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The mere idea of creating the site was revolutionary. The platform and the concept of creating a site where you house questions and FOCUS on the quality of ques
by zitterbewegung 14y ago
The mere idea of creating the site was revolutionary. The platform and the concept of creating a site where you house questions and FOCUS on the quality of questions is pure genius.
Making it an addicting game is great too. People love the social proof.
I use stack overflow and its sister sites nearly every day. On theoretical computer science stack exchange its allowed me to ask better questions. It has increased my research maturity by one hundred times. I know more about topology and I am sincerely in debt to the quality of this concept and platform.
Cheers to Jeff. This is his magnum opus. I can't wait what he thinks of next.
- codinghorror 14y agoIt is wonderful to read this. Self-improvement is the sort-of-hidden thing that all Stack Exchange sites are about. The best way to improve, in my opinion, is to teach your peers while learning from your peers.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoStack Overflow is basically what Yahoo! Answers could be, but isn't. A brilliant resource with great questions, great answers, and a great community.
- Goladus 14y agoIt's certainly better than the alternatives that preceded it. I can't tell you how many times I've searched for <topic>, found my question in a forum about <topic>, and instead of answers or straightforward discussion I find a bunch of attitude from high-postcount forum jockeys saying "use the search function", "RTFM," changing the subject, and otherwise contributing lots of useless static noise (often they won't even bother to actually link a FAQ).