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Have you heard about Stack Sites? If you haven’t, you will. Here’s an overview:

In 2008 two programmers—Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky—created a website called StackOverflow. The site had one purpose: to allow its users to ask and/or answer questions about computer programming (use of everything on the site is free). On the StackOverflow Home page you’ll see a long list of questions. Click on a question and you’ll view the various answers given. There are multiple ways to sort and categorize data, and it all works very fast indeed.

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood

An incentive is given to those who take the time and effort to give a worthy answer: reputation points and “badges” are awarded. Users vote on answers they find helpful, and by accumulating enough points winners earn digital Gold, Silver, and Bronze badges. Users can also vote an answer down if it’s off topic or incorrect, which penalizes points.

StackOverflow is popular. As of this writing it has nearly 100,000 registered users and 68,403 questions. (You can download podcasts from StackOverflow, too.) Not surprisingly, StackOverflow set off a veritable overflow of technically-oriented stack sites. For instance:

• ScienceStack, which deals with scientific questions such as “What’s the decay rate of C6H5Br?” or “What is the species with the shortest longevity?” Of course, scientists have their fun side like anybody else, so you also get questions like “What’s your favorite ‘science’ cartoon?”
• SuperUser is a stack site for computer enthusiasts. You don’t need to be a programmer to enjoy this site, but it helps to be a bit of a techie (or, yes, a SuperUser). Sample questions: “How to allow blank password on Windows 7 Home Premium?” and “How do I get Fluid to open multiple pages by default?”
• ServerFault is geared to system administrators and IT professionals, who wonder: “Is Elmah safe to use on a production SharePoint/ASP.NET server?” or “Why is OLEDB provider saying I have a duplicate when I don’t?” Darned if I know, but somebody out there probably has an answer.

It was inevitable that Stack Sites would move into the general realm, and they are now doing so. A website called StackExchangeSites lets you establish your own Stack, choosing your own color theme and other personalizations, on any topic. As they put it: “Bird calls? Stamp collecting? It’s up to you.”

StackExchangeSites is still in Beta, and at the moment they’ll host your Stack for free. That will change when Beta ends, with prices starting at $129/month and shooting up rapidly depending on the number of page views.

So far the company is hosting 86 Stacks, including CueLoop (for DJs and producers), How Sociable? (social media users), and ProTrader (professional traders of stocks, bonds, futures, etc.). There are Stacks about London, England; Cooking; Family History; Magic; Natural Healing; Mathematics; Games; and on and on. I like TravelQA, which addresses many topics I find interesting.

Bottom line: expect to hear more about Stack Sites soon.

© Suzanne Rodriguez

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