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I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've comm

by tmpz22 7y ago

I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?

Macha 7y ago
The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/ https://data.stackexchange.com/ At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in people's minds at that time for hiding answers behind signup walls.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  They can't really kill it, right? The content itself is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Version... uh... well it's definitely Creative Commons.
  - Macha 7y ago
    They can stop providing updates and let it go stale.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data, similar to how you can run Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap locally (or from anywhere, really). Good timing considering Distributed Web efforts [1]. Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF [2], word is Twitter's team focused on the same goals will be in attendence. [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ [2] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets-88949818301 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets...
      - reificator 7y ago
        > Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF I'm not even being flippant here, this is an earnest piece of feedback. Please don't call yourselves `dwebs`. That's just asking for people to not take you seriously.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        No relation to any org in the meetup, just calling it what it was called in the online marketing of it. I’d agree the marketing needs some tweaks.
      - chii 7y ago
        > Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data only if SO allows them to (by licensing the contents of SO liberally as they are currently doing). But they can stop at any time.
- fabian2k 7y ago
  They can only kill the license for future content, not for the existing content. And that would be a very clear sign that they're going to put up a paywall, and create a huge amount of pushback. But the most convincing argument that they won't put up a paywall to me is that there simply isn't enough money in it. You won't get enough people to pay for it, and it will cripple the amount of answerers.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  When googling for stuff I've sometimes come across other sites which make use of StackOverflow questions/answers. It feels tacky. I don't know the chances of another site killing SO/SE the same way SO killed EE.. but I've noticed recently I visit SO less frequently than e.g. GitHub issues.
irrational 7y ago
It wouldn't all be bad. So very many of the web development answers use jQuery. At least a clean start would mean a lot of those would go away.
thrower123 7y ago
People said the same about expertsexchange until SO did it. If they make it suck badly enough, something else will gain momentum and replace it. Get the Jon Skeets of the world onboard and you're most of the way there. Quora had the right idea initially, by subsidizing quality answerers, but they went too broad, and it devolved to Yahoo Answers quality.

by tmpz22 7y ago

Macha 7y ago

The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/ https://data.stackexchange.com/ At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in people's minds at that time for hiding answers behind signup walls.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
They can't really kill it, right? The content itself is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Version... uh... well it's definitely Creative Commons.
- Macha 7y ago
  They can stop providing updates and let it go stale.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data, similar to how you can run Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap locally (or from anywhere, really). Good timing considering Distributed Web efforts [1]. Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF [2], word is Twitter's team focused on the same goals will be in attendence. [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ [2] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets-88949818301 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets...
    - reificator 7y ago
      > Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF I'm not even being flippant here, this is an earnest piece of feedback. Please don't call yourselves `dwebs`. That's just asking for people to not take you seriously.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        No relation to any org in the meetup, just calling it what it was called in the online marketing of it. I’d agree the marketing needs some tweaks.
    - chii 7y ago
      > Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data only if SO allows them to (by licensing the contents of SO liberally as they are currently doing). But they can stop at any time.
fabian2k 7y ago
They can only kill the license for future content, not for the existing content. And that would be a very clear sign that they're going to put up a paywall, and create a huge amount of pushback. But the most convincing argument that they won't put up a paywall to me is that there simply isn't enough money in it. You won't get enough people to pay for it, and it will cripple the amount of answerers.
rgoulter 7y ago
When googling for stuff I've sometimes come across other sites which make use of StackOverflow questions/answers. It feels tacky. I don't know the chances of another site killing SO/SE the same way SO killed EE.. but I've noticed recently I visit SO less frequently than e.g. GitHub issues.

irrational 7y ago

It wouldn't all be bad. So very many of the web development answers use jQuery. At least a clean start would mean a lot of those would go away.

thrower123 7y ago

People said the same about expertsexchange until SO did it. If they make it suck badly enough, something else will gain momentum and replace it. Get the Jon Skeets of the world onboard and you're most of the way there. Quora had the right idea initially, by subsidizing quality answerers, but they went too broad, and it devolved to Yahoo Answers quality.