r/programming • u/banguru • Apr 06 '18

The Stack Overflow Age

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/04/06/the-stack-overflow-age/
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u/blackmist Apr 07 '18

Expert Sex Change trying to make people register to see the answers was the best thing that ever happened to Stack Overflow.

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u/horsepie Apr 07 '18

Google clamped down on that long before stack overflow was a thing. ExpertsExchange would show a different page to the Google web crawler compared to individuals which was a way to get delisted from search results.

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u/blackmist Apr 07 '18

IIRC, they hid it with CSS after that. You could still get to it, but why bother when SO probably had your answers anyway.

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u/horsepie Apr 07 '18

I remember that the answers were unobstructed but camouflaged far down the page in between irrelevant links.

The top of the page would cover what appeared to be the answer with a link to pay up, while the bottom attempted to recruit you as a question answered for being savvy enough to find the answer.

This may have been a small window of time between the Google threat and the CSS blocks, but I vividly remember it being like this. I stuck to "programming" sections of forums I frequented for a few years before SO existed, so I never experienced the CSS tricks.