Centre of the Universe

Stackoverflow must be doing something right. It is beginning to see its crop of imitators starting to flourish. Shapado is one of these.

In terms of look and feel, it closely copies Stackoverflow, although with enough differences that you not likely to get confused.

The reason the team that put up Shapado put it up, is that they feel that they do not want to work with a non-free platform, which to me sounds a bit odd, since, even though Stackoverflow is not quite open-source, anybody is free to register and use the site. There is very little restriction surrounding that. Although, in their favour, it does make sense if you want a local knowledgebase type system based on this format.

The second reason they state is that they feel that Stackoverflow is restricted, in that it only caters for programming, whereas they have made Shapado cater for pretty much anything.

The biggest problem of all though is not really technology related, but rather more social. Stackoverflow has significant traffic, with thousands of users asking – and answering – thousands of questions.

Shapado has very, very few of both questions and users. Maybe it is because the site is still new, or it might be that nobody cares. Only time will tell…

Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and son often take a lot of flak for being seen as frivolous time-wasters, which, no doubt, tends to happen frequently, but they do have a positive side.

Most of the threads on Reddit, for example, are a waste of time, with people saying dumb things and getting caustic (and often witty) replies, but every now and again I find an exception. I just read a thread on Reddit now, where a woman with terminal brain cancer is asking what is the best thing she can do for her loyal dog once she dies in a few months. She is struggling to find out how to get a good home for him once she dies, and doesn’t want to have to put him to sleep simply because she wont be alive.

The amount of support from the community coming out in reply to that thread truly bolsters my faith in future of mankind, where us, as human beings, in this digital age, still do stick together as a community.

The only difference is the support might not come from your neighbour down the street as in the pre-information age, but rather could be anywhere else in the world.

I have also seen on twitter and facebook, how much support humanitarian efforts can get from the online community.

And think about it – even in old school local neighbourhoods, most of the communication was frivolous in any event. Just think of how much time you would spend with your neighbours gossiping about the strange cat lady living down the street, or the guys wasting hours debating the merits of a Ferrari versus a Lamborghini – cars none of them will ever likely be able to drive.

For me, I am glad to say, the internet is more than just mindless frivolity, but is turning into a true global community which supports each other, while still being able to get our fill of gossip.