background July 26, 2009

Why Can’t You Have Just One Site?

Now that we have four sites in the Stack Overflow trilogy: Some users disagree with the idea that there should be four sites. Why do we need the trilogy instead of just one site? Having four sites to jump between is ridiculous! Why not one Site? Trilogy Portal: Community Colloboration The whole point of these…
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Co-Founder (Former)
community July 23, 2009

Non-English Question Policy

Since this came up on meta, here’s our official policy towards non-English questions on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User. (note that I say “programming” below, but this policy is the same across all the sites — when reading, you should substitute the actual topic of the site you use, e.g. “sysadmin topics” for…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background July 22, 2009

Stack Overflow Flash Mobs

Coding Horror reader Alex Vincent wrote to let me know that there is a Stack Overflow Birds-of-a-Feather session at OSCON 2009, which is going on right now. The premise of the BOF session is intriguing; it’s not at all what I expected: In concert with users online across the country, this session will lead a…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
background July 17, 2009

High Scalability Blog on Stack Overflow

It was quite an honor to see that the High Scalability Blog posted an entry on Stack Overflow! We referred to the HSB, and its exhaustively detailed information about how other websites handle scaling, many times during the course of Stack Overflow development. And I’ve cited it myself when researching what we think is the…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
beta July 15, 2009

Super User Semi-Private Beta Begins

The semi-private beta for Super User has begun. That’s right, it is officially Ewok Time. At any rate, if you wanted a community where (almost) anything goes, you’re about to get exactly what you asked for in the form of superuser.com. If your question has to do with computers, it will be allowed there. But…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
company July 14, 2009

Migrate Questions Between Websites

First, I’ve got a little joke for you, courtesy of Kip and TheTxi. A doctor, a lawyer, and a rabbi log into Stack Overflow. The bartender looks at them and says “sorry, you guys are not programming related.” I didn’t say it was a good joke. Moving on. Now that we have threefour Stack Overflow…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
community July 13, 2009

Reversal and Pundit Badges

Two new badges today: Reversal Provided an answer upvoted 20 or more times to a question that was downvoted 5 or more times. (gold) Pundit Left 10 comments with a score of 10 or more. (silver) I think I’ve discussed the Stack Overflow philosophy of badges ad nauseam by now, but the Reader’s Digest condensed…
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Co-Founder (Former)
background July 10, 2009

This Just In: Stack Overflow Defeats Google

We knew in our hearts this day would come: Stack Overflow has defeated Google! On July 2, from 6:45 AM PDT until 12:35 PM PDT, Google App Engine (App Engine) experienced an outage that ranged from partial to complete. Following is a timeline of events, an analysis of the technology and process failures, and a…
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Co-Founder (Former)
background July 6, 2009

Are you a human being?

Ever had one of these days? Are you a human being? We apologize for the confusion, but we can’t quite tell if you’re a person or a script. Please don’t take this personally. Bots and scripts can be remarkably lifelike these days! Enter the CAPTCHA displayed below, and we’ll be out of your way. If…
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Co-Founder (Former)
company July 5, 2009

Database Server Upgrade — 48 GB

We are currently upgrading the database server to 48 GB of memory, which also means we have to upgrade the operating system, too. Should be done in about an hour. OK, this is complete. Our database server not only has 48 GB of memory installed, but has access to all of that memory. Finally. And…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
community July 4, 2009

Welcome New Server Fault Moderator

Last week, the first user reached 10,000 reputation on Server Fault. That user is splattne. I had already noticed Stefan from his high quality contributions to Stack Overflow and Twitter, where he seems like a genuinely nice guy and a true geek like us. So when he passed the magical 10k mark, I felt comfortable…
Avatar for Jeff Atwood
Co-Founder (Former)
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