What a brilliant idea

Question

The various Ubuntu Q&A websites have an unique and very fresh way of doing things. The voting, badging and reputation system is well thought out and the moderators work well with the community, keeping us under check!

To start with I found that scores and badges were of great interest, but then I went through a stage of getting embraced if the last few points are corrections to others questions. Now I realise that if the editing have made the question readable, understandable and means that it gets an answer, the reputation points are well deserved. The feeling of pride when your first answer gets you 15 points is brilliant and quite inspiring.

The answers to questions on the whole, are mostly positive, with a few answers that need ignoring.

My question, as there is supposed to be one, was it a group or an individual which came up with the concept of the way the community works?

Answer 1

Ask Ubuntu is part of the Stack Exchange Network. You will find most of your answers on the /about page there, and on meta.stackoverflow and Area 51. Both of these are also part of the Stack Exchange network.

Stack Exchange was built to expand Stack Overflow beyond just programming. Some Ubuntu community members then pushed for their own site through Area 51.

The site went through four phases:

• A definition phase: where people defined what on and off-topic posts would look like.
• A commitment phase: where people committed and said they would actually use the site.
• A private beta: where those who committed gained access and started using the site.
• A public beta: same as private beta but with a wider audience.

At each phase, the the site had to prove it was worth going to the next phase. Finally after all of those steps, the site went "public" in October 2010 and was rebranded Ask Ubuntu.