

Answers.OnStartups.com -- StackOverflow for startups - smartbear
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/10724/Answers-OnStartups-Community-Q-A-For-Startup-Entrepreneurs.aspx

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davidw
Ugh, that site makes me recall why I found stack overflow so annoying until
you get a few points.

"Dave, I'm sorry, I can't let you (upvote|comment|put links in answers|do much
of anything)"

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, uh... there is a price admission. To get something you've got to give
something.

Considering stackoverflow provides tremendous resources once you get a few
points AND it is not _that hard_ to get the points, stackoverflow seems like
far less of a pain than expertexchange or the various link-popup-polluted
archives.

It's kind of a way out of the whole total-leaching thing. I'd imagine the hn
news community would be excited.

~~~
allenbrunson
i don't think that's the whole story.

there is a question/answer thread on stackoverflow that revolves around a post
i made on my blog. seeing that the answers weren't reflecting as much as i
personally know about the subject, i figured out how to log in to stack
overflow. then i discovered i didn't have enough karma or whatever to leave a
comment. i don't care enough to stick around however long it would take to get
however much karma it would take to do that. so, too bad stackoverflow users,
you're not getting the benefit of my knowledge.

~~~
joe_the_user
SO isn't oriented around debate but around solving specific problems. I've
asked many questions whose answers I needed. I've often gotten answers but not
always. In this sense, "threads" or debates on some external issue are already
a fail for SO's intent. I'm sure they're there but they're the exception.

Also - it takes 0 karma to answer a question and you get unlimited space. It
takes 50 karma to leave a comment and you get about 200 words. If you've got
lots of knowledge, you should have answered the question rather than tried to
leave a comment on someone else's answer.

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sachinag
Is this essentially the Ask MeFi for HN? I'm confused.

~~~
abossy
I can see his motivation for this -- I was thinking of this exact idea today.
There are simply so many rudimentary questions new entrepreneurs ask that can
be easily answered. Two examples that I've recently sought answers for are
"how do I negotiate for domain names," and "how do I set up a credit card
payments system on my website." These are two of many, many more.

I've been a reader of HN since the beginning and have found it an invaluable
question/answer database. All my questions have likely been answered before
(I've found some really obscure stuff!).

Most queries can be answered by searchyc.com or a Google search prepended with
"site:news.ycombinator.com." It'd be nice to have unfiltered access to
entrepreneurial questions, ranging from the broad to the very obscure.

StackOverflow works beautifully, IMO, and I hope this blossoms into an
excellent complement to HN.

~~~
ahoyhere
Hey. Regarding the "how do I set up a credit card payments system", you might
like this free little ebook I put together when I was going through that
particular hell:

<http://jumpstartcc.com>

~~~
sachinag
That's actually a pretty wonderful e-book. I would change "credit card
processor" to "payment gateway" in the subhed on page 14 to match the language
throughout the rest of the book. Also, why no love for PayPal's Payflow Pro as
a small business gateway?

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kpanghmc
Am I the only one who's getting sick of the StackExchange sites? I like
StackOverflow, but all of the StackExchange sites fall right into the uncanny
valley for me.

~~~
davidw
Uncanny valley? What's that got to do with these sites?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley>

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vaksel
i was gonna register, until I saw that you only take openid.

~~~
justlearning
I am genuinely curious - why are you (and some others) against openid? (apart
from the trust factor)

~~~
zaidf
It is a pain to use and understand, even for a techie like me.

When it works, it's magic. And often I don't mind--especially since facebook's
implementation of it.

When it doesn't work, I've no freakin idea what is going on. And it _really_
makes me miss the plain ol login/pass.

~~~
justlearning
i can relate to that - with logging with openid here in HN. I had to post an
"ask hn" to catch attention of pg - who resolved it. I couldn't make head or
tail of what was happening and strongly assumed that clickpass was at fault.
Then pg said he had to fix some code.

~~~
mcav
Oh. I, too, had an issue logging in with OpenID here. I finally gave in and
reset my password so I could log in with that.

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proee
Does anyone know what license is used for the stackoverflow code and where/if
it's currently available? From reading the article is sounds like Jeff and
company are making the software available to the public in some form. I'd
really like to learn more about this.

~~~
terpua
<http://stackexchange.com/>

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jlees
I think this is the third such site I've seen this week. Guess there's a need!

~~~
petercooper
That remains to be seen. I've seen quite a few systems come out over the years
- MetaFilter clones and open source Reddit, to name just two - where a lot of
new sites are created but then fail to thrive. A year or two later, hardly any
exist anymore even though the original site is still doing fine. Technology
isn't community, long term.

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whirlycott1
dharmesh++

