Answers.OnStartups.com -- StackOverflow for startups

http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/10724/Answers-OnStartups-Community-Q-A-For-Startup-Entrepreneurs.aspx

by smartbear • 17 years ago

98 49 17 years ago

onstartups.com

vaksel2• 17 years ago

i was gonna register, until I saw that you only take openid.

dshah3• 17 years ago

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)

vaksel2• 17 years ago

stackoverflow doesn't just use openid, they give you like a hundred different options. It's pretty surprising that they don't have it for stackexchange.

sefner• 17 years ago

For what it's worth someone asked Joel this after the first DevDays in Boston and he said adding a normal username/password login was at the top of their list.

kylec• 17 years ago

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.

justlearning2• 17 years ago

I am genuinely curious - why are you (and some others) against openid? (apart from the trust factor)

zaidf• 17 years ago

It is a pain to use and understand, even for a techie like me.

When it works, it's magic. And often I don't mind--especially since facebook's implementation of it.

When it doesn't work, I've no freakin idea what is going on. And it really makes me miss the plain ol login/pass.

mechanical_fish4• 17 years ago

It's a royal pain in the ass.

Like everyone else in the world, I already have a well-established workflow for managing usernames and passwords. My favorite tool is 1Password for the Mac. It works seamlessly with the majority of websites. It doesn't work well with Stack Overflow. Most sites log me in with one keypress; Stack Overflow now takes two keypresses and a mouse click, and that's after I carefully set it up by hand, because the auto-learning feature doesn't work with OpenID.

I resisted using OpenID for months because I didn't want my login on Stack Overflow to be tied inextricably to my Yahoo or Google identity. I can change a password, and on well-designed sites I can even change a username, but I can't change my OpenID on Stack Overflow by any means that I can find.

(Yeah, I know I could have used some kind of identity-forwarding fu to use my own domain as an OpenID, and then forwarded the actual task of running an OpenID server to some other entity that I could change at will. Whatever. I don't want to have to read a goddamn FAQ in order to log in to Stack Overflow, of all things. Even the Treasury Department, which has the most baroque login scheme I have ever seen, involving a personalized plastic card and an onscreen keyboard, doesn't make me read a manual in order to use their site.)

(And, yeah, I know that there are honest and hardworking startups dedicated to providing me with an OpenID. Not to put too fine a point on it: If my Stack Overflow ID is going to be inextricably tied to somebody else's website being up, I'm going to pick a website that has been up for at least one decade, and promises to remain up for as many future decades as possible. If my identity can't be made to live as long as me, I've got a problem.)

So I finally gave in and signed up with my Yahoo OpenID. I have no idea why I picked them over Google. I doubt it was for their track record of preserving user privacy.

But the pain did not end, because I proceeded to forget which ID I had used. In their zeal to ensure that everyone on Earth is pre-provided with an OpenID, the standard's proponents have created a monster: My OpenIDs outnumber my uses for OpenID by an order of magnitude. I have a bunch of Google accounts, and I tried one or two of them, and then I just decided that I had better things to do than write that post on Stack Overflow. If I hadn't happened to have left another machine logged in to the site with a very long-term cookie, my username would be gone forever. (They can't email you a hint, because they don't capture email addresses.) At least now I've taught it to 1Password, and if that fails me I can Google up this rant. ;)

Sadly, all of this has had the Pavlovian effect of making me feel really angry every time I see the login screen at Stack Overflow, a truly useful and even inspiring site which I read fairly often. Never a second chance to make a first impression, I guess.

jerome_etienne• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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? :)

whirlycott1• 17 years ago

dharmesh++

sachinag2• 17 years ago

Is this essentially the Ask MeFi for HN? I'm confused.

abossy3• 17 years ago

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.

ahoyhere• 17 years ago

Hey. Regarding the "how do I set up a credit card payments system", you might like this free little ebook I put together when I was going through that particular hell:

http://jumpstartcc.com

petercooper2• 17 years ago

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.

proee• 17 years ago

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.

terpua• 17 years ago

http://stackexchange.com/

davidw2• 17 years ago

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)"

dshah3• 17 years ago

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_user2• 17 years ago

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.

allenbrunson• 17 years ago

i don't think that's the whole story.

there is a question/answer thread on stackoverflow that revolves around a post i made on my blog. seeing that the answers weren't reflecting as much as i personally know about the subject, i figured out how to log in to stack overflow. then i discovered i didn't have enough karma or whatever to leave a comment. i don't care enough to stick around however long it would take to get however much karma it would take to do that. so, too bad stackoverflow users, you're not getting the benefit of my knowledge.

kpanghmc• 17 years ago

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.

davidw2• 17 years ago

Uncanny valley? What's that got to do with these sites?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

mattmanser• 17 years ago

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.

jlees• 17 years ago

I think this is the third such site I've seen this week. Guess there's a need!

petercooper2• 17 years ago

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.

Answers.OnStartups.com -- StackOverflow for startups

Related Stories