Timeline for The Foundations of Collectives and its Future
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
47 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 12, 2022 at 19:45 | answer | added | Jon Ericson | timeline score: 13 | |
| Dec 9, 2021 at 16:16 | comment | added | Keith Johnson | Very nice page - thank you for sharing! This page reminds me of a concept a friend of mine once told me about (he is a Computer Scientist and ace programmer/developer), and that is "collective intelligence". One of the last points in this page is can you split the Intel collective into two separate collectives? I asked my friend about this and he said only temporarily. Ultimately, the two temp-collectives will need to merge back and integrate to become a true collective again. Great page, thanks. | |
| Dec 6, 2021 at 22:56 | answer | added | Makoto | timeline score: 10 | |
| Dec 1, 2021 at 17:21 | answer | added | Kevin B | timeline score: 8 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 17:49 | answer | added | MachavityMod | timeline score: 36 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 17:24 | history | edited | V2Blast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
minor copyediting; clarified link description
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| Nov 30, 2021 at 15:57 | comment | added | Lundin | @Gimby It would have to be based on post views I think, not votes. And probably in relation with advertising, because Youtube is essentially just giving the video author a cut on the advertising profits earned per view. Anyway, luckily it isn't my job to make SO work as a long term commercial product. Less intrusive things like the job site seem like better ideas, though to become successful there they would have to employ actual human recruiters and not just charge for advertising, but candidate matching, interviews and so on. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 15:49 | comment | added | Gimby | @Lundin true enough but we must not forget that the setup works for Youtube because they care absolutely nothing about quality, only that a video is advertiser friendly. If the monetisation factor of Stack Overflow becomes the voting score... jeepers imagine what that is going to do to voting fraud. It's going to go rampant. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 12:22 | answer | added | khelwood | timeline score: 14 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:51 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Lundin Yes, it looks like the gain for the users from Collectives is relatively small so far. Maybe they just failed to use their resources to generate benefit for all. But you're right. Binding content creators financially to the company sounds like an idea that might work. Maybe that should be asked as a separate discussion topic? | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:40 | comment | added | Lundin | To get back to the original comment I posted - one viable business model for a private company is to pay users to post high quality (or at least high traffic) content, just look at Youtube. Will you start paying us is a serious question. It's one possible way to preserve the site in the long term, there might be others too. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:37 | comment | added | Lundin | @Trilarion But this very topic here is all about sacrificing quality and community moderation in exchange for profit. Specifically by introducing low-quality sneak advertisements that can't be moderated neither by the community nor by community-elected moderators. It holds absolutely zero value for the community and nobody asked for it either. A non-profit site wouldn't even have considered this idea to begin with. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:30 | comment | added | khelwood | "We cannot compromise on quality" but you do artificially inflate the score of articles by penalising downvotes on them. There is no evident justification for that other than to try and misrepresent the quality of articles. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:15 | comment | added | Peter Mortensen | Perhaps add something about the thinking behind the name itself, "Collectives", to preempt inevitable associations (no matter how misdirected or wrong, they exist. Especially considering the current political climate in the United States). | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:10 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Lundin "...until non-profit sites gain momentum..." There is surely a certain appeal non-profit approaches but I see it less dogmatic. Profit or no-profit, what counts most is the quality for the users in the end. Maybe SO can make the better offer, after all they have a lot of resources and could use them. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 11:02 | history | edited | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Active reading [<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%26A_software>] - also consistent with near "They are semi-isolated".
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| Nov 30, 2021 at 10:27 | comment | added | Lundin | @Trilarion Mostly they are here because there were no good alternatives for a long while. The predecessor Experts Exchange had most of the experts before SO came along, then the experts moved here. It didn't happen over night, but rather through a slow trickle, people using both sites then eventually abandoning one of them. And now there are fairly mature non-profit open source alternatives to SO - I've already stopped posting what I personally consider higher quality content on SO and only post it elsewhere. Hopefully the start of the slow trickle phase, until non-profit sites gain momentum. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 10:27 | answer | added | Mad Scientist | timeline score: 20 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 10:19 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Lundin It's not so strange. Because of its size this place here exerts some kind of gravitational pull on experts. They think that this place is somehow better than others, otherwise they wouldn't be here. Probably has to do with the size. Isn't this a well studied phenomenon that there are scale effects in economy? | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 10:06 | comment | added | Lundin | @Trilarion That argument is kind of like saying that I should drink Coca Cola instead of water because it's a big and well-known brand, whereas my local water supply is a non-profit venture ultimately controlled by democratically elected local politicians. As for experts, my question is exactly that: why should the experts stay at this site? We end up with a strange circular argument if we say that the experts should stay because the experts are found here. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 9:42 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @FailedScientist "..building on free contributors to gain profit..." I'd say that this is actually okay. People volunteer here with their knowledge and there is no reason to assume they are not aware and fully okay with their produced content to be monetized in any way the company sees fit. There are people with a million rep and thousands of hours of work writing answers on a website that belongs to somebody else. They have probably decided that the risk that their work is "misused" and that others profit from it is still worth it. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 9:23 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Lundin "Why exactly should we be using this platform?" Typically it's a combination of two factors. First, they are the biggest such platform and have a known brand name. You have the highest chance to find experts here, some kind of size advantage. And second since they have revenues they can provide a reliable service over time. Not saying this is decisive, but surely quite an advantage. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 8:05 | comment | added | Sayse | You say "We cannot compromise on quality" and yet thats exactly what the collective posts I've seen so far have been. I hope this is something that is going to be monitored and not like the time you said "We are encouraging employees to be active within the community" | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 8:04 | answer | added | Alex Guteniev | timeline score: 3 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 7:58 | comment | added | Lundin | This brings us to the question: what can SO offer the users that the non-profit open source alternatives can't? Why exactly should we be using this platform? It holds value to me as a user to support non-profit communities where I can actually affect the design and features of the site. I even donate money to them. Whereas I have absolutely no interest in unpaid volunteer work for the purpose of making some private company stock owners in USA rich. So why exactly should I be using this site? Will you start paying us, or what's the long term plan here? | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 7:39 | answer | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 7:36 | answer | added | Dalija PrasnikarMod | timeline score: 38 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 7:32 | comment | added | Failed Scientist | When she talks about quality "Stack Overflow, as a resource, is only viable if the quality of the objective content is extremely high, better than anywhere else.", does she indirectly infer that all those 12/13 years of SO had just ok/not HQ content? Reminds me of a Persian quote: "Defending a crime is worse than committing it.". SO is building on free contributors to gain profit and that's not OK!! | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 7:29 | comment | added | Failed Scientist | What does this "for profit" company has on offer for the contributors?? | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 6:54 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @MegaIng "..and some users [..] don't want to acknowledge that SO has to cater to investors and make money somehow.." That's fine. I really acknowledge that. It's just that I don't have any financial interest in the company. I'm not a shareholder or an employee. If SO gets more profitable somehow I don't see a cent from that and don't care much about that. Therefore I can purely look at how useful a feature is for me and nothing else. I understand though that everything in life is a trade-off of some sort. It's nothing personal, we all optimize but for different goals. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 6:18 | answer | added | Travis J | timeline score: 7 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 6:17 | answer | added | Journeyman Geek | timeline score: 51 | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 6:14 | comment | added | eis | @Nick "IMO, the "Please check out Philippe's post to participate in the conversation." needs to be far more prevalent in this post" why? If you know already these things, fine, but there are certainly others who don't. I think the point was so that people would read this text before jumping to Philippes post, so it was kinda the point that it isn't more prevalent. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 5:59 | comment | added | QHarr | I would like to recognise that, whilst not perfect, this communication is another example of improved transparency. | |
| Nov 30, 2021 at 4:55 | comment | added | Daniel Widdis | I appreciate the openness and transparency of this post. What I'm missing is the connection between the for-profit business and the expectation that an all-volunteer community will contribute all-volunteer time to help a for-profit company without any compensation. SO is the way it is because of community, voluntary, involvement. Spin that off? Great! Spin that off and expect volunteers to continue to give you free labor as you profit off it? Not so great. Any forward-looking profit-making venture must factor in paying for your curation staff. | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 23:13 | comment | added | Heretic Monkey | So, this pretty much kills any of the Stack Exchange sites that were devoted to a particular subject? Like Drupal Answers or Joomla and all those? Because why would Drupal or Joomla sponsor a Collective when they already have their own SE sites? In fact, why didn't Google just create a Google Cloud Stack Exchange? Less overhead I suppose. After all, with Collectives, they pay SO, Inc. for the icon and that's basically all they have to do. No need to get moderators or anything like that. Okay, Collectives are a lazy corp's SE site :). | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 22:39 | answer | added | Kevin B | timeline score: 81 | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 22:23 | comment | added | MegaIng | @Trilarion "Sure but why emphasize it here?" -> Because that is part the motivation for Collectives, and some users (apparently including you) don't want to acknowledge that SO has to cater to investors and make money somehow. "SO needs profit" is the primary reason why Collectives will stay, even with negative feedback. That is what this announcement is supposed to explain. | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 22:05 | comment | added | Dada | This post insists quite a bit on the "we are a for-profit company" and "this is not a democracy" aspects of SO. An acknowledgment that this is only possible thanks to the thousands of volunteers who answer questions would have been appreciated. Nothing too fancy, just a "thanks" somewhere in the post... Still, it's nice to have some transparency. | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 21:59 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | "We are a for-profit company." Sure but why emphasize it here? As a user I really care much less about the exact amount of proftability of SO and why should I? I will certainly use the product if it's good and if not I won't use it. The burden to balance usability and revenue should mostly be on the company, I think. I'm happy to give feedback and if you don't like it feel free to ignore it. This announcement feels a bit strange in how it comes across, focusing on revenue so much. I can only say that I respect your approach and hope your expectations come true. | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 20:43 | comment | added | Kevin B | Put another way. Why all the smoke and mirrors? Sponsored tags isn't really a service people seem to have much of an issue with. why does this service, which in it's purest form gets a company's logo on as many pages as possible, need to be presented as something it's not? | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 20:18 | history | became hot meta post | |||
| Nov 29, 2021 at 19:51 | comment | added | Kevin B | I still fail to see how they are anything more than sponsored tags 2.0. What value, at all, has it brought to the community that couldn't have existed without it? | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 19:46 | comment | added | Nick is tired | IMO, the "Please check out Philippe's post to participate in the conversation." needs to be far more prevalent in this post. We know they're a revenue stream and that was never an issue, our concerns were the ones that would be addressed in Philippe's post, which... got a single sentence at the end of this. I was reading through this hoping for good news and it took til reaching the end to get a link to where what is important to me will actually be. | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 19:37 | comment | added | bad_coder | This was a lovely post, very objective, informative and holding up to the commitments the company has made on transparency. Thank you for addressing the community and keeping us in the loop. It's very much appreciated. | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 19:17 | comment | added | Makoto | I think I finally have an answer to my questions on this. Thank you for providing this! | |
| Nov 29, 2021 at 19:10 | history | asked | Teresa Dietrich | CC BY-SA 4.0 |