[ianstallings]

When it first arrived on the scene it was much like quora is now and I loved that. But then they started trying to trick people into signing up, etc. It just went from awesome to dagnabbit quickly. So when there was one place to find a bunch of other programmers that popped up, I jumped on it.

[andy_adams]

EE's business model was built in the early days of the internet, and before SO came around they had lots of paying customers. "Tricking people to sign up" was really just their attempt at monetizing content. It clearly did not pan out to be the best long-term strategy, but when you already have thousands of paying customers, it gets pretty difficult to "open up" to the general public vs. a company like SO which started open and monetized in other ways (Careers).