Stack Overflow:Building Social Software for the Anti-SocialJeff Atwoodcodinghorror.comstackoverflow.com

So I went to New Zealand Consulate and asked if it was true. And they said: "Indeed. New Zealanders can visit Australia without a Visa". And I said:"Well, I wanna be a New Zealander. My father is a New Zealander. Can I get a New Zealand passport?" And they said: "Certainly, Sir. Go down to the basement, get some pictures taken, bring them up". And I did, and they did, and they made me a passport.

Joel Spolsky

Step 1:

Know your audience

Q:

How do you tell an introverted computer programmer from an extroverted computer programmer?

A:

An extroverted computer programmer looks at your shoes when he talks to you.

“In the early years of programming, a program was regarded as the private property of the programmer. One would no more think of reading a colleague's program unbidden than of picking up a love letter and reading it.”

“This is essentially what a program was, a love letter from the programmer to the hardware, full of the intimate details known only to partners in an affair.”

This series of books is affectionately dedicatedto the Type 650 computer once installed atCase Institute of Technology,in remembrance of many pleasant evenings.

Donald Knuthdedication toThe Art of Computer Programming1968

One of the great pioneers of computer and online gaming, Dani Berry died in 1998. Some of her aphorisms are still frequently quoted by game developers, including

”No one ever said on their deathbed, ‘Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer.’”

Step 2:

Know your topic

Programming is now a social activity

Like it or not.

Social software for the anti-social

(programmers)

Step 3:

Understand people’s motivations

Modern programming may be a social activity, but programmers are still introverted and anti-social.*

What motivates us to work with confusing, complicated, erratic people instead of simple computers?*and that’s how we like it!

A shared passion:

We love programming.

A common enemy:

We hate Bad Code.

•I don’t have to agree with you•I don’t have to be “friends” with you•I don’t even have to like you

… but we have a shared passion, a shared enemy, and we can learn from each other.

The currency of Stack Overflow is information.

Programmers map social relationships on top of that.

Do you really need software to tell you who your friends are?

Workvs.

work

Work is when your boss tells you to do something, you do it, and you get paid.

work is motivated by inherent interest and generally unpaid.

Usability testing techniques developed over the past 25 years for Work no longer apply for work.

We shouldn't be asking, “Can you complete the task?” but rather “Are you motivated to do it in the first place?”

Little-w work:

Tiny slices of frictionless effort

Amortized across the entire community

“If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project --every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in -- that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought.”

•Fast, fast, fast•No registration required•Simple Markdown formatting•Edit anything, anytime (with rep)

Every question has an input box at the bottom, inviting you to participate and share what you know

“I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby) [...] I'd like to know what features most people would want.”

“Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.”

“In the past, we could do little things for love, but big things required money. Now, we can do big things for love.”