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Stack Overflow Community Reacts Against Stack Overflow Company

22 points by nsoonhui 7y ago

wtmt 7y ago
1. Company builds a product with no/minimal ads and uses community involvement to grow. 2. Company adds more ads to the system to earn money. 3. Company adds more "features" to make money (for expenses and...to make money). 4. Company reduces consulting with the community because the purpose of the community, to grow the site and userbase, has been served well and the community's interests conflict, at times, with the company's commercial interests and directions. 5. Community complains that this is not good. What would people expect after this? That the company would have a change of heart and go back to how it was years ago? I don't think that's easily possible nor desirable by the company. I'd expect that responses, or the lack of appropriate responses, would be to have those who are unhappy to leave.
- zepolen 7y ago
  Circle of life. Stack Overflow came about as a direct solution to Experts Exchange that was doing exactly the same thing. So now it's up to someone to build a new solution which will last for another 10 years until they too decide to cash in. Probably the smart move from Stack Overflow is to secretly create the competitor themselves.
goatinaboat 7y ago
It’s clear now that Stack Overflow was a bait-and-switch play: 1. get the high quality content through gamification of writing answers and moderating the site with points and badges 2. once a critical mass of content was captured and the competition eliminated, tell the original creators they were no longer welcome 3. profit with a new, ad-friendly userbase
- lioeters 7y ago
  "Bait-and-switch" implies an intentional plan from the beginning. What I suspect typically happens is that a company starts with good (or neutral) intentions, grows a community that trusts them. Then it becomes profitable, and a new set of C-levels and managers swoop in with a completely different set of values, to exploit and squeeze more profit out of the community they never contributed to building.
  - captainbland 7y ago
    Sure but the original intention makes no difference to the user base, particularly those who've put in a lot of time and effort for little reward other than community kudos. I suppose there's a deeper problem of the difficulty of ethical profitability over the long term. We seem to see this same pattern again and again with startups that seem to grow out of their good intentions, particularly with social media or otherwise community driven websites.
throwaway3627 7y ago
I deleted all of my Stack accounts several months ago. Not all, but the vast majority of programmers on there exude too much ego, self-centeredness, know-it-allitry, unreasonableness, are too petty and/or are too unpleasant to make me either a. want to ask questions or b. want to answer them. It's not a community but a Twitter soundbite competitive résumé sausage factory. I'd rather struggle and figure out whatever the issue is myself.
jmkni 7y ago
I feel like I'm out of the loop here, what specifically have SO done to piss people off? What are the actual features they have they added that people are annoyed about?
tabtab 7y ago
They need some good old-fashioned competition to light a fire under their butt. The Network-Effect is poison to competition, but I hope somebody finds a way around it.

22 points by nsoonhui 7y ago

wtmt 7y ago

1. Company builds a product with no/minimal ads and uses community involvement to grow. 2. Company adds more ads to the system to earn money. 3. Company adds more "features" to make money (for expenses and...to make money). 4. Company reduces consulting with the community because the purpose of the community, to grow the site and userbase, has been served well and the community's interests conflict, at times, with the company's commercial interests and directions. 5. Community complains that this is not good. What would people expect after this? That the company would have a change of heart and go back to how it was years ago? I don't think that's easily possible nor desirable by the company. I'd expect that responses, or the lack of appropriate responses, would be to have those who are unhappy to leave.

zepolen 7y ago
Circle of life. Stack Overflow came about as a direct solution to Experts Exchange that was doing exactly the same thing. So now it's up to someone to build a new solution which will last for another 10 years until they too decide to cash in. Probably the smart move from Stack Overflow is to secretly create the competitor themselves.

goatinaboat 7y ago

It’s clear now that Stack Overflow was a bait-and-switch play: 1. get the high quality content through gamification of writing answers and moderating the site with points and badges 2. once a critical mass of content was captured and the competition eliminated, tell the original creators they were no longer welcome 3. profit with a new, ad-friendly userbase

lioeters 7y ago
"Bait-and-switch" implies an intentional plan from the beginning. What I suspect typically happens is that a company starts with good (or neutral) intentions, grows a community that trusts them. Then it becomes profitable, and a new set of C-levels and managers swoop in with a completely different set of values, to exploit and squeeze more profit out of the community they never contributed to building.
- captainbland 7y ago
  Sure but the original intention makes no difference to the user base, particularly those who've put in a lot of time and effort for little reward other than community kudos. I suppose there's a deeper problem of the difficulty of ethical profitability over the long term. We seem to see this same pattern again and again with startups that seem to grow out of their good intentions, particularly with social media or otherwise community driven websites.

throwaway3627 7y ago

I deleted all of my Stack accounts several months ago. Not all, but the vast majority of programmers on there exude too much ego, self-centeredness, know-it-allitry, unreasonableness, are too petty and/or are too unpleasant to make me either a. want to ask questions or b. want to answer them. It's not a community but a Twitter soundbite competitive résumé sausage factory. I'd rather struggle and figure out whatever the issue is myself.

jmkni 7y ago

I feel like I'm out of the loop here, what specifically have SO done to piss people off? What are the actual features they have they added that people are annoyed about?

tabtab 7y ago

They need some good old-fashioned competition to light a fire under their butt. The Network-Effect is poison to competition, but I hope somebody finds a way around it.