Learning from StackOverflow.com

Posted by admin on September 14th, 2009 and filed under learning websites | 25 Comments »

Google Tech Talk
April 24, 2009

ABSTRACT

Presented by Joel Spolsky

Until recently, searching for help on highly technical programming problems has been a mess. A lot of what the search engines found was old discussions in forums, where you have a lot of wrong answers and out-of-date answers that you have to sift through yourself. You also found a lot of answers at sites that were hidden behind a pay wall, which uncloaked themselves for Google and then demanded membership fees to see the answers.

StackOverflow.com is a programmer’s Q&A site that launched last September to address these problems. It incorporates more modern ideas about community such as voting and public editing, and even a few ideas from game design, to create a much more successful way to get help with programming problems. In a few short months, it has grown to 14 million page views a month and reaches 3 million unique programmers every month. The lessons we’ve learned in creating a successful Q&A site has many implications for search which I’ll share in this talk.

Duration : 0:51:58


[youtube NWHfY_lvKIQ]

25 Responses

  1. petradog409 Says:

    STACK OVERFLOW …
    STACK OVERFLOW IN RULEZZZ

  2. supaflyjohnson Says:

    “how is babby …
    “how is babby formed?”

    Hilarious.

  3. ChristopherDone Says:

    I always scroll …
    I always scroll down to see the answers… I find it pretty useful. But I’m glad StackOverflow will (probably) usurp it.

  4. ChristopherDone Says:

    I believe when …
    I believe when people make a noise it shows that video stream. Perhaps for some conversational type of talks?

  5. maximz2005 Says:

    Experts Exchange – …
    Experts Exchange – it sucks!

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    Anita taking it …
    Anita taking it deep – __UXPORNTUBE{.}COM__

  8. SadeTabitha Says:

    Nice try. Keep it …
    Nice try. Keep it up check out esteembpo + com for social media marketing. gjdfg

  9. sxybgy Says:

    Aaralyn Barra – …
    Aaralyn Barra – Teens Gone Wild #2 – Scene 3 – _APRETTYGIRLS{.}COM_

  10. GeoffreyBernardo Says:

    What is that hyphen …
    What is that hyphen website?

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    Two sexxy, tan …
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  12. matthewdoucette Says:

    i love how joel …
    i love how joel spolsky understands human interactions on computers… UI.

  13. utuber2 Says:

    Every time I ask a …
    Every time I ask a question, it gets deleted for not being programming related. If I’d found the answer on Google, I wouldn’t be asking, numbnuts! :-)

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    h0t milf with a …
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  15. xlinltry Says:

    Dani – 1st Time …
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    Naughty schoolgirl …
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  17. ehsanul Says:

    That’s true once in …
    That’s true once in a while, but to a large extent, I’d agree with him. Yahoo answers isn’t all that great.

  18. Kn0wnIssues Says:

    It’s funny that the …
    It’s funny that the speaker claims that technologies like Yahoo Answers is failing. There’s been countless times I’ve done a search on Google of a question nature and gotten a Yahoo Answer as a result.

  19. fl1ckmasterflex Says:

    Its just his …
    Its just his opinion. Do you publish a paper with citations every time you recommend restaurants that you think serve the best food?

  20. GrantNeufeld Says:

    I really like the …
    I really like the point of recognizing that the Google search pages are really the front page for the site, and how they optimize for that (proper meta tags, meaningful permalinks, etc.).

  21. bryantfilms Says:

    kudos to …
    kudos to googletechtalks for their great series, and Joel, who really fills this entire talk to the brim with concentrated details about the anthropology and design of a question and answer site. No time is wasted. I have been amazed by the immediate success of stackoverflow — after following the pre-launch blog I stopped watching it but then rediscovered it in google search results shortly after it launched.

  22. jfontecha Says:

    yeah? and? so? you …
    yeah? and? so? you see anybody else building somethiing like stackoverflow and being successful at it?

  23. creamboat Says:

    His claims that the …
    His claims that the Microsoft stack is somehow more efficient and cost friendly is never supported with actual data. It just reads as a blatant advertisement for a company he used to work for.

  24. luger111 Says:

    Joel is the best!!

    Joel is the best!!
    We all have what to learn from this guy

  25. Borbuster Says:

    The secret is to …
    The secret is to use Google cache, or make your browser identify itself as the google spider.

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