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background March 19, 2010

Important Reputation Rule Changes

In the next few days, we will be rolling out two important changes to the way reputation works on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, and Meta. We’re letting you know now so you can be prepared. Item the first: question upvotes will now grant only +5 rep instead of +10.* There is no change…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background March 16, 2010

More Trilogy Sites?

One thing we’ve been pitching a lot to VCs is our love for internet communities that are obsessive about something, where that something could be … well, anything, really. I feel that the kind of expert communities that arise around a shared passion for something are not only fascinating but help the world at large,…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background March 14, 2010

Podcast Future

Hey presto! Jeff gave me permission to publish here, so from now on, you’ll be seeing posts from both of us. The first thing I want to talk about is plans for the podcast. I feel like the current podcast format needs to be freshened up a little bit. I think we’ve started repeating ourselves…
Avatar for Joel Spolsky
Co-founder & Former Chairman of the Board
background March 11, 2010

Welcome Stack Overflow Valued Associate #00004

I am pleased to announce that Stack Overflow just added another team member in an officially paid capacity: Kevin Montrose. You may remember Kevin as the author of the unofficial Stack Exchange API. I didn’t realize at the time that Kevin was graduating from Rice University in Houston, TX and actively looking for employment. But…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background March 1, 2010

Our Sidekick, iFixit.com

Late last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Kyle Wiens, who recently launched iFixit.com. It’s a community driven site providing step-by-step self repair guides for predominantly Apple hardware: Repair is recycling! The best way to keep electronics out of landfills is to keep them working longer. Toxic electronic waste is a global problem that…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background January 25, 2010

Six Whys – Or, Never Trust Your Network Switch

Remember Joel Spolsky’s fine article “Five Whys”? Sure you do! It contained this paragraph: Michael spent some time doing a post-mortem, and discovered that the problem was a simple configuration problem on the switch. There are several possible speeds that a switch can use to communicate (10, 100, or 1000 megabits/second). You can either set…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
api January 15, 2010

What Would a Stack Overflow API Look Like?

We are now gearing up to build the first official Stack Overflow API. Please bear in mind that the first version of the API will be read-only by design. We’d rather attack the much harder problem of writing (that is, submitting questions, answers, and comments) in V2 with improvements rolled in from our experience having…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background January 14, 2010

Stack Overflow Network Configuration

I think we’ve finally arrived at a semi-stable network layout for running Stack Overflow and the rest of the trilogy. Here’s a diagram of our current network layout: The most recent changes were all in the name of redundancy: move to dual HAProxy routing instances add a third Stack Overflow server to the HAProxy rotation…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background January 13, 2010

Coming Soon: Stack Overflow T-Shirts

I am beginning the process of placing a Stack Overflow T-Shirt order. Please refer to the two meta t-shirt questions to see proposed designs (or post your own), but I think we’re going to have to go with something simple and basic to please everyone. At the moment, I am thinking a large-ish copy of…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background January 4, 2010

Stack Overflow: Where We Hate Fun

I noticed that the Stack Overflow question Strangest language feature has been closed and reopened several times now. The text of the question is brief: What is in your opinion the most surprising, weird, strange or really “WTF” language feature you have encountered? I agree this is not exactly an ideal question for Stack Overflow,…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background January 1, 2010

Stack Overflow Gives Back

It’s hard to believe that Stack Overflow has been “a thing” for over a year and a half now. I quit my job in March 2008, we announced Stack Overflow in April 2008, and the site was launched in September 2008. The rest is kind of a blur. During 2009, the company became somewhat stable,…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
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