Erf

From the perspective of someone encountering the site: how does it help? Why should I use your site instead of just emailing them? Or using Scribd? Or putting it on my network shared drive?

In programming AI players for various games, I've found that stupid algorithms with excellently-tuned parameters beat smart algorithms with decently-tuned parameters.

Similar: Perhaps make downvoting power -- as opposed to upvoting power -- proportional to age/karma? That would empower experienced (indoctrinated?) members to discourage the undesired content, without too heavily influencing the discussion.

But the next question is: Who has the deeper pockets with which to throw more money to the content providers?

Yes.

One thing I noticed is that searches no longer require that all words in the query be present in the search results. Adding a + before a word is now required to ensure that it's present in results. That frequently results in me having to do 2-3 searches to find something that could previously be found with one.

Despite all the downmodding, jpwagner's suggestion is on the money. What would most benefit the development of a tool like this is extensive understanding of how the target audience reacts to and applies it.

Lest we forget that COBOL and SQL were originally designed to be accessible to non-developer business-y types. One wonders how much UX testing they underwent.

They seem to have mostly avoided that, actually. There's no Firefox logo on their site, for example.

This, incidentally, reads like a business how-not-to.

Why is it counter-intuitive? If your goal is to make a lot of money, sometimes your exit strategy will be acquisition.

The setup I've found works best is to have two computers with browsers pointed to an Etherpad document, to allow pseudocode, and use problem domains that don't require the use of references.

That allows face-to-face communication, and avoids the uncomfortable violation of personal space induced by over-the-shoulder glancing.

Incidentally, this technique scales very effectively for phone interviews.