I have a question for frequent SO posters: what do you get out of it? I like more choices and I think the resource is fantastic for googling, kudos to Jeff&Joel, but in my case, when googling doesn't help and I need to ask someone, it just seems that IRC beats it hands down: why would I go to SO asking jQuery questions if there's #jquery on freenode where John often answers questions himself? With something like jRuby or Linux hosting the picture is even better: JRuby lead programmers always hang out in #jruby, bunch of smart folks helping each other in real time.
Whereas I see people ask a question on SO and... what exactly do they do next? Sit for hours hitting 'refresh' every minute or so? SO is great for googling for similar questions answered in the past, but I just don't understand why people post questions there in the first place.
Sometimes I think that if IRC hasn't existed and someone would have launched it now as a fresh idea, all tech blogs would be filled with "IRC changes everything" and "the game is over for slow HTML-based collaboration"
I'm not a frequent SO poster, but I've asked and answered a couple of questions. Personally, it's a combination of:
1) I find IRC completely unusable - I've been on the net since 1994, I've tried IRC multiple times, and it just doesn't gel with my head, sorry.
2) I don't use SO when I need an immediate answer. At the very least I'll put a query in, then wander off and google some more in the hope of finding an answer, then come back in half an hour. More usually I'll leave it overnight while i get on with something I do know how to do. It feels like the same sort of dialogue timescale as a mailing list query, but for where there isn't an appropriate mailing list.
I think most people just havent realised that what they actually want to do is to chat, there is a technical and social stigma, people already have a web browser, just point it to google and getting the help is the same as doing whatever else.
As for the technical, I remember the first time trying to get on irc and as a cs undergrad, wondering why the hell it was so complicated, I run an xmpp chatroom and that is only marginally easier, these arent inherent problems with the protocol, just the software around is entirely unusable. facebook / meebo and mibbit are helping overcome this, but it isnt there yet.
I have wondered how to solve the problem chat knowledge being unable to persist, even with public chat logs, an answer on a forum etc is still much easier to comprehend for a 3rd party than an irc log, but havent come up with much
You can search SO, you can see the dozens of other answers to similar questions and you can see other answers by the person answering you.
Realtime works for some set of easy quick answers - if the answerers are in your time zone.
I am pretty sure its the opposite, a complicated questions needs a feedback mechanism, you say X is wrong, I ask well what happens with Y, whats the output of Z. this really works better in realtime.
I find a lot of application / language / library developers are in irc reasonably often, whereas the questions on forums are a bit more of run of the mill how do I do types
Sites like Alexa and Compete provide valuable data - you just need to know how to use it.
The number 1 thing you need to remember is that the data is not useful as an absolute measure - it's only good to compare sites.
The number 2 thing to know is that if you compare similar sites, the comparisons are more accurate. So if you compare trailbehind.com, everytrail.com, and backpacker.com, the comparison will be a lot more accurate than if you compare cnn.com, stackoverflow.com, and myspace.com.
Number 3 is these sites are more useful if you have benchmark data. For example, if you want to know the traffic for a magazine type site, go download their media kit (usually available as a PDF on their site), and it will tell you their traffic. Then you can use this data for understanding Alexa better.
I'm honestly not trying to attack you but there are several posts below (mine included) that indicate what you are saying isn't the case. If you have a factual basis that says we're wrong I'd be interested in hearing it. But in this post you are simply stating absolutes without backing those absolutes up.
I guess what I'm asking is "how do you know what you are saying is true?"
Go to InformationWeek.com, ComputerWorld.com, and ITWeek.com, or pick a few other trade rags that publish a media kit.
Download the media kits, see how much traffic these similar sites get, and then see what the error is on Alexa. I think you'll find that the numbers are of the right order of magnitude.
You're going to get a pretty clear signal when looking at sites relative to one another, since most of the error will effect the sites the same. And if you have sites that have the same sorts of traffic patterns, then the relative signal should be even clearer.
It's true that people gaming the system effect the numbers, but that's not going to distort the numbers enough to make them worthless.
You can't use Alexa or similar to see whether one site has 3000 visitors a month and another has 3500. But if one ha 3000 and one has 30000 then you'll see it in the graph.
Sorry about the name typo (<pre coffee excuse>). Although the absolute numbers are always wildly inaccurate, Compete tends to be fairly good at viewing the traffic trends for a site. Or does the chart look nothing like your own internal ones?
I'm not even sure that's true anymore. Compete's always low-balled my traffic numbers (at least in comparison to Google Analytics) but I have a fairly small blog so I've always given Compete a pass because I can understand why it would be harder for them to measure a site with only a modest readership.
But a couple months back I got linked to by Mathew Ingram and, while Michael Arrington was covering Mr. Ingram's post on Techcrunch he also shot me a link. As you can imagine that generated a huge bump. But Compete actually had my numbers trending down for that month (cut in half in fact) and the month after as well (which was completely contrary to my Analytics readings).
So now I don't even have much faith in the site for trending data.
Interesting situation... Should the title's "Spolksy" be changed to "Spolsky"? If it isn't changed, the title is inaccurate. If it is changed, your comment won't make sense to new viewers anymore. (Except now your comment would still make sense, because of this comment! Fun stuff.)
Care to tell us how you managed to get that first wave of traffic? I'm guessing that having a popular blog helps, but who were the first adopters, and how did you get them?
Being someone that got in fairly early (3-digit SO ID#), in my case it came from listening to the podcast. Months before the site went live, Joel and Jeff discussed the site and how it was being built.
You are right, though; the reason why I started listening to the podcast was because I enjoyed reading Joel on Software and Coding Horror, and I've continued to stay because the show is much more casual than any other programming podcast I've come across (other shows I've found tend to take themselves a little too seriously).
Anyways, that's just my opinion, but I do think that a podcast is a great way to build buzz for a site, and if you know of any shows similar to Stack Overflow I'd love to hear about them.
You cant use compete.com as a source by itself. It is best used to compare. So if it is always off by x% (or a range of %), you can still have a rough comparison to other sites.
I think that StackOverflow.com growth now is being pushed more by the organic search results from google and the praise being sung by ordinary users in blogs and forums.
I think the site is excellent, and looking forward to more growth as more eyes provide better questions/answers!
I don't suppose that has anything to do with their blatant use of blackhat SEO tactics. If StackOverflow wants to be to Expert Sex Change what Facebook is to MySpace, more power to them.
Wire transfer ? Pay Pal ? Cheque ? Cash ? My firstborn is spoken for.
Amazing, that's what I get for shooting my mouth off.
The funniest thing is I do something just like this on a site that I own to search for music files removing all the fake sites, but I never thought of using it to improve my regular searches. I simply used a submit form that sets the source of an iframe to googles result page. Works dandy.
I do wish that, but not Experts-Exchange (yet) - if you get to a page on there via a Google search, scroll down past all the list-of-forums waffle, and the answers are in plain text at the end.
well, they do have many years of accumulated info and branding. No matter how horrible they are, it'll take time to dislodge them. I'm an occasional SO user and I like it very much, so I say good luck to Joel and Jeff in their quest :)
woah. that only speaks strongly to stackoverflow. they're gaining on experts exchange extremely quickly. if one of my sites gained on the competition that quickly, i'd be jumping for joy. with a giant grin on my face. for hours.
They're getting a lot of traffic, but is it really a success; are people learning or getting or understanding the best answers to their questions?
Are there enough smarties (experienced smart programmers) on the forum to answer all the inane newbie (inexperienced programmers) questions? And if there's too many newbies it's possible that incorrect or sub-optimal answers will get voted up because there aren't enough smarties to realise what are optimal answers.
Me too! Last few weeks I have been working with Python (which makes me smile after Java and C++) and looked up plenty of stuff like "how to elegantly get first day of week N", and about 50% of my questions were answered in SO.
I knew they'd be able to use their existing audiences to push the site but I think this is probably more than that. If the trend continues they really are going to have a huge amount of traffic and make a ton of money. I'm impressed.
Whereas I see people ask a question on SO and... what exactly do they do next? Sit for hours hitting 'refresh' every minute or so? SO is great for googling for similar questions answered in the past, but I just don't understand why people post questions there in the first place.
Sometimes I think that if IRC hasn't existed and someone would have launched it now as a fresh idea, all tech blogs would be filled with "IRC changes everything" and "the game is over for slow HTML-based collaboration"
Am I missing something?