Comment by 300bps | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 300bps | Hacker News Reader

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You seem to be thinking that people answering questions deserve to be paid

If I may first pay you a compliment, you are very adept at twisting words and building up straw man arguments.

What I actually said was:

What [Experts Exchange] did was build a business model based on taking from many and giving to nobody

Your response was then:

EE treats those answering questions really well

But we both know this isn't true. It pays the vast, vast, vast majority of question answerers in worthless or near worthless points. The average question answerer, including the ones that get flown places and "treated like a VIP" is probably actually getting less than minimum wage for their work. That's hardly being treated "really well".

So we come back to my original statement. Experts Exchange built their business on taking from many and giving to nobody. If you want me to add an exception of, "giving to nobody except giving scraps to the very top of people whose time they were taking to build their business on" I would be amenable to that.

My friend, I do not intentionally twist words. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how you can be upset that:

- EE isn't paying people money for the answers they provide

when

- those persons answering questions are doing so with no expectation of being paid in anything but points.

It's no different than Stack Overflow, but you seem to think otherwise. Just trying to figure out what you're getting at.

It's no different than Stack Overflow

You're being consciously or subconsciously obtuse.

With Experts Exchange:

1. People answer questions for free

2. People pay for the answers

3. Google and other search engines are gamed

The only thing that is the "just like Stack Overflow" is #1. The other two items are absolutely nothing like Stack Overflow. As I said, Experts Exchange takes from many and gives to nobody. Stack Exchange takes from many and gives to all. You really can't possibly not see the difference.

> Experts Exchange built their business on taking from many and giving to nobody.

How is the Stack Overflow business model any different?

Uh... they give the answers to everybody?

I don't understand what getting paid for answers is for? They volunteer to help answer questions, most do this because they get that warm fuzzy feeling inside from doing a good deed and helping someone out, the rest for the free access to the site.

No one at SO gets paid to post. so why should EE pay them to post?

No one at SO gets paid to post. so why should EE pay them to post?

Maybe because EE expects to be paid to share those answers and SO doesn't?

Maybe SO doesn't have a paid staff to pay for, and has larger operating costs? without other sources of income to pay those

Are you daft?

http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring

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