I think many people, like me, have been waiting for someone to address this obvious niche that has been crying out for attention.
There's also an interesting path to monetization: it's pretty much models the buying process, esp for the enterprise. Also generalises to purchasing decisions, in general - it's relevant to all transactions. i.e. the whole economy.
However... very hard to do well. It's good start, but nailing it will take a lot of time, effort and luck. Starting in this very focussed and narrow niche is a great way to build understanding of what's needed and how to do it.
EDIT I found the site slow to load (actually got the wait or cancel dialog). Because such a site thrives on as many users as possible, it may be more important to make it accessible to more people at the expense of prettiness (I assume the pie-charts are partly to blame for the slowness). It also biases the answers and votes (maybe a good thing - target that niche?); might explain why emacs got few votes.
The presentation of information is too "detail-heavy" (i) the list of questions includes 3 alternatives and even some lines about each. The typical user wants to scan the topics to find one of interest. (though I guess having a some context is good, since that's what SO does; but only to clarify the question, not the answer).
(ii) in the actual answer, there's no summary of the results [EDIT whoops, there is a summary; somehow I went directly to one of alternatives at first]; no comparison of the alternatives; and no indication of what context each tool best suits ("job" for the tool); instead, each page is all about one alternative. I would guess that something like a grid might work better, with the tools listed vertically, and the attributes horizontally (with the "job"/context first). The user can then scroll down to examine each point in detail (or maybe drill-down, with expanding sections, for truly secondary/tertiary content, like comments/debates). Attributes could be voted on.
In short: organise it to suit the user-task, not the subject matter.
> I found the site slow to load (actually got the wait or cancel dialog).
Sorry about that, we are under some heavy load and didn't have time to do even the most basic speed optimisations (gzip etc). Its very high priority.
> The presentation of information is too "detail-heavy" (i) the list of questions includes 3 alternatives and even some lines about each. The typical user wants to scan the topics to find one of interest. (though I guess having a some context is good, since that's what SO does; but only to clarify the question, not the answer).
Totally agreed. I know how to fix this, will be done soon.
> (ii) in the actual answer, there's no summary of the results; no comparison of the alternatives; and no indication of what context each tool best suits ("job" for the tool); instead, each page is all about one alternative. I would guess that something like a grid might work better, with the tools listed vertically, and the attributes horizontally (with the "job"/context first). The user can then scroll down to examine each point in detail (or maybe drill-down, with expanding sections, for truly secondary/tertiary content, like comments/debates). Attributes could be voted on.
We have this page: http://slant.co/topics/what-s-the-best-jabber-gchat-client-f... that shows ALL the options and an overview of what they are suitable for. To further improve this we are working on a comparison matrix style feature that is approximately what you described here.
Would it be possible for you to email me? (stuart@slant.co) I'd love to be able to show you some 'in the works' features as they are being built for some feedback.
Another thing I particularly like about threads comparing two or more different technologies/frameworks/languages is when someone says "X does Z badly, and here is why Y does Z better." Slant seems to not be able to facilitate this very well.
Good point. We plan to add something along the lines of "counterpoints" ("X does Z badly"), and we have other viewpoints ("Y does Z well"), but directly pointing users toward solutions that solve those counterpoints ("[take a look at Y, because] Y does Z better") isn't something we'd considered. I'll definitely keep that in mind as we hash out the counterpoints idea a little more. Thanks kindly.
The strange thing is if SO actually decided to cater for this, which would be pretty trivial, they would win this game by default. It's basically just ocd run amok.
There's also an interesting path to monetization: it's pretty much models the buying process, esp for the enterprise. Also generalises to purchasing decisions, in general - it's relevant to all transactions. i.e. the whole economy.
However... very hard to do well. It's good start, but nailing it will take a lot of time, effort and luck. Starting in this very focussed and narrow niche is a great way to build understanding of what's needed and how to do it.
EDIT I found the site slow to load (actually got the wait or cancel dialog). Because such a site thrives on as many users as possible, it may be more important to make it accessible to more people at the expense of prettiness (I assume the pie-charts are partly to blame for the slowness). It also biases the answers and votes (maybe a good thing - target that niche?); might explain why emacs got few votes.
The presentation of information is too "detail-heavy" (i) the list of questions includes 3 alternatives and even some lines about each. The typical user wants to scan the topics to find one of interest. (though I guess having a some context is good, since that's what SO does; but only to clarify the question, not the answer).
(ii) in the actual answer, there's no summary of the results [EDIT whoops, there is a summary; somehow I went directly to one of alternatives at first]; no comparison of the alternatives; and no indication of what context each tool best suits ("job" for the tool); instead, each page is all about one alternative. I would guess that something like a grid might work better, with the tools listed vertically, and the attributes horizontally (with the "job"/context first). The user can then scroll down to examine each point in detail (or maybe drill-down, with expanding sections, for truly secondary/tertiary content, like comments/debates). Attributes could be voted on.
In short: organise it to suit the user-task, not the subject matter.