Author: Michael
Date: September 7, 2008 at 8:08 am

I have been checking out the beta of Stack Overflow, a soon-to-be-launched developer Q&A web site. The concept of the site is that you ask a question pertaining to anything in the realm of software development, and people answer. It’s a community site, and the community votes up the best answer which then rises to the top of the answers list to be displayed directly beneath the question.

As the site grows the goal is to provide a central repository to all software development Frequently Asked Questions. As well as those that are not so frequently asked. I’ve been able to add an answer to one question so far, although I’d like to contribute further. Alas, every time I log in I find that most of the unanswered questions are pertaining to Windows development and I’m a UNIX guy. I’m sure that will even out after the site goes out of beta.

Overall it has a great interface and is very simple to use. One feature I’d like to see, which Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky have discussed on the podcast, is a forum or discussion area for the questions and answers. I’d like to see each question have its own “talk” page but as more of a forum than a Wikipedia-style talk page.

The design of the site, with reputation points, badges, and community editing of questions and answers creates a desire on my part to participate. Unfortunately, unless I have a pressing question I’d like to post or an answer to provide, I don’t really have a way to feel a part of the community.

I understand that their ultimate goal is to have most of their inbound traffic come from search results and their main user is the developer who wants a quick and correct answer to their specific question. They search, they find, they go away happy. But for those of us who are actually participating as registered users I feel that more could be done to develop the community aspect of the site.

Nevertheless, it’s off to a great start and I look forward to them launching publicly. If you can’t wait, this blog post has the beta sign up information.

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Categories: web development