Why experts work for free at Experts-Exchange ?

Somewhere in all this, you seem to have forgotten why a hugely popular site tries to get money from its visitors. Thats because it costs money to run it. Bandwidth and servers cost money. In addition, the folks created a pretty good thing, and peeps like to get monetary rewards for creating pretty good things.

As a new expert myself (signed up Feb 2006), it is difficult to find the expert links although I must admit I didn't really look for them.

You forgot (or perhaps are unaware) of the predominant reason most folks contribute to Experts Exchange, Usenet, and software/hardware forums in general, the Experience that working and trying to solve unusual problems brings. I mean, I can't put my Expert titles on a resume could I. But, having had solved or help solved many problems online, it helps me out as a consultant.

I think what’s killing EE more than anything, is the attitude presented by some of the long time "Experts." I would love to see some of these snobs answer a lot of questions without having access to Google. Because some of their answers are so canned, it sounds like a book.

Over all however, I enjoyed reading.

Posted by darkstar3d on May 6, 2007 12:18 PM

Thanks for your response darkstar3d.

I'm not forgetting the financial aspect. It's the balance that's disturbed at EE.
It takes three to make things running:
1) A site
2) A questioner
3) An expert
EE has been almost bankrupted by previous owners that were able to spend millions of dollars without generating income. The present owners did a fine job in making the site financial solid, but all the real work is done by the experts (for free) and a staff of admins, moderators and page editors (also for free). So there's almost no cost in maintaining the site running. The redesign has made the site "glossier" and will have costed a lot of $$'s, but the "old" site wasn't worn-out. As EE in the old days was run by one person, how does it come that there's now an office with some 15 payed employees?

As stated, the site is now out of balance. The financial objectives did take over and the site, the experts and the questioners are the loosers in this case. I've switched to www.thescripts.com that's for free. They added GoogleAds to generate some income and what's so bad in minimizing the costs and maximizing the benefits for the experts?
Basically it are the exerts that are the raw-material of the site and perhaps part of the revenues should be returned to them. Read the other day that YouTube is going to pay the best posts as they are the reason of their success (and GoogleAds income)....

There's also a new site starting up (www.supportspace.com) that's going to pay experts and besides me a lot of other EE experts have been joining there lately.

I've been suspended because I warned another expert to post more elaborate comment and he started calling me names. So I guess you can see that not all old experts are having the "killing attitude", but standing for quality is risky :-)

Finally, I know all positive effects of helping others. I've been a coach for several years and have had many new insights because of Q's some people would call "stupid". That's why my motto at EE was:
"There are no stupid questions, only not asking is stupid"

Nic;o)

Posted by nico5038 on May 6, 2007 12:56 PM

Disappointed at EE I decided to read reviews today since I have been a "fan" of EE 4 years ago and was taken aback how my last post was handled.

I posted a question and some "expert" just gave me links to MSDN. After a few posts from him with more links, I have told him to check out another solved post in EE that was almost close to my question. Then the so called "expert" came back with a little less professional response that my question was broad and that I should hire someone to do the work for me since I can't do the work myself. It was a joke.

Then, I thought - why not ask the MOD to see how I can reword my question and/or description. Maybe the "kid" was right. My question is broad. And so I fired away a question to the community "service" group and ask "Can you please check my question (gave the link to the question) and tell me how I can reword my question and/or description to get a better response since this expert (expert name here) told me that my question was broad?"

MOD response:

"Not every response you get here will be a work of art...

Thanks for using Experts Exchange!"

Hahahaha.... its true because the MOD's response is an affirmation of that!

In this case, I think I am stupid for spending $120 a year for "answers" that are useless.

Reading the post from Nico I understand now why EE is going down. When I saw nico5038, I thought could this be the nic;o) in EE that handled my questions 4 years ago? The last post confirmed it. I guess EE has lost one of its brainpower and is continuing to lose its "assets". Looking at my question history, I have paid EE $500 for roughly 20 questions. Maybe the "expert" that answered my last post at EE is correct. I should just hire someone to work for me. :-)

Posted by bukol513 on Aug 31, 2008 4:13 PM

Hi bukol513,

Yes, I'm the "Nic;o)" you're referring to and I hope to have handled your question better as the "link dump" example you gave.

I've switched to bytes.com for helping people with Access questions, so feel free to use this resource for free and experience the "old EE" cooperation between the experts !

Nic;o)

Posted by nico5038 on Aug 31, 2008 5:07 PM