<story><title>Stack Exchange 2.0</title><url>http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-2-0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bonaldi</author><text>They realised that StackExchange was failing, but because they don&apos;t realise the reasons &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; their attempted correction is only making it worse.&lt;p&gt;Their software is a hideously complicated and over-engineered attempt to twist human relationships into math. It only works on StackOverflow because:
a) The tech community was &lt;i&gt;desperate&lt;/i&gt; for an alternative to hidebound mailing lists on one hand and expertsexchange on the other
b) How to put this? A whole lot of nerds really would like to be able to reduce the complexity of human relationships to math, too, and willingly participated.&lt;p&gt;But without a userbase that&apos;s dying for a solution, any solution, and especially a userbase prepared to put up with convoluted ranking-rating-have-I-got-enough-points-to-change-my-profile-picture-yet point-scoring games the software is actually a millstone. You&apos;re not going to get a liberal arts Q&amp;#38;A site that takes off with those restrictions. This is why StackExchange was such a dud.&lt;p&gt;By not realising this, their solution is more of the same! &quot;Sure, you can start a site, you just need pi+4 users to seed your initial contract bounding, then that will need to be ranked to 6 by a quorum of level 3 users, and after an initial 26-day period of zzzzzzzzzz &amp;#60;click&amp;#62;&quot;.&lt;p&gt;You want to create a good Q&amp;#38;A site, you need to have a community, and it needs to be well-tended by empathic people who know how and where to prune. The software is pretty much irrelevant. Look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ask.metafilter.com/&lt;/a&gt; for a success story: totally flat, forum-esque, but answers are obvious, there&apos;s no chatter or bullshit, and it works on the most amorphous and wide-ranging types of questions.&lt;p&gt;There is no shortcut solution to this problem. There is no way to mathematically manage human connections like this that works in this space. The route to success is careful relationship management, not yet more programming.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spolsky</author><text>Sounds like you have a great business plan. In the meantime, I think that the Stack Overflow model has proven itself among nerds, and I think that your assertion that nerds are weird in some way and need completely different software than the rest of the world is not backed up by any evidence.&lt;p&gt;I disagree that the software is irrelevant. Discussion groups that don&apos;t allow voting have no way to distinguish answers that the community thinks are good from answers that the community thinks are bad. Discussion groups that don&apos;t allow editing have no way to change answers as the world changes, so wrong answers stick around. Discussion groups without tags are forced to splinter communities into smaller and smaller fragments because they have no way of dealing with overlapping communities. Discussion groups without reputation systems are overrun with spam.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t think of anything I disagree with MORE than the concept that &quot;the software is irrelevant.&quot; The software DEFINES how the community works with each other and is absolutely critical.</text></comment>
<story><title>Stack Exchange 2.0</title><url>http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-2-0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bonaldi</author><text>They realised that StackExchange was failing, but because they don&apos;t realise the reasons &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; their attempted correction is only making it worse.&lt;p&gt;Their software is a hideously complicated and over-engineered attempt to twist human relationships into math. It only works on StackOverflow because:
a) The tech community was &lt;i&gt;desperate&lt;/i&gt; for an alternative to hidebound mailing lists on one hand and expertsexchange on the other
b) How to put this? A whole lot of nerds really would like to be able to reduce the complexity of human relationships to math, too, and willingly participated.&lt;p&gt;But without a userbase that&apos;s dying for a solution, any solution, and especially a userbase prepared to put up with convoluted ranking-rating-have-I-got-enough-points-to-change-my-profile-picture-yet point-scoring games the software is actually a millstone. You&apos;re not going to get a liberal arts Q&amp;#38;A site that takes off with those restrictions. This is why StackExchange was such a dud.&lt;p&gt;By not realising this, their solution is more of the same! &quot;Sure, you can start a site, you just need pi+4 users to seed your initial contract bounding, then that will need to be ranked to 6 by a quorum of level 3 users, and after an initial 26-day period of zzzzzzzzzz &amp;#60;click&amp;#62;&quot;.&lt;p&gt;You want to create a good Q&amp;#38;A site, you need to have a community, and it needs to be well-tended by empathic people who know how and where to prune. The software is pretty much irrelevant. Look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ask.metafilter.com/&lt;/a&gt; for a success story: totally flat, forum-esque, but answers are obvious, there&apos;s no chatter or bullshit, and it works on the most amorphous and wide-ranging types of questions.&lt;p&gt;There is no shortcut solution to this problem. There is no way to mathematically manage human connections like this that works in this space. The route to success is careful relationship management, not yet more programming.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>billybob</author><text>1) I don&apos;t think they&apos;re trying to model &apos;the complexity of human relationships.&apos; That&apos;s what Facebook tries to do. The trust metrics are crude, but the real goal seems to be to get credible upvotes for answers.&lt;p&gt;I use SO all the time, have great success, and haven&apos;t made any friends there. Because that&apos;s not what it&apos;s for.&lt;p&gt;2) Maybe this model won&apos;t work for EnthusiasticCatBreeders.com, but it will probably work for a lot of sites. Maybe it will self-select for topics where the people interested are a bit nerdy.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s OK. There is still a lot of room for nerdy growth. I can imagine sites about cell phones, economics, geomapping, and lots of other topics where the audience is a bit nerdy, there are right and wrong answers, and this will probably work.</text></comment>