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Experts Exchange

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Experts Exchange
File:Experts Exchange logo.png
Available inEnglish
OwnerRandy Redberg
URLexperts-exchange.com
Commercialyes
Registrationyes

Experts-Exchange.com (EE) is an online "ask an expert" site for computer and IT related questions that was founded in 1996. It offers multiple ways to access content on the site: earning membership by answering questions or writing articles every month, or a fee-based premium service.

At Experts-Exchange, users are awarded points for answering questions asked by other users or writing Articles the general community values as resourceful. This results in a competition for obtaining more points to achieve various experts' certifications. The site offers its services in a couple of forms: free access for users that actively participate on in the community, and a subscription service that offers full access to those who primarily use the website to get their IT and tech questions solved. Those who obtain 10,000 points are given access to all features of the web site known as premium services. Additionally they need to obtain at least 3,000 points each month to keep these privileges.

Experts Exchange went bankrupt in 2001.[1] Austin Miller and Randy Redberg took ownership of Experts Exchange later and the company was made profitable again. Experts-Exchange has more than 2 million solutions.[2] Experts-Exchange has mostly been among the top 800 visited websites in the first 6 months of 2009, based on Alexa's ranking [1][3]. Its users are mainly young to middle-aged males in the IT Field.[4]

Zones, points, rankings, administrators

The askers can post their questions in relevant "Zones" after they are registered at the site. The experts propose comments, and the asker is expected to select one or more comments that best solve the problem as the answer, and to grade the answer (from A for excellent answers to C for answers that helped a bit but didn't provide a complete solution) in order to award the most helpful experts. This is achieved by a patented system (U.S. Patent 6,064,978 [5]) that encourages experts to accumulate award points by providing satisfactory answers, and questioners to continue pushing experts until an adequate solution is obtained.

The maximum point value for a question is 500 points and the minimum is 20. Based on Experts-Exchange guidelines, 500 points should be assigned to questions of a high level of difficulty, for an urgent request, or where some other large time or cost savings benefit will be gained by the asker.[6] However, members with premium services subscription often assign the maximum point value to their simple or intermediate questions.[7]

An expert ranking system is provided to certify the experts according to their expertise, contributions and activities. A high ranking in most topic areas is generally indicative of an expert who devotes a substantial amount of time and may have a high level of expertise. The list of top experts includes a number of Microsoft MVPs as well.[8][9][10][11][12] It is announced on Microsoft Exchange team's blog that Experts-Exchange is among the communities they actively look into to find people who make good candidates for Exchange MVPs.[13]

Volunteered members with various administrative privileges maintain the site by resolving arguments, closing questions left open by the asker, and assisting members with their site-related questions.

Membership

As of May 2009, there were two ways to earn membership and get full access to the services Experts-Exchange.com offers. You could participate as an expert by answering a couple questions a month, or pay for the service and get an unlimited number of questions answered by the community.

Experts, those who earn their membership by answering at least two questions a month, [14], and subscribers get the benefit of using the site's search engine without limitations and they aren't shown ads.

Members can also get their questions answered, ask unlimited questions, write and view Experts-Exchange articles, browse the site using the alternate "Experts" skin, save solutions and other content to their knowledgebase, follow friends and other users and add to their growing list of favorites on the site.

One must be a member of Experts-Exchange to be able to ask questions.

Viewing solutions without membership

As of late 2007, it is also necessary to be a member to view solutions. People who are not signed in are redirected to a page where they can sign up, when they try to visit any Experts-Exchange page beyond the first page. However, due to a search engine optimization requirement, answers can be freely viewed by visitors that enter the site via a search engine results page[15][16], simply by scrolling down to the very bottom of pages where the answers are displayed.[17]There are other ways to view solutions without becoming a member, including viewing Google's cache of Experts-Exchange's content, or using a special web browser extension.[18] As of late 2009 it's also needed to answer on forehand at least 10 questions to get access to the "free" answers as a free "expert" member.

Criticism

Experts-Exchange is criticized for appearing high up on search engine results for technical issues while providing no solution when non-member visitors click on them. The site identifies search engine robots and sometimes serves different content to them[citation needed].

History

Originally, the name and URL of the site was expertsexchange.com but this created confusion and ridicule as many users interpreted it as Expert-Sex-Change as opposed to Experts-Exchange. Subsequently, the domain was changed to experts-exchange.com.[19]

Experts-Exchange went bankrupt in 2001 after venture capitalists moved the company to San Mateo, CA, and was brought back largely through the efforts of unpaid volunteers.[20] The period following the bankruptcy recovery was marked by a rapid growth and expansion of the knowledge base and saw technical advances.[21]

Experts-Exchange was chosen as a runner-up for Best web resource for developers award by VSJ on 2006;[22] The Code Project won this award and the other runner-up was MSDN.

In the late months of 2006, Experts-Exchange allowed users to try out a new version of their website. In late January 2007, the legacy site was replaced. Many complaints and bugs were reported during this time, but since then most have been fixed. Experts Exchange offers a skin (Expert Skin) that paid members or qualified experts may use if they prefer the Legacy site over the new one. The benefits of the Expert skin will Include smaller sized, less graphics-intensive pages, and a more text-based experience, which can be useful to users with low bandwidth.

The new site also brought about many new topic areas (now called 'zones') and the ability to cross-post. Cross-posting provides benefits for both those who ask and answer questions. Those who ask questions can place a link to it in up to 3 zones (instead of just one), which means more experts are likely to see the question and answer it. Experts who receive points on such a question will get the allotted amount of points in all 3 zones, making it easier for them to get certificates in other zones that are related. The expert's total points is only increased once for the question (even if the question appears in multiple zones).

Additional rankings were also added, as some experts have achieved the Genius ranking and had nothing else to shoot for. The new rankings that come after 'Genius' are: 'Savant' (for 10 million points), 'Elite' (for 25 million points), 'Technocrat' (for 50 million points), and 'Legend' (for 100 million points). [23].

The latest official list of ranks a member may receive are as follows: Master (50,000 points), Guru (150,000 points), Wizard (300,000), Sage (500,000), Genius (1,000,000), Savant (10,000,000), Elite (25,000,000), Technocrat (50,000,000), Legend (100,000,000).

On 13 November 2007, the number of solutions on Experts-Exchange reached 2,000,000. [24]

Experts-Exchange ran a competition for almost a month before that date. The competition was announced on Experts-Exchange web site and its newsletter. [25] A Dell laptop and a t-shirt was given to the user who asked the 2,000,000th question, the expert who answered it, and the user who made the nearest guess for the time and date of the 2,000,000th solution.

In 2008, it was announced that an Expert has reached 20,000,000 points in total and 18,000,000 points in one zone. Both of these values were the most in Experts-Exchange to date. [26]

Experts Exchange also recently announced the addition of EE Articles, which are free to view for members and visitors.[27]

References

  1. ^ Young, Greg. "Patterns aren't just for software. (Copy of Experts-Exchange's newsletter on 2005/10/04)". Retrieved 2008-02-24.
  2. ^ "Experts-Exchange passed 2 million solutions". Retrieved 2008-09-22.
  3. ^ Experts Exchange is ranked among top 800 Web sites by Alexa
  4. ^ "Audience profile for Experts-Exchnage". Quantcast. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
  5. ^ U.S. patent 6,064,978. United States Patent (16 May 2000).
  6. ^ "Experts-Exchange's Help Page". Experts-Exchange.com. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  7. ^ "Experts-Exchange's Topic". Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  8. ^ Butler, Simon. "Simon Butler's Personal Page". Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  9. ^ "FlyGuyBob's Member Profile". Experts-Exchange.com. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  10. ^ "Exchange_Admin's Member Profile". Experts-Exchange.com. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  11. ^ "Aneeshattingal's Member Profile". Experts-Exchange.com. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  12. ^ "Experts Exchange Community News". Experts-Exchange.com. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  13. ^ Microsoft Exchange Team (2004-05-05). "Where Microsoft Exchange Team looks for potential MVP candidates". Microsoft Exchange Team Blog. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  14. ^ "Experts-Exchange's Help Page". Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  15. ^ "How to always view answers on Experts Exchange". Daniweb forums. 2006-04-29. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  16. ^ "How to obtain free answers from Experts-Exchange.com". AskStudent. 2006-10-20. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  17. ^ "Remove Experts Exchange from google programming searches". Stack Overflow. If you look way down at the bottom of the page...
  18. ^ http://www.clazh.com/how-to-access-experts-exchange-and-bypass-without-registering/
  19. ^ "Domain name change". Retrieved 2008-05-22.
  20. ^ "Expert-Exchange's Topic". Experts-Exchange. 2003-01-18. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  21. ^ "2002 highlight reel". Experts-Exchange. 2003-03-25. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  22. ^ "VSJ Reader Awards 2006". VSJ. 2006-08-29. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
  23. ^ "Experts-Exchange ranks and their definitions". Experts-Exchange. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  24. ^ "Two million solutions on Experts-Exchange". Experts-Exchange. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  25. ^ "Experts-Exchange Newsletter". Experts-Exchange. 2007-11-24.
  26. ^ "Experts-Exchange Newsletter". Experts-Exchange. 2008-01-03.
  27. ^ Experts-Exchange Articles
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