It's impressive to me that when the great minds behind Experts Exchange make their voice known, they talk just like the kind of slimeballs you would expect behind such an operation.<p>It's shameless. In their shoes, I'd just sit there quietly, take the snub on the chin, keep plying my spammy trade, and have enough introspection to realize that the reason no one wants to talk to me is because I've created one of the shittiest, most user-hostile content abominations in the history of the entire internet.<p>I guess the dangerous thing about dirtbags is that they have no idea they're dirtbags. My only comfort in all this is the knowledge that Stack Overflow has delivered us from evil.
<i>One of the big things that makes Experts Exchange unique is a patented system that requires askers to select their best answer. Most Q&A sites (StackExchange included) let the community vote for the best answer, when really the person whose opinion matters most is the one who asked the question.</i><p>StackOverflow allows for both community voting AND for the original asker to indicate which answer was the best answer. I suppose the only thing it doesn't do is require the asker to select a best answer like EE does apparently.<p>Also, how in the world did they get this process patented?
<i>Q: What makes Experts Exchange different from other Q&A sites on the Internet?<p>A: Most of our nearly 3 million solutions revolve around specific technology questions, and the majority of those have a sense of urgency to them.</i><p>Huh? How does this differ from StackOverflow? Other than, of course, that those answers are hidden behind a paywall.<p><i>We switched to a premium model to keep out of the Venture Capital business (been there, done that, got the t-shirt). Companies like StackExchange couldn't do it without the VC cookie jar. Where's the model? Huh, Spolsky? (I’m sorry. Did that slip out?)</i><p>Maybe he hasn't noticed the ads running on every SO page? Or perhaps he doesn't know anything about how careers.stackoverflow.com's billing works (<a href="https://careers.stackoverflow.com/billing/checkoutnew" rel="nofollow">https://careers.stackoverflow.com/billing/checkoutnew</a>)?<p>I hate saying things like this because it puts me into a position where it looks like I'm saying too much sooth, but it kind of looks like the EE guys are starting to miss the paradigm shift that's occurred and probably will continue to occur in "long-tailed" question and answer sites.
Jees. Talk about sour grapes... If EE wants to know why they weren't picked for the Q&A site pow-wow while StackExchange and Quora were, they should look no further than themselves. Let's take a look at one of their current top answers:<p><a href="http://www.experts-exchange.com/Virus_and_Spyware/Anti-Virus/Q_26636990.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.experts-exchange.com/Virus_and_Spyware/Anti-Virus...</a><p>30 day trial?! Subscribe now?! Who do they think they're kidding? Or really: who actually uses this thing? Before the other sites came along, it was merely a nuisance that showed up in your search results, mixed in with something that would actually help. (Interestingly, now the problem is StackExchange content-farms...)<p>This is exactly the kind of thing that inspired StackOverflow (a fact this post even references!) and it's a key factor in its massive growth and adoption on the part of fed up programmers and sysadmins.
"What do YOU think makes this site different from other Q&A sites?"<p>Why, at one time, I was one of the highest ranked volunteer 'experts' on the site, having amassed the EE equivalent of a zillion karma, or whatever they're called, and then, literally, the first time I go there to ask a question, they're all of a sudden premium? I literally helped build that site's content, and not only got nothing for it, but I have to pay to see the answers that I populated the site with?
Experts Exchange is borderline spam, to put it mildly. They hide the answer at the very end of an enormous scroll (of course after they try to sell you via a pop-up). A reasonable user has no clue that the answer is on the page.<p>When I have made it all the way down, I have received a quality solution perhaps 5 out of 500 times.<p>Stack Overflow realized there was a quality problem with the existing tech Q&A services and ate their lunches. Ditto for Quora. Hopefully they can keep it up.
They're clearly freaked out about by Stack Exchange. They attacked them for needing a "VC cookie jar," but couldn't actually saying anything bad about their sites.<p>This was also surreal: "Sites like Quora seem more like Tumblr or other blog-esque formats."<p>Wait. What?<p>Many here on HN have only ever seen EE when clicking on it <i>accidentally</i> because of their SEO-fu.<p>The rise of more modern Q&A sites combined with Google's renewed commitment to punishing automated/weak/content means this must be a challenging time to be EE.<p>I admit I'm not mad at that.
Honestly, I'm just shocked to see that there's a real person behind the site.<p>I don't know why, but whenever I stumbled across an EE answer through Google, it's always seemed like a place full of crystallized ancient knowledge.
These guys tried to recruit me out of CalPoly. One of the most disgusting, slimy companies on the internet, and the people behind the site are every bit the sleezeballs you think they are. I believe this blog post adequately supports my assertion.<p>(Also, who can resist the old internet joke about their original domain name? expert sex change dot com made for good chuckles in Staley's class.)
From the article: "One of the big things that makes Experts Exchange unique is a patented system that requires askers to select their best answer."<p>A great example of how broken the patent system is.
> At Experts Exchange, we know who we are.<p>Oh no they don't. Judging by their attitude these people are in complete denial as to how they are perceived by others.<p>> Experts Exchange Experts are unpaid volunteers who give of their time to answer questions on the site.<p>Right. So if they are unpaid volunteers wouldn't they rather help the community and provide the same answers at stackoverflow?<p>If I volunteer to serve soup on Saturday in a soup kitchen to the homeless, why in the world would I want to have some third company take my soup and sell it to the same homeless people and keep the profit.<p>And then of course, why would they name their site something that sound exactly like "expert sex change"? Wasn't their domain listed as r-rated in some porn filtering software a while back.
I find this exceptionally funny.<p>EE held me hostage for so many years, working as a young independent contractor in a small town with far fewer tech resources to draw upon... there's just no sympathy for their particular kind of slimeball tactics.<p>I remember that they even experimented with cutting off answers right before the end, not to mention saying that they had an answer when it fact they didn't. There was certainly no way to get your money back.<p>Thanks Google, Hacker News, GitHub, Quora, Ruby on Rails and even Facebook for making my life so much better in less than a decade.
Hang on, Experts Exchange has actual people behind it? I thought it somehow spontaneously congealed out of the random spam swirling around the Internet, like how the Sargasso Sea forms in the dead zone of the North Atlantic out of the detritus and flotsam there. It's where content goes to die. The notion that some sort of malevolent intelligence fuels it is a disconcerting one.
Rupert Pupkin, anybody? Experts Exchange is not a small site in general, and has been around for like 15 years (per the article), so I'm a little curious how this guy got so jaded on VC such that he "got the t-shirt."<p>Is EE really run by movers and shakers riding deals every few years in their spare time? Until finally tiring of the rigamarole and retiring to their first love, Experts Exchange. Isn't it more likely that they've hired various "been through an acquisition and/or IPO" people to try and give them business ideas over the years? No wonder the site is so annoying, these people would have been bleeding the founders dry while suggesting a full campaign of popup ads that worked a peach a few years back at Ask Jeeves. That doesn't work, so they move on to the next guy who totally worked at Twitter in the early days.<p>I'm thinking lashing out at the world is at the unpaid end of the spectrum of BizDev.
There is also an earlier cry baby article titled "Blekko Bans Experts Exchange....And No One Cares". Too funny!<p><a href="http://www.experts-exchange.com/blogs/EE-Tech-News/B_3838-Blekko-Bans-Experts-Exchange-And-No-One-Cares.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.experts-exchange.com/blogs/EE-Tech-News/B_3838-Bl...</a>
"Most Q&A sites (StackExchange included) let the community vote for the best answer, when really the person whose opinion matters most is the one who asked the question."<p>I'm not sure that's correct. Didn't the person ask the question in the first place because they didn't know the answer? In the case of a technical question, someone might give them an answer which produces the correct output but in a terrible way, the person who asked the question might be tempted to mark this as the best answer and move on.
::SOB SOB:: looks like someone felt left out. Whoa! no VCs? I would just love to see what would happen if they found out I didn't pick them for my kickball team. Looks like Fortune magazine in the end all for what's right in this universe.<p>Pretending like you took part in the interview. I can only describe it to my self as...Desperation.<p>Maybe this is whine your-self some more recognition tactic? I've been out of the game since I was 6 years old, I can't be sure.
I wonder if the author is even aware of the ill will people have towards EE? There are not many sites people <i>clamor</i> to remove from Google listings. You're probably doing something wrong if they are.
When the article didn't load, it took me a minute to remember I'd blacklisted experts exchange in my hosts file several years ago. Apparently I'm still not missing anything.
I am a registered expert and contributor and they reward me by locking me out if I do not contribute for a month. I cannot even see my own answers. With competition around I do not think they will be able to hold people hostage for long.
God I love how Stackoverflow kick those guys buts, and they don't even know their concurrency enough to tell bad things about it, most things they said it's theirs super duper feature is already at Stack.
It's a little sad that expert sexchange felt the need to respond to an interview they weren't asked for in such an immature manner, and yet they still haven't realized that they weren't invited to the party because their content is paywalled, littered with ads, and generally considered spam by most users who are seeking answers.
There was this time when Google used to let me remove links from the search results (personalization, I presume) and I would RELIGIOUSLY remove expertsexchange.com. It also used to fill me with warmth to know that several other geeks probably did the same! :-)
Wow! I just read something on Expert Exchange and i didn't even have to pay any money!<p>Expert Exchange is actually a legit company? I had no idea. I don't think i know anybody who's ever used it. Hell, i've never <i>heard</i> of anybody who's ever used Expert Exchange.
"best and brightest technology minds on our site, including over 300 Microsoft MVPs"<p>That's an odd measurement of what it takes to qualify as one of the "best and brightest technology minds"...<p>To be fair, I once was an MCP.
I am mostly a coder, but running a small start-up, I encountered a need to configure 3com and HP switches and routers (VLANs, routing, BGP, etc). Those devices have a complex OS, and the documentation is usually cumbersome. To my surprise, the only site where I got exact answers on this was experts-exchange. Google did not help, stackoverflow did not help. I was about to hire an consultant for a few thousand, but discovered that I could do it myself, paying about $30/mo for e-e.
What I'd like to know is how does EE always show up so well in Google search results? Even when there are several better results to a particular technical search query EE always shows up near the top of Google's results.<p>I can't speak for anyone else's queries but from my perspective EE is just Google spam, and their "answers" aren't worth the HTTP traffic.
I sought out and installed a user-script addon for my favourite browser, specifically to remove EE from search results for technical questions.<p>EE, I hate you.
Wait, forgot to mention that now that google created the chrome anti-google results plugin, expertsexchange is in trouble (missing hyphen there somewhere)
Whenever I am searching for an internet solution, if I see a result coming from the EE domain I automatically pass over it, so why shouldnt the reporter?