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Yeah, I agree. I think it's actually fantastic that they focus so narrowly on answerable questions. It's still a super useful resource, and a tight focus means

Yeah, I agree. I think it's actually fantastic that they focus so narrowly on answerable questions. It's still a super useful resource, and a tight focus means it will probably be able to stay on track for a long long time. However, I wish there was a place as fantastically focused on good discussion.

solistice 12y ago
Isn't Jeff Atwoods working on Discourse right now?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  A good online community comes from the users and the management, not the software.
- the_af 12y ago
  Isn't Discourse software aimed at improving internet forums rather than a discussion venue in itself? It's not comparable to stackexchange, which is software plus a community.
  - solistice 12y ago
    But stack-everything only has such a vibrant and focused community because community rules have been made as clear as they have. If you go through Jeff Atwoods blog, you'll see that they are making the same considerations for Discourse, which has it's own "community rules" that ship with it. They're not only writing better forum software, they're also investigating what makes great forums great and horrible forums horrid and they're baking it into their product.
fidz 12y ago
What do you think about Quora?
- girvo 12y ago
  That hiding answers to people who aren't logged in is user-hostile.
- SquareWheel 12y ago
  Isn't that the spammy site that insists you log in to view answers? I always took it as another Experts Exchange.
  - mlvljr 12y ago
    Wait, these are different sites??
- username223 12y ago
  The "?share=1" guys? Mostly useless.
  - paradite 12y ago
    What exactly does it do? And is this a bad practice?
    - teh_klev 12y ago
      >What exactly does it do? It does this: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-read-all-answers-on-quora-without-having-to-register http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-r... And it's officially supported: https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better But you still need to sign up/in in to casually browse. >And is this a bad practice? It's pretty user hostile which is why I personally never used the site.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Targets a different audience with different kinds of questions.
colordrops 12y ago
Wouldn't this be easily solved by adding a "discussion" link from the question page to a wiki/forum page for more free-form or reddit-vote style questions?
bunderbunder 12y ago
On the other hand, in the past few years I've found that all of the most useful Stack Overflow or P.SE pages I've found when Googling for information have turned out to be questions with 25+ upvotes, with answers having 50ish upvotes. And all closed as "not constructive." It's certainly staying on track, but it's worth noting that many track-related analogies are pejoratives that focus on the way that you can't steer vehicles that go on tracks. I suspect an inordinate amount of incoming traffic to Stack Exchange is for information that only Stack Exchange apparently thinks (not just by the closing, but by the choice of words in explaining the reason for the closing) is not particularly valuable. Methinks that's evidence that the community governance has become an echo chamber - otherwise one should think that the people running this company would have identified a gap in the market that they could be exploiting by now.
- StuieK 12y ago
  I started slant.co for this. Closed question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are... Open Question: http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards-for-programming http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards...
  - stinos 12y ago
    Yeah slant is ok, but still needs more users/moderation to be as useful as SO (even despite questions getting closed). Eg I browse to http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous-integration-tools http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous... and it lists 'Visual Studio default theme' as an option with one recommendation. So I signed in but I see no way to tell a mod that it doesn't belong there? (I could add a con saying 'This is not a CI' though)
    - StuieK 12y ago
      I'm honestly really sorry about that, we're in the middle of building a flagging system at the moment. Up until now we typically have been using the comment to moderate but this is obviously really inefficient. I removed that option, thanks for pointing that out. We have a long way to go on the moderation side of things. Anything else you don't like/wish we had?

solistice 12y ago

Isn't Jeff Atwoods working on Discourse right now?

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
A good online community comes from the users and the management, not the software.
the_af 12y ago
Isn't Discourse software aimed at improving internet forums rather than a discussion venue in itself? It's not comparable to stackexchange, which is software plus a community.
- solistice 12y ago
  But stack-everything only has such a vibrant and focused community because community rules have been made as clear as they have. If you go through Jeff Atwoods blog, you'll see that they are making the same considerations for Discourse, which has it's own "community rules" that ship with it. They're not only writing better forum software, they're also investigating what makes great forums great and horrible forums horrid and they're baking it into their product.

fidz 12y ago

What do you think about Quora?

girvo 12y ago
That hiding answers to people who aren't logged in is user-hostile.
SquareWheel 12y ago
Isn't that the spammy site that insists you log in to view answers? I always took it as another Experts Exchange.
- mlvljr 12y ago
  Wait, these are different sites??
username223 12y ago
The "?share=1" guys? Mostly useless.
- paradite 12y ago
  What exactly does it do? And is this a bad practice?
  - teh_klev 12y ago
    >What exactly does it do? It does this: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-read-all-answers-on-quora-without-having-to-register http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-r... And it's officially supported: https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better But you still need to sign up/in in to casually browse. >And is this a bad practice? It's pretty user hostile which is why I personally never used the site.
yuhong 12y ago
Targets a different audience with different kinds of questions.

colordrops 12y ago

Wouldn't this be easily solved by adding a "discussion" link from the question page to a wiki/forum page for more free-form or reddit-vote style questions?

bunderbunder 12y ago

On the other hand, in the past few years I've found that all of the most useful Stack Overflow or P.SE pages I've found when Googling for information have turned out to be questions with 25+ upvotes, with answers having 50ish upvotes. And all closed as "not constructive." It's certainly staying on track, but it's worth noting that many track-related analogies are pejoratives that focus on the way that you can't steer vehicles that go on tracks. I suspect an inordinate amount of incoming traffic to Stack Exchange is for information that only Stack Exchange apparently thinks (not just by the closing, but by the choice of words in explaining the reason for the closing) is not particularly valuable. Methinks that's evidence that the community governance has become an echo chamber - otherwise one should think that the people running this company would have identified a gap in the market that they could be exploiting by now.

StuieK 12y ago
I started slant.co for this. Closed question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are... Open Question: http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards-for-programming http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards...
- stinos 12y ago
  Yeah slant is ok, but still needs more users/moderation to be as useful as SO (even despite questions getting closed). Eg I browse to http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous-integration-tools http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous... and it lists 'Visual Studio default theme' as an option with one recommendation. So I signed in but I see no way to tell a mod that it doesn't belong there? (I could add a con saying 'This is not a CI' though)
  - StuieK 12y ago
    I'm honestly really sorry about that, we're in the middle of building a flagging system at the moment. Up until now we typically have been using the comment to moderate but this is obviously really inefficient. I removed that option, thanks for pointing that out. We have a long way to go on the moderation side of things. Anything else you don't like/wish we had?