great
if you could tag a post e.g. ATLAS-internal, CMS-internal, and then only
people from your experiment could see that post). We probably have tens of
thousands of members, so I think we have the critical size needed for such a
project. Finally, I can see it not only used for programming, but also for
physics, statistics, analysis questions in general.

Currently, we are mostly using old school mailing lists, and it can be hard to
find some information you are looking for.

I would sign up, and prod our computing department to check this, but I'm
quitting next week :-(.

~~~
enriquto
I don't understand... why would you want to keep your discussions private to
each experiment? Certainly people from other experiments or from other
research groups could have very similar interests.

Moreover, CERN is funded by the taxes of us european citizens. Does this
research really need to be kept secret?

~~~
aaukt
They have a pretty strict rule about not talking to other experiments to avoid
confirmation bias, because in the end they want to verify each other.

~~~
enriquto
Ok, this makes sense then.

The part about "maximizing your glory" is a bit... tiring.

------
dustinmoris
This could be really useful, however I wonder how teams will find answers to
their questions without a private Google channel :)

I don't know anyone who actually finds the answer via SO search.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
That, and one gets usually chastised when not finding a duplicate via this
search box.

I always check Google results, then look at the yellow suggestions box for
earlier posts and sometimes end up with a duplicate (rarely but still).

This usually ends up with a "closed as duplicate" (which is fine) but also
sometimes end up with cynical, passive aggressive remarks on Meta.

I love SO (and SE in general). It helped me to understand and discover things
I was not aware of.

But Meta is an abomination, full of people with ego issues and heavy
complexes. I abhor this community, which is a shame as I stopped to file bugs
in SO just because of the toxic environnement there.

------
CameronBanga
Really not a fan of the "free for now, we'll give you an idea of pricing in
the future". I understand that the team at StackOverflow probably doesn't have
an idea on pricing, but it makes it extremely difficult to jump on and try the
product.

I guess in that situation, our team should just wait until it's out and
public. But a lot of these "free betas" go on for months or even years. I know
this isn't always the case, but it almost feels like at times, the goal is to
get users dependent on the product before telling them how much you're going
to take/charge.

~~~
cheath
PM on Channels here.

I see what you're saying. The honest answer is that we just really need to
focus on making sure the product works well before anything else.

I really can't speak with confidence about pricing, because we still need to
do discovery on what will work best. But what I do know is that it'll likely
continue to be free for many people with some premium features that people can
pay for if they want.

And if not, the data you create is yours and you can export it and bail!

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Thank you. But when you say 'export it and bail', what do you mean? Is it
exportable in a way I can fire it into something else? Is there a definition
of 'exportable'?

------
azhenley
This has already existed in the form of Stack Overflow Enterprise [1]. One
major difference is that the company I was at managed and maintained their
instance of Stack Overflow (it involved a lot of work). I wonder what else is
different (or maybe this is just a replacement for Enterprise?)

[1]
[https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/enterprise](https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/enterprise)

~~~
davnicwil
When was this launched?

~~~
azhenley
It has been around since at least 2010 [1], and there was a more official
release in mid 2013 [2].

[1]
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/69436/169404](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/69436/169404)

[2]
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/197549/169404](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/197549/169404)

------
borispavlovic
There's a viable privately hosted alternative with Atlassian's "Questions for
Confluence"
([https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/questions](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/questions))

~~~
jiaweihli
I looked into this briefly in the past, but it didn't seem viable.

Reviews complain about bugginess and pricing:
[https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.conf...](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.confluence-
questions/cloud/reviews)

And active development stopped in early 2016:
[https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.conf...](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.confluence-
questions/versions)

------
riquito
I'm not convinced by the free beta. I cannot ask my team members to start
using it and add knowledge into this system with the risk that we'll have to
migrate everything back once the costs are announced (and we'd loose time (=
money) in the process).

------
davnicwil
I had a side project which was basically this (at least this was my [company]
for [x] summary of the project) a couple of years ago. I always wondered why
StackOverflow weren't doing it, and after years of wondering this I just built
it myself.

I tried to publicise it a bit (not a lot, in fairness) and didn't generate
much buzz. I even speculatively applied to YC with it, with the beta written
and running, and got no call for an interview even. After that I lost
enthusiasm for the idea, and moved on to other things. Seeing this has
reminded me of it.

What do people think of this? Useful product? Would you pay for it?

~~~
siegecraft
It's a useful product. I'm actually surprised that the state of Stack Overflow
clones isn't better. Although much of the value of SO comes from its knowledge
base, the UI and organization and administration is nice to have pre-built.
When I was looking around the top choices among open source/free were askbot
([https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel](https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-
devel)) and osqa
([https://github.com/dzone/osqa](https://github.com/dzone/osqa)). There was
also a plug-in for Confluence (Questions) and Answerhub (seemed to be the
pro/paid version of OSQA). But none of them were as nice as stack overflow,
which was surprising to me.

------
kensai
Sounds like... "Slack Overflow" :D

(which is actually a good thing, I wish there was a hosting service with their
combined strengths)

------
gepoch
Had a team running on Askbot [1] for a few years, but nowadays we've been
running on Questions for Confluence. I feel like most Atlassian shops will
probably default to that route.

[1] [https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel](https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-
devel)

------
laythea
Stack overflow may offer lots of fancy features, but, in my opinion, the
essence of what they do should be easily achievable by any competent group of
engineers. Genuine question - I don't get it, what does this bring to the
table? A voting system?

~~~
jfriend
Microsoft built several of these Q&A systems that are "easily achievable by
any competent group of engineers". They never really took off until they got
Stack Overflow Enterprise. So, I guess it isn't really that easy.

Note: I'm a former Microsoft PM and currently a Stack Overflow PM. My POV
comes with bias.

------
sklegg
Can this do what SharePoint and private wikis can't? My team has tried both
with varying degrees of success. In my experience it's always just "easier"
for people to pester those who should know the answers.

~~~
brianwawok
Of course. You need to teach this with culture.

Come over and ask me something I know is in the wikki? Let's sit down and
search the wikki together. No match? Then let's type up a result together and
enter it for future use.

You can't fix a bad process with a magic app, but a magic app can help a
process work much better.

~~~
pishpash
How many people are that conscientious?

~~~
brianwawok
The people that would want a wiki program to work?

It only takes a few to start a culture.

------
Hernanpm
My team uses [http://flarum.org/](http://flarum.org/) for the same purpose we
even added a slack notification plugin when new questions are added.

~~~
lloydde
What were some of your deciding factors? Does that forum software have modules
or configurations that make it effective as a Q&A focused site? How does
Flarum compare to say Discourse?

------
ecshafer
My company uses haydle, which is basically the same thing and works very well.

------
Savageman
Does it include the "Documentation (beta)" feature?

