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I see a big difference between Google's "don't be evil" and StackOverflow's "contents are the community's property." One is lip-service, a campaign promise: An

by aiscott 15y ago

I see a big difference between Google's "don't be evil" and StackOverflow's "contents are the community's property." One is lip-service, a campaign promise: An empty claim that is difficult to quantify; the other is a done deal. The content on SO is licensed right now as a community-commons license. SO even preps a data-dump for you available as a torrent: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/09/creative-commons-data-dump-sep-11/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/09/creative-commons-data-...

AznHisoka 15y ago
that's great, but when Google has already indexed the original content and has it ranking high, you able to download the content is an empty victory. They already got the cash
- gnosis 15y ago
  Making a SO competitor is not the only reason to download the data, just as making a Wikipedia competitor is not the only reason to download Wikipedia data. One very important reason for downloading the data is for simple archiving. If Wikipedia or SO disappear tomorrow, their data will still be in the hands of the public, ready to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Not so with proprietary, closed data that's never released to the public. Another important reason to download the data is to use it locally and with your own tools. Plenty of people download Wikipedia data for offline browsing. I'm sure the same could be done, at least in theory, with SO data. Yet another reason is to mine the data in ways that the parent website might not allow (due to lack of knowledge, lack of interest, or lack of manpower).
- tadfisher 15y ago
  There are many examples of SO scrapers that rank higher than SO itself in many cases. Like BigResource.com. So your point is moot. A relevant point is that should SO slap a paywall around their content, anyone can grab the data and create a worthy competitor. Hence the death of ExpertSexChange.

by aiscott 15y ago

AznHisoka 15y ago

that's great, but when Google has already indexed the original content and has it ranking high, you able to download the content is an empty victory. They already got the cash

gnosis 15y ago
Making a SO competitor is not the only reason to download the data, just as making a Wikipedia competitor is not the only reason to download Wikipedia data. One very important reason for downloading the data is for simple archiving. If Wikipedia or SO disappear tomorrow, their data will still be in the hands of the public, ready to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Not so with proprietary, closed data that's never released to the public. Another important reason to download the data is to use it locally and with your own tools. Plenty of people download Wikipedia data for offline browsing. I'm sure the same could be done, at least in theory, with SO data. Yet another reason is to mine the data in ways that the parent website might not allow (due to lack of knowledge, lack of interest, or lack of manpower).
tadfisher 15y ago
There are many examples of SO scrapers that rank higher than SO itself in many cases. Like BigResource.com. So your point is moot. A relevant point is that should SO slap a paywall around their content, anyone can grab the data and create a worthy competitor. Hence the death of ExpertSexChange.