Scott Hebert

Note: I was originally going to post something about this on Slaptijack, but I later decided that wasn’t the right place. So, I’m putting it here for your consumption.

This issue has been driving me crazy for a couple of months now, and I’m finally fed up. If you’ve had to do any technical research in the past few years, you’ve undoubtedly stumbled across Experts Exchange. Maybe I missed something along the way, or perhaps I’m just dense. I’m sure you’ll correct me if I wrong.

I seem to remember that at one time, anyone could at least view the questions and answers on this site. In fact, it was highly likely that if you had a technical question, someone had already asked it.

Somewhere along the way, Experts Exchange must have determined that advertising was not going to sufficiently pay their bills. They have now moved to a subscriber-based system. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to pay $12.95 a month for a service I used to get for free. Additionally, as far as I can tell, that $12.95 doesn’t guarantee me anything other than access to the content. The quality of the solutions is still fully dependent on the user base.

It stands to reason that the quality of solutions on Experts Exchange might have actually gone down if more folks like me feel there is no good reason to use it.

Trust me, I know better than anyone the costs associated with running a web site. And I’m certain the folks at Experts Exchange were hesitant to lock out part of their user base. Still, there has to be a better answer to the problem than what has been implemented.

I’m sure I’ll get flamed for this.