[HN Gopher] Scripting the Future of Stack Overflow
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Scripting the Future of Stack Overflow
Author : pkamb
Score : 20 points
Date : 2020-01-21 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stackoverflow.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (stackoverflow.blog)
| iamaelephant wrote:
| The first half of the article contains a huge amount of gloating
| about the size and reach of Stack Overflow. Then the second half
| of the article has gems like
|
| > in order to continue to fuel our growth
|
| Why does it have to be this way? SO is an immensely useful
| resource and a sustainable business. Why does every company need
| to continue to grow until they lose the essence of what made them
| good? Why can't companies be satisfied with making a decent chunk
| of change, paying their employees a fair wage and delivering
| value to their customer base?
| fabian2k wrote:
| The company took VC money, growing in a sensible and
| sustainable way isn't an option. They're targeting an IPO
| according to the former CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky, which
| means they need to grow 10X in the near future.
|
| They're making around 70 million a year now, 44 million from
| the job platform, 16 million from ads and the rest from the
| private SO Teams/Enterprise software (28 large corporations are
| paying 1 million+, I know this doesn't add up entirely, but
| that's the only information publicly available that I know of).
| The numbers are all from the following interview with Joel:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1275&v=zMfxd9y0c...
| tmpz22 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The knowledge bank itself is available under creative
| commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly):
| https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it
| online here: 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They can stop providing updates and let it go stale.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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/
|
| [2] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-
| tickets...
| fabian2k wrote:
| 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.
| irrational wrote:
| 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.
| dancek wrote:
| For those unaware of the context, StackExchange fired a
| (volunteer) moderator in September causing a wave of moderator
| resignations. Now in January they fired two Community Managers
| (ie. employees) and a third CM resigned.
|
| https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-commu...
| andonisus wrote:
| > The key to Stack Overflow's future and growth are the millions
| of developers from around the world who find the site useful, but
| who haven't yet been welcomed into the community. We need to
| expand our reach and engagement to ensure these developers join
| the conversation and push their own learning to new heights.
|
| The key to stack overflow's future is providing useful answers to
| various programming questions, facilitating the asking and
| answering of these questions, and providing an easy way to find
| the answers to your questions.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| Stack Overflow has been trying VERY aggressively to monetize
| the site lately. In just the past 12 months:
|
| - They've backpedaled on their formerly strict ad policy, now
| allowing animated ads [0] and trackers [1], and their quality
| control has become very poor [2].
|
| - They changed the homepage to market their new SaaS product
| instead of the Q&A site [3]
|
| - They replaced their CEO (who was a cofounder) with a new one
| who they described as " someone who could foster the community
| while accelerating the growth of our businesses, especially
| Teams, where we are starting to close many huge deals and
| becoming a hyper-growth enterprise software company very
| quickly" [4]
|
| - They fired and defamed a well-liked and well-respected
| volunteer moderator without cause, in a misguided attempt at
| virtue signaling, and refused to make any attempt to rectify
| their mistakes until the moderator in question got a lawyer [5]
|
| - They fired/laid off two longtime and very well-respected
| Community Managers (employees whose job was to manage and work
| alongside with community) [6]
|
| [0]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/213770/258777
|
| [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/332297/258777
|
| [2]:
| https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q="Inappropriate+ad"+i...
|
| [3]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/386505/3476191
|
| [4]: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/09/24/announcing-stack-
| overf...
|
| [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/333965/258777
|
| [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/342039/258777
| [deleted]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Your comment might be a duplicate of one made two months ago in
| a post about photographing cabbages in Sri Lanka.
| [deleted]
| andonisus wrote:
| [Put on Hold]
| Zamicol wrote:
| Doesn't that just drive you nuts?
|
| Cabbages just sneak up on you like that.
|
| I've had plenty of genuinely unique questions marked as
| "duplicate".
| dx87 wrote:
| Most annoying to me is when I find someone asking a
| question that's exactly what I'm looking for, but it's
| locked and says "This question is too specific and is
| unlikely to be useful to anyone else." Last time that
| happened was with gdb, and looking through the code wasn't
| helpful because all it said was "unless you're a gdb
| developer, these header files are unlikely to be useful".
| klez wrote:
| FWIW that reason for closing has been removed for a long
| while, so new questions asking those lines should get
| answers (if the question itself is answerable).
| brailsafe wrote:
| > What became apparent in my conversations is that software
| development has evolved rapidly, and successful companies are
| evolving their own cultures and practices to keep pace.
|
| Clearly a discerning eye
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(page generated 2020-01-21 23:01 UTC)