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Answers.OnStartups.com -- StackOverflow for startups

98 points| smartbear | 16 years ago |onstartups.com

49 comments

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[+] davidw|16 years ago|reply
Ugh, that site makes me recall why I found stack overflow so annoying until you get a few points.

"Dave, I'm sorry, I can't let you (upvote|comment|put links in answers|do much of anything)"

[+] dshah|16 years ago|reply
Agreed. It takes a bit for new sites to have enough users with sufficient reputation to get things going.

The good news is that it does seem to keep a lot of the spammers out because building up a reputation takes too much energy.

[+] joe_the_user|16 years ago|reply
Well, uh... there is a price admission. To get something you've got to give something.

Considering stackoverflow provides tremendous resources once you get a few points AND it is not that hard to get the points, stackoverflow seems like far less of a pain than expertexchange or the various link-popup-polluted archives.

It's kind of a way out of the whole total-leaching thing. I'd imagine the hn news community would be excited.

[+] sachinag|16 years ago|reply
Is this essentially the Ask MeFi for HN? I'm confused.
[+] abossy|16 years ago|reply
I can see his motivation for this -- I was thinking of this exact idea today. There are simply so many rudimentary questions new entrepreneurs ask that can be easily answered. Two examples that I've recently sought answers for are "how do I negotiate for domain names," and "how do I set up a credit card payments system on my website." These are two of many, many more.

I've been a reader of HN since the beginning and have found it an invaluable question/answer database. All my questions have likely been answered before (I've found some really obscure stuff!).

Most queries can be answered by searchyc.com or a Google search prepended with "site:news.ycombinator.com." It'd be nice to have unfiltered access to entrepreneurial questions, ranging from the broad to the very obscure.

StackOverflow works beautifully, IMO, and I hope this blossoms into an excellent complement to HN.

[+] petercooper|16 years ago|reply
Yeah. I'd personally prefer to see such a site using the same software as Hacker News, just on a subdomain. ask.ycombinator.com or something.. *Overflow is icky.
[+] kpanghmc|16 years ago|reply
Am I the only one who's getting sick of the StackExchange sites? I like StackOverflow, but all of the StackExchange sites fall right into the uncanny valley for me.
[+] mattmanser|16 years ago|reply
Isn't that a bit like saying you're getting sick of wiki sites? Or phpbb?

They've come up with a new way to do Q&A sites which works. All power to them.

And there will be open source clones soon enough. Already was one posted here I seem to remember.

[+] vaksel|16 years ago|reply
i was gonna register, until I saw that you only take openid.
[+] kylec|16 years ago|reply
I used to be very against StackOverflow's stance of only using OpenID as the login system. However, with the sheer multiplication of the StackExchange-powered sites, the initial investment in setting up an OpenID has, in my opinion, paid off.
[+] justlearning|16 years ago|reply
I am genuinely curious - why are you (and some others) against openid? (apart from the trust factor)
[+] jerome_etienne|16 years ago|reply
this leads to a "who do you like/dislike openid"... but i think it is irrelevant. it is more "why such application force you on this ?"

this application is not about promoting openid, it is about ask/answering question on startup. So the identification and authentication should remain mainstream, not to uselessly disturb the user.

openid is an option, username/password, google, facebook and co provides others

[+] chris123|16 years ago|reply
I don't particularly like the OpenID either. It's crap security and crap usability, at least in all the implementations I've seen so far. I would love to see a great example of a great implementation. Anyone? :)
[+] dshah|16 years ago|reply
I agree, that's a bit irritating. I'll reach out to Joel/Jeff and see if they're open to adding other options.

But, you can't argue with the success of Stack Overflow (despite being only OpenID, it's done pretty well)

[+] proee|16 years ago|reply
Does anyone know what license is used for the stackoverflow code and where/if it's currently available? From reading the article is sounds like Jeff and company are making the software available to the public in some form. I'd really like to learn more about this.
[+] jlees|16 years ago|reply
I think this is the third such site I've seen this week. Guess there's a need!
[+] petercooper|16 years ago|reply
That remains to be seen. I've seen quite a few systems come out over the years - MetaFilter clones and open source Reddit, to name just two - where a lot of new sites are created but then fail to thrive. A year or two later, hardly any exist anymore even though the original site is still doing fine. Technology isn't community, long term.