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Comment by jeremyt | Hacker News Reader

PM of the Stack Exchange sites here.

I can understand why it appears this way from outside, but we've never been moving faster than we are now.

I have been on board for about six months, and in that time we have rolled out lots of usability and layout improvements: streamlined sign-up process, a new anonymous homepage, a consolidated and curated help center, completely rewritten search, new badges page, upcoming new privileges page...

In the next couple of months, we will be finishing sitewide SSL, redesigns of our more high-traffic pages, and a complete re-factor around closing to make that process more clear.

Stay tuned, because I'm excited about where we're headed.

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I like SO, but its focus is just too narrow. Any question that seems to involve an opinion is shut down as not constructive, yet I can assure you that the vast majority of questions that bring me to SO are of this type.

You already rely on the users to vote up the good answers and vote down the bad ones - why don't you trust them to continue doing this, rather than shutting down useful and interesting topics?

Without addressing the broader question, which we are well aware of and continue to discuss internally, "not constructive" will no longer be a close reason as of next week. It's being replaced, in this case, by "primarily opinion based", which is a slightly higher bar. The result should be a small decrease in questions closed for opinion based reasons.

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-...

Huge SO fan, and I have no doubt that there is serious ongoing work at SO. Each of the items you listed sounds like it will improve someone's life and is not so simple with 5 years of legacy. Based on these descriptions I would bucket that work as "improvements" and not "disruptive."

I think what GP was commenting on, which I agree with, is that SO doesn't appear to evolve its core mission from question-answers to something else -- perhaps a worthy HN/Slashot/Reddit replacement with discussions? Or expert-based code-reviews? Or documenting best-of-breed frameworks/platforms/service providers/etc/etc/etc (like GP posted)? I don't necessarily believe that SO should change its mandate, and I certainly don't know what would be a worthy change, but without an appearance of change then I can't help but fear SO will be relegated to the top google search result for me instead of a regular destination every day (like HN is).

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