StackOverflow Private Beta

I'm happy to announce that as of this morning I'm an official beta tester for the all new programmers Q&A site StackOverflow.


StackOverflow is the brainchild of Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky who have decided to create a new knowledge transfer site specifically for programmers (Knol for programmers if you will). The service is totally free and is designed both functionally and graphically in the spirit of Web 2.0 (and, yes, there's also a podcast).

Each question submitted to StackOverflow is tagged by topic. Users can then answer the question, vote on it (in a very Digg like way), add their own answer and vote on the existing answer. The idea is that by using this democratic process the most relevant/accurate/knowledgeable answers will rise to the top.



Users are rewarded for their participation with different badges that are added to their profile. Badges include Guru, Specialist, Teacher, Student and many more. The bagdes act as incentives that are supposed to encourage users to participate.



So far, the site looks very good. The volume is suprisingly high for the first day of the private beta (with only about 500 users), and the concept seems promising. We'll see how it unfolds.

Update: To apply for the beta, click here.