[klmr]

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange.

By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions.

Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. But I always thought this was merely due to SEO trickery, not because they were actually widely used.

Truth be told, I would be hard pressed to even call it a “forum” — typical forums (bulletin boards) functioned very differently.

[wilkystyle]

I would guess that the metric he's using here is Google search result popularity. I definitely remember the exact experience he describes regarding EE and Google search results.

[Slansitartop]

>> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange.

> By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free.

Or just used workarounds. I remember always going to the Google Cache versions, because that was what the GoogleBot saw, so it had the answers.

I wouldn't be surprised if their SEO trickery made it one of the biggest single Q&A sites of the time, since people will go where search takes them.

[zwieback]

I remember that too, there was a brief time between the comp.lang.xyz usenet groups and SO where the google cache for EE was a great resource for me.

[rconti]

I don't know a lot of people who subscribe to stackoverflow either. Use it? yes. Subscribe? no.

[chipperyman573]

In order to view an answer on Experts Exchange, you had to subscribe.

[aembleton]

I used to change my user agent to be that of a Google Bot

[daurnimator]

Did you? I always just scrolled past the fold.

[chipperyman573]

I think they changed it once SO started becoming popular (I may be misremembering the timeline, but I definitely remember being very frustrated about not being able to view the answers at one point)

[daurnimator]

I think they may have had a google-wall: if you came from google you could scroll down to the content, but if you were just browsing the forum you couldn't see the answers.

[pubby]

Experts Exchange used to cost money to use. (a subscription)

[vermooten]

Remember when the url made it look like Expert Sexchange? :)

[reitanqild]

Worth noting:

I always just scrolled to the very bottom of the page to see the answers on EE.

This might not have worked in the start (I don't know) but as far as I can remember it worked.

I think they did this intentionally because google would ban them otherwise.

[simias]

IIRC they changed their approach several times and I think for a while you wouldn't have access to the answer at all until they changed it to what you describe (answer buried at the bottom of the page). I assume they settled on that format for the reason you mention, Google would have ended up removing them from their results if they kept cheating.

[wilkystyle]

I think you could also click to view the cached version of the page.

[nmstoker]

Yes, scrolling down was what I recall too.

Once in a while it wouldn't work and I ditched EE pretty much as soon as SE got going

[astannard]

It definitely featured near the top of google results for many questions. I remember being annoyed at the paywall many a time.