[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.