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Experts Exchange currently displays its answers for free at the very bottom of its pages, but it misleads visitors into thinking that they have to pay for acces

by jawns 15y ago

Experts Exchange currently displays its answers for free at the very bottom of its pages, but it misleads visitors into thinking that they have to pay for access. Unless you scroll through about eight pages' worth of filler, you would never know that the answers are there. And EE would love for them not to be there, but search engines won't index them otherwise. That's actually an improvement from some of their earlier tactics, which involved cloaking (serving one version of the site -- with the answers -- to search engines and a different version to everyone else). The only reason they're not still cloaking is because search engines have gotten wise to their methods and won't tolerate it. In short, Experts Exchange is willing to mislead people and search engines in any way that it can get away with. So, at least in EE's case, the fact that Google has tightened the screws is great. (I should mention that I understand EE is a business and is trying to make a profit -- but profiting from deception is what really riles me.)

Too 15y ago
> Experts Exchange currently displays its answers for free at the very bottom of its pages, but it misleads visitors into thinking that they have to pay for access. Only if you reach the site with a google.com referrer. Without referrer there's no answers at the bottom.
- astrodust 15y ago
  So basically "boo hoo" that they're not getting any rank. Stack Overflow is a business too, but it's one worth supporting.
- adgar 15y ago
  I just checked this, and it's true. Googled "experts exchange fix mod_rewrite," tried a resulting question as referred and in an incognito window. Only the former had the results at the bottom. Notably, even if you're using secure google search because you're logged in, the referrer still gets sent - so it still works. I know some people were concerned referrers didn't get passed from the new "secure if logged in" option - this seems a decent confirmation they do.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
lkrubner 15y ago
I was a customer of Experts Exchange for 3 years, from 2004 to 2006. It was useful to me when I needed information on subjects I did not know well, like Apache mod_rewrite, or some Linux sysadmin stuff. All the same, there is a great deal that I disliked about Experts Exchanged. Two complaints stand out: 1.) sometimes the other people on the site gave me excellent help, and some even put in an extraordinary amount of time to help me. And yet, they didn't get any money for their efforts. Experts Exchange kept 100% of the money that I paid. The people who answered questions just get meaningless "points". But clearly these experts deserve some money for their time. 2.) sometimes the other people on the site did not give me any help at all. In fact, sometimes some were rude, or they would only answer "RTFM", or they would fail to read my whole question and they would post an answer to what they thought I was asking, rather than what I was really asking. Again, this is a problem that would have vanished if I'd had an easy way to send money to the people trying to help me. People would take the time to answer my question if I was paying them to read my question. I also thought it was disgusting that so many people put so much effort into helping each other and yet Experts Exchange keeps 100% of the money made off of those efforts. I've the same criticism of StackOverflow nowadays -- they keep 100% of the profits coming in from ads on their site, rather than share the money with the experts who answer questions. My negative experiences with Experts Exchange were an influence when I created my own question and answer site ( http://www.wpquestions.com/ http://www.wpquestions.com/ ). Here, 95% of the money goes to the people who answer the question, and the distribution of the money is decided by a community vote. I think a question and answer site has the right to charge some fee to pay its bills, but since the experts who answer questions are the one's doing most of the work, most of the money should go to them.
- vegardx 15y ago
  People don't use services like EE or SO to make money, they do it because if feels good to help someone, and it's a great place to pick up and learn new stuff. Also, I think you highly overrate how much SO makes from advertisements.
  - jason1178 15y ago
    The only reason Stack remains free is because of the large cash infusions they received from VCs. As soon as they burn through it without coming up with a viable replacement that still allows free access, they will begin charging or they will disappear. One one site makes money from ads and it rhymes with Moogle.
wiredfool 15y ago
They used to use rot13 to encode their answers. That was nice When I noticed that, since I already had the bookmarklet.

by jawns 15y ago

Too 15y ago

> Experts Exchange currently displays its answers for free at the very bottom of its pages, but it misleads visitors into thinking that they have to pay for access. Only if you reach the site with a google.com referrer. Without referrer there's no answers at the bottom.

astrodust 15y ago
So basically "boo hoo" that they're not getting any rank. Stack Overflow is a business too, but it's one worth supporting.
adgar 15y ago
I just checked this, and it's true. Googled "experts exchange fix mod_rewrite," tried a resulting question as referred and in an incognito window. Only the former had the results at the bottom. Notably, even if you're using secure google search because you're logged in, the referrer still gets sent - so it still works. I know some people were concerned referrers didn't get passed from the new "secure if logged in" option - this seems a decent confirmation they do.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

lkrubner 15y ago

I was a customer of Experts Exchange for 3 years, from 2004 to 2006. It was useful to me when I needed information on subjects I did not know well, like Apache mod_rewrite, or some Linux sysadmin stuff. All the same, there is a great deal that I disliked about Experts Exchanged. Two complaints stand out: 1.) sometimes the other people on the site gave me excellent help, and some even put in an extraordinary amount of time to help me. And yet, they didn't get any money for their efforts. Experts Exchange kept 100% of the money that I paid. The people who answered questions just get meaningless "points". But clearly these experts deserve some money for their time. 2.) sometimes the other people on the site did not give me any help at all. In fact, sometimes some were rude, or they would only answer "RTFM", or they would fail to read my whole question and they would post an answer to what they thought I was asking, rather than what I was really asking. Again, this is a problem that would have vanished if I'd had an easy way to send money to the people trying to help me. People would take the time to answer my question if I was paying them to read my question. I also thought it was disgusting that so many people put so much effort into helping each other and yet Experts Exchange keeps 100% of the money made off of those efforts. I've the same criticism of StackOverflow nowadays -- they keep 100% of the profits coming in from ads on their site, rather than share the money with the experts who answer questions. My negative experiences with Experts Exchange were an influence when I created my own question and answer site ( http://www.wpquestions.com/ http://www.wpquestions.com/ ). Here, 95% of the money goes to the people who answer the question, and the distribution of the money is decided by a community vote. I think a question and answer site has the right to charge some fee to pay its bills, but since the experts who answer questions are the one's doing most of the work, most of the money should go to them.

vegardx 15y ago
People don't use services like EE or SO to make money, they do it because if feels good to help someone, and it's a great place to pick up and learn new stuff. Also, I think you highly overrate how much SO makes from advertisements.
- jason1178 15y ago
  The only reason Stack remains free is because of the large cash infusions they received from VCs. As soon as they burn through it without coming up with a viable replacement that still allows free access, they will begin charging or they will disappear. One one site makes money from ads and it rhymes with Moogle.

wiredfool 15y ago

They used to use rot13 to encode their answers. That was nice When I noticed that, since I already had the bookmarklet.