It is a domain-specific community (everything about software development), in the form of questions and answers. Reputation is earned by upvotes from other community members. Naturally, the established experts emerge as high-reputation members, being those with a long history of giving good answers.
Stack Overflow is just one (and the original) of a set of sites/communities on the same software, Stack Exchange. Each site has its own reputation scores for users, on the principle that someone who is knowledgeable (and sensible) on a given topic isn’t necessarily so on another (though there is a +100 cross-signup bonus, presumably on the “OK, you’re not an unknown fresh pseudonym” basis).
Avoiding populism problems: Stack Exchange specifically avoids “general interest” in favor of sites with specific topics, and moderation discourages “populist crap” of the “What are your favorite X” / “How do you feel about X” sort.
The format draws a sharp distinction between questions and answers and meta-discussion thereof (either in the form of “comments” or the full-scale meta-discussion site) in order to increase signal-to-noise.
(In case you haven’t noticed, I think they’re doing a lot of things right and right things, in terms of creating a valuable resource and community.)
(Should there be a top-level post about SO/SE? I don’t know that I could write it.)
StackExchange makes no distinction between up-votes from experts and up-votes from idiots. The way I read Risto’s suggestion is that the people get cred only from up-votes from experts. This is why it has to be seeded with experts.
″ we could write an algorithm that gives stuff and people get expert cred when they are upvoted by the established experts”
Sounds like StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com)
It is a domain-specific community (everything about software development), in the form of questions and answers. Reputation is earned by upvotes from other community members. Naturally, the established experts emerge as high-reputation members, being those with a long history of giving good answers.
Stack Overflow is just one (and the original) of a set of sites/communities on the same software, Stack Exchange. Each site has its own reputation scores for users, on the principle that someone who is knowledgeable (and sensible) on a given topic isn’t necessarily so on another (though there is a +100 cross-signup bonus, presumably on the “OK, you’re not an unknown fresh pseudonym” basis).
Avoiding populism problems: Stack Exchange specifically avoids “general interest” in favor of sites with specific topics, and moderation discourages “populist crap” of the “What are your favorite X” / “How do you feel about X” sort.
The format draws a sharp distinction between questions and answers and meta-discussion thereof (either in the form of “comments” or the full-scale meta-discussion site) in order to increase signal-to-noise.
(In case you haven’t noticed, I think they’re doing a lot of things right and right things, in terms of creating a valuable resource and community.)
(Should there be a top-level post about SO/SE? I don’t know that I could write it.)
Did anyone write this top-level SO/SE post, as a model for charities built around capturing time rather than money?
StackExchange makes no distinction between up-votes from experts and up-votes from idiots. The way I read Risto’s suggestion is that the people get cred only from up-votes from experts. This is why it has to be seeded with experts.
Stack Overflow and other forums dedicated to a specific topic don’t have quite the same populism problem as general interest forums do.
What about Quora?