[exikyut]

This is both awesome and depressing.

But it gave me a really interesting idea: a service/network/community/forum/etc for people to gather and discuss Really Confusing Bugs™ that they're trying to figure out. Not necessarily (?) for contemporary end users (maybe highly technical end users).

This could actually be a really cool concept. Somewhere squarely between HackerOne and StackOverflow - not for exploits, and not for simple(r) stuff, but specifically for complicated and confusing bugs you've been staring at for days/weeks and nothing's making any sense.

I can see a subscription model working for this, even - subscriptions would work both to allow people to provide extended assistance, and also because a contract makes NDAs easier.

Hmm. Thinking about how the subscription model would work... you sign up, configure billing, that then allows you to request extended assistance.

- One way that could work is that people offer you help in return for thanks, which would work like a configurable upvote; higher quality answers attract more rewards. Maybe anyone can reward answers (via the credit in their account) after the fact?

- Another way would be setting a minimum or exact reward amount up front to attract more help.

Regardless of how it worked, the site would have all discussion be public and open by default; you'd have to check a box to make the discussion private, and even after that you'd have the ability to go through and selectively un-redact parts of the conversations so everyone could be helped.

And anyone could sign up and offer answers instantly, and the rewards credited to their account could be cashed out at any time. That would attract new users.

I realize I've just described a weird kind of paid StackOverflow. I am very curious why SE hasn't pursued such an idea. As in, I am 1000% confident they've had this conversation at least once, and I'd really love to hear what the opinions were.

[andreareina]

ExpertsExchange was[1] a paid StackOverflow before the latter existed, SO came along and ate EE's lunch. Some of that was undoubtedly due to EE's (anecdotally, I never used it due to the money issue) bad UX, but free makes a big difference.

[1] They still exist, and it apparently gets traffic/use, but never hear anyone talking about them, and it never comes up when searching to resolve or diagnose a problem.

[pbhjpbhj]

EE had a scheme where you could answer questions to get free membership; I used that for a while.

I remember getting screwed over but don't remember the details: they locked up the site and I couldn't even access the solutions I'd written anymore. A bit later still they made it appear locked but you could still get to the answers if you knew how (I think that was to get their solutions on Google.

I'd guess it was taken over and someone tried to squeeze the money out, hasn't happened to SO yet.

[wolco]

if I remember you had to scroll down past the ad content.

[mort96]

I still hear people talking about ExpertsExchange. Usually accompanied with a joke about their name; ExpertSexChange.

[bigiain]

" a service/network/community/forum/etc for people to gather and discuss Really Confusing Bugs"

Should be universally open to all - at least until someone screws up badly enough to get temporarily or permanently barred, needs to be open outside regular work hours, should be free (or super a inexpensive nominal charge) to enter, would need to monetise itself via other means, perhaps selling beverages.

We've just re-invented "the bar"... ;-)

[hathym]

Stackoverfliw ?

[fapjacks]

It would be great if this were possible, but unfortunately, even relatively novel and interesting bug posts will be indiscriminately closed on Stack Overflow. You can bet that it will be aggressively closed as a duplicate or as "unclear" or "too general". That is the fate of the vast majority of new posts there.

[wolco]

I never understood why they didn't allow duplicate questions. It provides a fresh prespective and a new updated way to solve a question.

[mort96]

Things I have experienced when finding an SO question from Google:

* The question is closed as a duplicate, but the question it's a duplicate of is subtly different enough to be completely irrelevant to me.

* The question is closed as a dupilcate, but there's no link to what it's a duplicate of.

* The question is closed as a duplicate, but there are no good answers to the question it's a duplicate of.

[fapjacks]

At some point, there were an equal number of average and bad programmers on Stack Overflow as there were average and good programmers on Stack Overflow. But Stack Overflow does not reward people for being good programmers. SO rewards actions that game the system. And when SO points became a kind of currency for finding jobs ("I have five thousand points on SO!" on a resume), it skewed the userbase heavily in the direction of "game the system for more points". So you had average, bad, and awful programmers gaming the system and earning points, but because they are just terrible at what they do and the quality of all of their output is awful, this had the effect of driving away the average, good, and excellent programmers away from Stack Overflow.

At some point, the whole of SO shifted, and what you had was a bunch of point-chasing, terrible "programmers" gaming the system for points. There are actually a substantial number of reasonable questions which are not even slightly related to the questions they're closed as duplicates of. But in the eyes of these shit-awful "programmers" they're similar enough to close. Stack Overflow is on its way out. It has served its purpose in life, and perhaps will remain somewhat relevant to the kinds of enormous enterprises that hire shit-awful programmers with their Stack Overflow points on their resumes. But all the reasons it was originally attractive are now gone, as are the majority of the excellent programmers that made it interesting.

I'm not sure if Quora is its replacement, and I'm not sure what the next big place where excellent programmers go to share insights looks like. But it's not Stack Overflow.

[exikyut]

? What do you mean?