HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

There is a deliberate reason the sites are split. Spolsky talks about in depth here: http://vimeo.com/37309773 Since it's largely sociological, it's also the reason my money is on SE as opposed to Quora in this space.

⬐ bduerst

Thanks - that's a great watch.

Essentially they're trying to keep SE from becoming a "chat" community, and keep it focused on being a Q&A community.

With Yahoo Answers, Usenets, even Subreddits, you have people having conversations within posts, which generates noise for people who were looking for answers to questions.

⬐ judk

SE has chat forums now, integrated with the main Q&A forums.

I'm not sure if you were insinuating that SE's fragmentation was a bad thing. If you are, SE actively fragment's itself for a reason. Watch Spolsky talk about it here: http://vimeo.com/37309773

Quora's non-fragmentation is it's ultimate downfall.

I'm all bull on SE and bear on Quora.

⬐ tyang

K. How do you express those views? Are you buying SE shares via MicroVentures, etc.? How do you go short Quora?

⬐ mbesto

I meant metaphorically. Both companies are capitalized privately.

⬐ ProAm

Im not sure yet if the SE fragmentation is a good thing or bad yet. From one perspective I see where they are coming from and why they are doing it. But in today's age of IT where the specialists is dead and people are more-or-less required to be an expert generalist it is very frustrating to use SE. I find myself more or less giving up when a question gets migrated to a SE Im not a 'member' of yet (they should really just make all users IDs members on all their sites whether people use them or not). Whether you are a webmaster, server admin, programmer, general PC user or just want to ask a general question about how SE works, I shouldn't need to go so many places. It's really 50-50 in my mind if they are doing a good thing or bad (and it probably doesnt matter in the end)

But I have never used Quora, so I know nothing about it beyond getting the blurred webpage when you are not a member there. Ill check out that video now.

My thoughts on the success of Quora are consistent with that of Joel Spolsky's take on cultural anthropology: http://vimeo.com/37309773

Watch from 9:30 on. "The idea of Stack Overflow is to attract anyone who is an expert programmer and repel anyone who's not"

My prediction - Google/Facebook (someone in that arena) will buy Quora.

⬐ taybin

Isn't Stack Overflow the opposite of that though?

⬐ mbesto

That's my point. Sorry I was actually making two distinct points that probably got intertwined. One - that Quora will not succeed like SO has. Two - Someone will buy Quora. Reason? Because, Silicon Valley.

⬐ hadoukenio

That's the problem with gamifying something. Eventually you'll get people who are only there for karma. The other day I found an incorrect answer that was chosen, but directly below it was the correct answer. The kicker? The OP commented on the correct answer saying that his was correct but the guy other guy had less karma than him and "needed it". WTF.

These days, you really have to take Stack Overflow answers with a grain of salt.