StackOverflow has been a popular community where software developers would help one another. Recently they raised some VC funding, and to make profits they are selling job postings and expanding the model to other areas. Metaoptimize LLC has started a similar website, using the open-source OSQA framework for such as statistics and machine learning. Here’s a description:
You and other data geeks can ask and answer questions on machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, text analysis, information retrieval, search, data mining, statistical modeling, and data visualization.
Here you can ask and answer questions, comment and vote for the questions of others and their answers. Both questions and answers can be revised and improved. Questions can be tagged with the relevant keywords to simplify future access and organize the accumulated material.
If you work very hard on your questions and answers, you will receive badges like “Guru”, “Student” or “Good answer”. Just like a computer game! In return, well-meaning question answerers will be helping feed Google and numerous other companies with good information they will offer the public along with sponsored information that someone is paying for.
I’ll join the party myself when they introduce the “Rent,” “Mortgage Payment,” “Medical Bill”, and “Grocery” badges. Until then, I’ll be spending time and money, and someone else will be saving time and earning money. For a real community, there has to be some basic fairness.
[9:15pm: Included Ryan Shaw's correction to my post, pointing out that MetaOptimize is based on OSQA and not on the StackOverflow platform.]
[D+1, 7:30am: Igor Carron points to an initiative that's actually based on the StackOverflow.]
Which means you get paid for posting here instead?
MetaOptimize doesn't seem to be affiliated with StackOverflow. It is running on OSQA, an open-source alternative to the hosted StackExchange service that StackOverflow runs.
None of which makes your critique any less relevant; just thought I'd point it out.
William, I don't get paid for posting here – it's all volunteer work.
I don't understand your comment about spending time and money and someone else saving time and earning money.
Sure if you participate in an online community you spend time, presumably both contributing your knowledge but also gaining access to other people's knowledge as well. Where does spending money come into it? Are they charging to be a community member?
Who are the "someone else"'s who are getting a profitable free ride? Are you conflating the other community members [saving time] with the site admins [earning money]?
Apologies if I'm not reading your post properly, it's often difficult to parse sarcasm in text
Joel Spolky's stroke of genius was to link Stack Overflow to a careers site. Recruiters can not only see your CV, but also your Stack Overflow reputation, and a manager can see the way you approach difficult "long tail" problems without even calling you in for an interview. Time spent building your reputation is also time invested in your own career development.
Spolsky's business philosophy has always been about finding the best developers and giving them excellent working conditions. This works well because, despite the large pool of talent available, the difference between a good programmer and an excellent programmer is incredibly important. I'm not sure this applies in every field, though.
Aleks,
There is also this effort using the stackoverflow software:
Statistics version of MathOverflow looking for beta testers
http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/statist…
If interested you might want to commit:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/stat…
Cheers,
Igor.
Before I'd commit to anything, I'd like to know:
1. Who owns the content? 2. Who's making money and how much of it? 3. Can I take my content and reputation elsewhere? 4. Can someone else take my content and reputation elsewhere? 5. What are the controls limiting freeloading and abusive behavior?
Wikipedia was set up as foundation, providing clear answers to 1 and 2. Usenet was an effort of internet community that was destroyed by 4 (Dejanews and Google Groups) and 5.
I cannot endorse supporting any kind of initiative that pretends to be a community without being transparent about these matters. Without that, the operators of the website just expect free labor from volunteers who are filling someone else's coffers. The world would be a better place with these volunteers volunteering where it matters.
Aleks,
I put up the site, because I'm an NLP + ML researcher (postdoc at UdeM), and knew how much the community needed this sort of site. I also think that it's important that ML, NLP, stats, vision, etc. crosspolinate information more, because we are adjacent fields and don't communicate enough. It is also useful for researchers at remote institutions, who don't get enough face time with their colleagues.
Alexandre Passos (Unicamp) writes: "Really thank you for that. As a machine learning phd student from somewhere far from most good research centers (I'm in brazil, and how many brazillian ML papers have you seen in NIPS/ICML recently?), I struggle a lot with this folk wisdom. Most professors around here haven't really interacted enough with the international ML community to be up to date"
Let me address your specific concerns.
1. Who owns the content?
As the footer says: "User submitted content is under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Unported." You can read more about this license here. This is similar to StackOverflow, except they require Share Alike.
2. Who's making money and how much of it?
I'm not making any money. However, I've seen from answering questions on Quora has led to me receiving a lot of job offers, because I demonstrate practical knowledge that isn't always reflected in my publications. So I hope that people participating on this Q+A site leads to people getting gigs, in addition to the other benefits that come when people share knowledge.
3. Can I take my content and reputation elsewhere?
IANAL and this is not legal advice, but you can always take your content everywhere else. I don't know what you mean by taking your reputation elsewhere. From a technical perspective, you should talk to the OSQA core devs. I think they are working on a feature so that OSQA sites can "federate".
4. Can someone else take my content and reputation elsewhere?
As long as they adhere to the Creative Commons license, someone can use your content. Here is the relevant language from CC-Wiki:
You are free: to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work; to Remix — to adapt the work;
Under the following conditions: Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
5. What are the controls limiting freeloading and abusive behavior?
There are moderator controls. But I guess I'll have to address this issue as it arises.
Aleks,
I really do not understand the rather hostile attitude you have towards Q&A sites such as Stackoverflow.
I am sure you have had occasions when you wanted to get an answer from an expert for a research related question. Well designed Q&A communities attract experts so that someone such as yourself can post a question and obtain an answer from someone else. Perhaps, the most well known example of such a site is http://www.mathoverflow.net which is targeted at research mathematicians. I would encourage you to browse mathoverflow to get a sense of how effective such a Q&A site can be.
Anon
Before I go to another conference to present anything, I'd like to know:
Before I'd commit to anything, I'd like to know:
1. Who owns the content?
2. Who's making money and how much of it?
3. Can I take my content and reputation elsewhere?
4. Can someone else take my content and reputation elsewhere?
5. What are the controls limiting freeloading and abusive behavior?
Extraordinary post! It's lucky that everyone doesn't think that way, or we'd still be living in caves.
Joseph, thanks for setting up the site, and being willing to engage in this discussion.
Anon, no hostility here. Although I do have some resentment after having spent years volunteering on Usenet to have it ripped apart by commercial interests and absence of controls. I believe that community-based efforts to organize information are superior to commercially driven ones.
Jeremy, thanks for finding my post extraordinary!
Most conferences have pretty good answers to those 5 questions, much better ones than many 'Web 2.0' sites.
Before I publish another journal article, I'd like to know the following:
1. Who owns the content?
2. Who's making money and how much of it?
3. Can I take my content and reputation elsewhere?
4. Can someone else take my content and reputation elsewhere?
5. What are the controls limiting freeloading and abusive behavior?
Actually, I already know the answers:
1. The publisher.
2. The publisher, and a lot.
3. Content no, reputation yes.
4. The publisher can do whatever they like with it because they have the copyright.
5. The publisher ensures everyone pays through the nose.
OK, extraordinary was taking it a bit far. But you seem to be thinking about the long term details of it – and the important part seems to be if someone else is going to make money off it. But if no one is going to make money off it, it's not going to happen as much (except by voluntary efforts – and it's amazing that, for example, R-help, stat-l and statalist do exist with voluntary effort).
Hadley's arguments about journal articles also apply to books – but I get some academic credibility in my field from writing journal articles, but (in my field) not a lot for writing books. Someone is making a reasonable amount of cash, and it's not me. But even though I don't like that, I'm going to continue to do it.
A lot of freeloaders copy my articles (OK, they copy articles, maybe not mine) – I even stick them on a web site or email them to help them with this. Most of the people on email lists are freeloaders (and have to be, or the list gets clogged up very quickly).
Anyhow, sometimes I think it's fun to try to answer people's questions. I guess not everyone does.
Hadley, pretty devastating! Why would anyone want to publish in a journal anymore?
Permanent google waves could be the way forward – covering the spectrum from article with reviewers comments to a short notes in Brit Birds style to classic papers with a 20 year history of citations.
The ownership issue is truly ridiculous – my paper from 1982 is on the web, behind a paywall and the publisher will not send me a PDF!
Certainly no good for job applications.
ON listing – I have worked places where well known people that spent a lot of time on public lists were widely reviled because they did almost no internal work.
So being seen as an avid list member can also work against you.
DaveG
Why not make this blog follow the Stack Overflow model? Then the regular authors and poster's here could gain.
Thumbs up or down seems to be an efficient, if limited way to guide such discussions.
As an aside, reputation could be exchangable for salary raises, tenure, self-worth, inflated ego, advancement toward enlightenment, etc.
Good point – there are no tools yet for something like this. There are things like Disqus, but we've been reluctant to trust the handling, storage, backup of comments to someone else.