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The closing paragraph: Spolsky says that the easiest way he's heard people explain the difference between Stack Overflow and old fashioned forums is that when

The closing paragraph: Spolsky says that the easiest way he's heard people explain the difference between Stack Overflow and old fashioned forums is that when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page. That's a charming way to put it and it's sure to be interesting to see the team that's assembled take a shot at building that kind of experience around other kinds of topics. Now THAT is an elevator pitch: Stack Overflow is just like old fashioned forums, only when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page.

melling 17y ago
That's correct. And the iPad is just a tablet notebook like the one from Microsoft in 2000. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13tabletpc.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13... And the iPhone is really just a cleaned up smart phone. StackOverFlow took an old idea, cleaned it up and made a better product. Seems pretty simple after the fact. Getting the small things right in a product really makes a big difference. StackOverFlow isn't perfect (and neither was the iPhone or iPad) but they got a good minimal viable product and now they're off to the races.
- klochner 17y ago
  I'm all for Ries, Blanks, lean, mvp, etc. etc., but all the lean jargon is getting overused and abused.
pak 17y ago
It's not always at the top, though. Call it the reddit effect: sometimes the top-voted item is not the one that is the most informative, relevant or correct, but the one that appears so by virtue of being well written, backed by someone with sufficient karma, and clever enough to get upvotes. The asker may then mistakenly pick this as the accepted answer and the better but less hive-mind-friendly answers get pushed away. When skimming the site I've occasionally seen better answers at the bottom of a page getting ignored while people shout about the top few answers. If I didn't know better, I would have ignored them too.
- cruise02 17y ago
  This happens a lot less on Stack Overflow than on reddit. The asker isn't supposed to accept the most popular answer, either. They're asking a question because they have a problem to solve. They should be testing solutions and accepting the one that works. I often see accepted answers with fewer upvotes than the most popular ones. The fact that both the most popular and the accepted answer are at the top of the screen is a nice feature of the site.
  - pak 17y ago
    The asker may be testing out some of the answers, but in reality most of the problems to be solved during software development are about balancing tradeoffs, e.g. security vs. performance. The reason the best solution is the best may not become apparent for years, when the project needs to scale, changes hands, needs to upgrade, gets hacked, etc. In such a case, how is the asker, lacking such experience, able to pick out the right answer except by number of upvotes? Same goes for anybody reading the page. I'm just saying a popularity-driven Q&A site has its drawbacks.
    - cruise02 17y ago
      You're assuming that both the asker and the crowd are incompetent. No kind of Q&A site is going to produce good results under those conditions.
      - pak 17y ago
        I'm not assuming that. I'm suggesting that certain answers may become more popular and rise to the top for reasons that have nothing to do with correctness. These include but are not limited to: the style in which the answer is written, the assertiveness/aggressiveness of the answer, the decision to include or not include sample code, the karma or reputation of the answerer, and the current vote count and visibility of the answer. I think it is safe to assume that there is a gradient in experience among SO users and that for those on the lower end, votes may be more influenced by the issues I just listed than any standard of correctness. It's simple crowd psychology, and already well established at other voting sites like digg and reddit.
jasonlotito 17y ago
Stack Overflow is about instant gratification. This isn't a bad thing. It's what it is. Another way to look at it is this way: Stack Overflow gives a man a fish. Forums teach a man to fish. Now, when you need a fish, you need a fish. You don't need to learn to fish. But in the long run, forums, and discussion, usually provide better value. This doesn't mean SO can't teach people. However, it doesn't encourage teaching. It's setup for questions and answers, not discussion.
- melling 17y ago
  Books aren't set up for discussion. I'm guessing that you think they aren't good for "fishing" either? The basic idea with StackOverFlow is to ask well-defined questions and get well-defined answers, without the long messy threaded response found in most forums. The worst is when the thread ends in a dead end. The wiki feature and the ability to include formated code are very useful. The reputation economy is essential, so more questions get answered, including older ones. What happens in a forum when no one answers a question? Ask again a few days later? Also, they do have short discussions through comments, which I have found to be effective. Finally, I think you, and many others, are completely missing the point of StackOverFlow, and hopefully other future sites like it. If say, for example, 100,000 people are learning [Lisp, Scala, Java, C++, Go, jQuery, C#, etc], they are going to have the a lot of similar questions that really only need to be asked once, with one or two solutions provided. Now the next 99,999 people don't need to ask the same question. So, now we have taken the FAQ and improved upon it by creating it dynamically through voting, and question matching. There are various improvements that could be done to StackOverFlow. They are essentially creating a huge database of programming knowledge. Ideally it, or a similar project, could be organized to enable someone to start learning any new topic and become proficient by browsing and searching the site. Questions could be further categorized to enable better filtering (eg. Mac OS bug, compiler warning message, compiler error message), include specific version solutions (eg. Java 1.5, Java 1.6). A Rosetta Stone feature could be added linking solutions. For example, the question: "How do I reverse a string in [Java]?" could provide links to the Perl, C#, Java, Lisp, Scheme, Javascript solutions.
  - jasonlotito 17y ago
jaytee_clone 17y ago
Stack Overflow is optimized for Q & A, while you can do more than just asking questions in a forum (i.e. actually making friends and building communities). They are both great. Really, every forum should just have a Q & A section that implements Stack Overflow or use a similar widget.

melling 17y ago

That's correct. And the iPad is just a tablet notebook like the one from Microsoft in 2000. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13tabletpc.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13... And the iPhone is really just a cleaned up smart phone. StackOverFlow took an old idea, cleaned it up and made a better product. Seems pretty simple after the fact. Getting the small things right in a product really makes a big difference. StackOverFlow isn't perfect (and neither was the iPhone or iPad) but they got a good minimal viable product and now they're off to the races.

klochner 17y ago
I'm all for Ries, Blanks, lean, mvp, etc. etc., but all the lean jargon is getting overused and abused.

pak 17y ago

It's not always at the top, though. Call it the reddit effect: sometimes the top-voted item is not the one that is the most informative, relevant or correct, but the one that appears so by virtue of being well written, backed by someone with sufficient karma, and clever enough to get upvotes. The asker may then mistakenly pick this as the accepted answer and the better but less hive-mind-friendly answers get pushed away. When skimming the site I've occasionally seen better answers at the bottom of a page getting ignored while people shout about the top few answers. If I didn't know better, I would have ignored them too.

cruise02 17y ago
This happens a lot less on Stack Overflow than on reddit. The asker isn't supposed to accept the most popular answer, either. They're asking a question because they have a problem to solve. They should be testing solutions and accepting the one that works. I often see accepted answers with fewer upvotes than the most popular ones. The fact that both the most popular and the accepted answer are at the top of the screen is a nice feature of the site.
- pak 17y ago
  The asker may be testing out some of the answers, but in reality most of the problems to be solved during software development are about balancing tradeoffs, e.g. security vs. performance. The reason the best solution is the best may not become apparent for years, when the project needs to scale, changes hands, needs to upgrade, gets hacked, etc. In such a case, how is the asker, lacking such experience, able to pick out the right answer except by number of upvotes? Same goes for anybody reading the page. I'm just saying a popularity-driven Q&A site has its drawbacks.
  - cruise02 17y ago
    You're assuming that both the asker and the crowd are incompetent. No kind of Q&A site is going to produce good results under those conditions.
    - pak 17y ago
      I'm not assuming that. I'm suggesting that certain answers may become more popular and rise to the top for reasons that have nothing to do with correctness. These include but are not limited to: the style in which the answer is written, the assertiveness/aggressiveness of the answer, the decision to include or not include sample code, the karma or reputation of the answerer, and the current vote count and visibility of the answer. I think it is safe to assume that there is a gradient in experience among SO users and that for those on the lower end, votes may be more influenced by the issues I just listed than any standard of correctness. It's simple crowd psychology, and already well established at other voting sites like digg and reddit.

jasonlotito 17y ago

Stack Overflow is about instant gratification. This isn't a bad thing. It's what it is. Another way to look at it is this way: Stack Overflow gives a man a fish. Forums teach a man to fish. Now, when you need a fish, you need a fish. You don't need to learn to fish. But in the long run, forums, and discussion, usually provide better value. This doesn't mean SO can't teach people. However, it doesn't encourage teaching. It's setup for questions and answers, not discussion.

melling 17y ago
Books aren't set up for discussion. I'm guessing that you think they aren't good for "fishing" either? The basic idea with StackOverFlow is to ask well-defined questions and get well-defined answers, without the long messy threaded response found in most forums. The worst is when the thread ends in a dead end. The wiki feature and the ability to include formated code are very useful. The reputation economy is essential, so more questions get answered, including older ones. What happens in a forum when no one answers a question? Ask again a few days later? Also, they do have short discussions through comments, which I have found to be effective. Finally, I think you, and many others, are completely missing the point of StackOverFlow, and hopefully other future sites like it. If say, for example, 100,000 people are learning [Lisp, Scala, Java, C++, Go, jQuery, C#, etc], they are going to have the a lot of similar questions that really only need to be asked once, with one or two solutions provided. Now the next 99,999 people don't need to ask the same question. So, now we have taken the FAQ and improved upon it by creating it dynamically through voting, and question matching. There are various improvements that could be done to StackOverFlow. They are essentially creating a huge database of programming knowledge. Ideally it, or a similar project, could be organized to enable someone to start learning any new topic and become proficient by browsing and searching the site. Questions could be further categorized to enable better filtering (eg. Mac OS bug, compiler warning message, compiler error message), include specific version solutions (eg. Java 1.5, Java 1.6). A Rosetta Stone feature could be added linking solutions. For example, the question: "How do I reverse a string in [Java]?" could provide links to the Perl, C#, Java, Lisp, Scheme, Javascript solutions.
- jasonlotito 17y ago

jaytee_clone 17y ago

Stack Overflow is optimized for Q & A, while you can do more than just asking questions in a forum (i.e. actually making friends and building communities). They are both great. Really, every forum should just have a Q & A section that implements Stack Overflow or use a similar widget.