Friday, July 24, 2009

The Stack Overflow Knowledge Exchange Platform

Here's all you really need to know about StackExchange:

"With StackExchange, you can run a site with all the same features that made Stack Overflow successful."
StackExchange is coming September 1. Pricing starts with a 45 day free trial, then $129 per month for 1,000,000 page views per month on a shared server, more $$ for more page views, and even more $$$$ if you want to host the server yourself... but the prices aren't stupidly high, not like, say, Oracle.

The StackExchange Beta is coming soon, you can sign up here... I have, maybe I'll set up a SQL Anywhere Overflow site!

5 comments:

Jason said...

I was wondering what you see as a benefit to running a technology product focused version of stack overflow, instead of just using the existing free stack overflow site. One of the big benefits I see of stack overflow is the fact that you get a wide cross-section of experts who can view questions. Wouldn't that benefit be lost for a product specific site?

Breck Carter said...

Graeme Perrow's review pretty much says it all, at
http://www.cutthechatter.com/2008/10/review-stackoverflow.html

The basic issue is that civility and respect are often lacking on StackOverflow. With a separate site the polite tone we've all become used to on the NNTP newsgroups could be enforced... the first step would be write our own FAQ.

Jason said...

But if you have a 'real' moderator to enforce civility, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the ratings and reputation system, which seems to be one of the key features of the site? If so, why not just use a standard web forums type of interface instead?

Anonymous said...

Breck, I would suggest to start another attempt to discuss the "Moving to SO / SX" topic in the SA general newsgroups.
I know there was no discussion at all the last time you tried but I still feel that the importance of such a change would need discussion (especially from the iAnywhere staff's point of view.

Regards
Volker

P.S. My *personal NNTP experience* has improved largely by moving from Outlook Express to Thunderbird:)

Justin Willey said...

Hi

Something along these lines would be a great improvement. I don't know if it just me, but the availability of the NNTP groups seems to have taken a dive recently - as well as the other issues you have highlighted before.

I think the main advantages of the SO approach are the clarity of the interface and the tagging mechanism rather than the voting stuff. I'm sure that a dedicated product version is preferable, apart from anything else it would make it easy to retain the friendly / helpful of the newsgroups and avoid the sometimes rude / dismissive attitude of a proportion of the SO posters.

PS thanks Volker for the TBird tip - definitely an improvement.