• Joshua (unregistered)

    s.Frist=""

  • JC (unregistered)

    Taking the piss out of expertsexchange is like taking a pop at the short, ginger, spotty kid of the IT world.

    And I like it.

  • macmac (unregistered)

    I bet it's a 1=1 mapping of their DB table structure.

  • Eric (unregistered)

    You can also just scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find the "answer" below all their ads.

  • Mark (unregistered)

    Google simply shouldn't index Experts Exchange. It's that useless, doesn't deserve it's prominent ranking on tech queries, and at least for large parts of it's life deliberately obscured content from users that it showed to the Googlebot (a Google no-no and one they should have acted on)

  • foxyshadis (unregistered) in reply to Eric
    Eric:
    You can also just scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find the "answer" below all their ads.
    Try that using HTTPS on your search engine, or coming to it from anywhere but the big three. I dare you.
  • Björn Tantau (unregistered)

    That Javascript code is for the Omniture tracking pixel. A WTF in and of itself. Mostly due to its "properties" usually being configured by marketing guys.

  • Chase (unregistered)

    I highly recommend everyone go back to the article and click on "ExpertSexchange.com" (you'll see a tooltip saying "click me!"). Keep clicking for maximum enjoyment.

    Captcha: plaga

  • Cidolfas (unregistered)

    Omniture is TRWTF, unfortunately. The variables do indeed all need to be numbered rather than named, and arrays are right out. I imagine this was generated via server code where individual variables were populated and it happened that in this case only number 49 had anything interesting in it. I had many a facepalm dealing with Omniture, especially since their documentation is terrible and the parameters sent to the server don't match the JavaScript parameters set up in the code.

  • Abico (unregistered)

    Hilarious capitalization aside, you realize the site is in fact experts "hyphen" exchange.com.

    Ten years ago, the site was okay. It had good answers and used a point system, whereby you could get so many answers per month for free. Then they went to all pay. Now I don't know why they bother.

  • XXXXXX (unregistered) in reply to Cidolfas
    Cidolfas:
    Omniture is TRWTF, unfortunately. The variables do indeed all need to be numbered rather than named, and arrays are right out. I imagine this was generated via server code where individual variables were populated and it happened that in this case only number 49 had anything interesting in it. I had many a facepalm dealing with Omniture, especially since their documentation is terrible and the parameters sent to the server don't match the JavaScript parameters set up in the code.

    Right on. I tried once to figure out what Omni-JS code does. It's javascript that writes and executes javascript to post the stupid s_code variables to their server. Even more awesome is TWTF that the numbered variables have to be formatted in a certain comma-delimited manner. So there is an uncountable number of arbitrarily numbered variables, but they couldn't break up some, so the value has to be like foo_87="bar; foo; foobar; jackass"

  • (cs) in reply to Abico
    Abico:
    Hilarious capitalization aside, you realize the site is in fact experts "hyphen" exchange.com.
    It is now. They learnt from their mistake.
  • Shyru (unregistered)

    Lol, it's funny that there are still people that don't know that answers on expert exchange are viewable by everyone without paying. - Just scroll way to the bottom of the page to find the answer. This is also why GoogleBot finds the answers. :-)

  • (cs) in reply to Abico
    Ten years ago, the site was okay. It had good answers and used a point system, whereby you could get so many answers per month for free. Then they went to all pay. Now I don't know why they bother.

    Hope Stackoverflow doesn't make the same mistake.

  • corroded (unregistered)

    Have people really not realised that if you scroll the entire way to the bottom on ExpertSexchange you get the answers... just come in via Google. It's literally right there. I mean, it's buried after about sixteen scrolls on bullshit you don't care about... but it is there.

  • Eggbox (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    Just go to the end of the page and the answer is shown, otherwise the page couldn't be indexed by google.

  • (cs) in reply to corroded

    I'll confess to being a little out of date- after ramming up against their paywall enough times in the past, I mentally blacklisted ExpertsExchange (and this was also before they added a hyphen to their domain), and haven't been back.

    I also don't use Google. DuckDuckGo does a much better job of finding code samples and StackOverflow pages.

  • Muzer (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    I also don't use Google. DuckDuckGo does a much better job of finding code samples and StackOverflow pages.

    Not in my experience. As much as I've been getting thoroughly irritated with Google recently, there's really not much of an alternative. They do have the best algorithm when it comes down to it. If you think DuckDuckGo has as good or better results, you're kidding yourself (or you consistently search for things that work whereas I consistently search for things that don't ;))

  • Dim (unregistered)

    A few year's ago the answer were coded on the page using a rot13 which was obviously easy to read. Now I agree that site is really useless.

  • Gareth (unregistered)

    For everyone who thinks the answer is at the bottom of the page on Experts Exchange pages - I bet you clicked through from a Google search.

    Take the URL for the page that your answer is at the bottom of, copy it into a fresh tab (i.e. with no Referer header) and viola! No more answer!

  • John (unregistered) in reply to Abico
    Abico:
    Hilarious capitalization aside, you realize the site is in fact experts "hyphen" exchange.com.

    Ten years ago, the site was okay. It had good answers and used a point system, whereby you could get so many answers per month for free. Then they went to all pay. Now I don't know why they bother.

    I used to answer questions (some were some quite interesting problems, especially GIS) and built up a great set of points. Then I logged back in after about 6 months, and was told I had to pay, completely ignoring the fact it was people like me that made the site useful. I never went back.

  • Imran (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    I think if you come via google and scroll way down, you can see the answer. I've always been able to

  • Anonymous Paranoiac (unregistered) in reply to Muzer
    Muzer:
    Remy Porter:
    I also don't use Google. DuckDuckGo does a much better job of finding code samples and StackOverflow pages.

    Not in my experience. As much as I've been getting thoroughly irritated with Google recently, there's really not much of an alternative. They do have the best algorithm when it comes down to it. If you think DuckDuckGo has as good or better results, you're kidding yourself (or you consistently search for things that work whereas I consistently search for things that don't ;))

    Try startpage.com. It's a google proxy that gathers zero identifiable information from your browser (they even scrub the IP address). Same company has a search aggregator called ixquick.com. Also, like DuckDuckGo, they don't box you in.

  • chuBb (unregistered)

    Personally i just change my user agent to googlebot's if i need to see something on expertsexchange... Or just find the better answer on stackoverflow....

  • (cs) in reply to Muzer

    I definitely won't say that DDG is overall better than Google, but for a lot of very specific searches that I've run, I get much better results. First time I used DDG, I was looking for a code sample for some bit of .NET API. DDG had the answer from StackOverflow, prioritized up at the top of the results, and I could copy/paste straight from there into my code.

    For Google, it was the third result, and the capsule displayed didn't make it clear that it was the answer I was looking for. For a lot of searches, I've found that to be pretty consistent.

  • (cs) in reply to macmac
    macmac:
    I bet it's a 1=1 mapping of their DB table structure.

    Sadly that's bog-standard Omniture analytics code. Omniture being a major source of WTFs in web analytics.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    Err, as far as I'm aware, expert sex change has always listed the answer if you enter the site via Google. You just have to scroll a loooooong way down and ignore all the "look this stuff is hidden so stop scrolling now" stuff.

  • monkeyPushButton (unregistered) in reply to Shyru
    Shyru:
    Lol, it's funny that there are still people that don't know that answers on expert exchange are viewable by everyone without paying. - Just scroll way to the bottom of the page to find the answer. This is also why GoogleBot finds the answers. :-)
    corroded:
    Have people really not realised that if you scroll the entire way to the bottom on ExpertSexchange you get the answers... just come in via Google. It's literally right there. I mean, it's buried after about sixteen scrolls on bullshit you don't care about... but it is there.
    Eggbox:
    Just go to the end of the page and the answer is shown, otherwise the page couldn't be indexed by google.
    As has been stated, this only works from Google (well, maybe a few others) and it hasn't always been that way.
  • Ben (unregistered) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    Google simply shouldn't index Experts Exchange. It's that useless, doesn't deserve it's prominent ranking on tech queries, and at least for large parts of it's life deliberately obscured content from users that it showed to the Googlebot (a Google no-no and one they should have acted on)

    Then shouldn't the answer be available to people viewing Google's cache?

  • (cs) in reply to monkeyPushButton
    monkeyPushButton:
    Shyru:
    Lol, it's funny that there are still people that don't know that answers on expert exchange are viewable by everyone without paying. - Just scroll way to the bottom of the page to find the answer. This is also why GoogleBot finds the answers. :-)
    corroded:
    Have people really not realised that if you scroll the entire way to the bottom on ExpertSexchange you get the answers... just come in via Google. It's literally right there. I mean, it's buried after about sixteen scrolls on bullshit you don't care about... but it is there.
    Eggbox:
    Just go to the end of the page and the answer is shown, otherwise the page couldn't be indexed by google.
    As has been stated, this only works from Google (well, maybe a few others) and it hasn't always been that way.
    Has anyone mentioned yet that the answer is there way at the bottom of the page? And that this only works if google is the referer?

    Just want to make sure we have our bases covered...

  • (cs)

    History has shown that sites that have value and allow you to use them from free seem to create enormous amounts of revenue for their creators:

    google facebook stackoverflow.com (and codeguru.com that preceded it)

    Some sites give you most of the functionality for free and have subscribe for "enhanced" features. (LinkedIn).

    Most of these use advertising to get money, after all a site that attracts a lot of users (because it's free) is likely to attract advertisers.

    facebook also accepts payment for users to

    1. Promote their pages (not sure how that works, I've never paid for one)
    2. Buy tokens for apps that run on it.
  • PotRoast (unregistered)

    I thought the article was about to bash the StackExchange family of sites... to which I would have to disown TheDailyWTF for...

    However! ExpertsExchange....BASH AWAY!

  • Champs (unregistered)

    I don't recommend using the site, either, but the answer IS there if you scroll well past the nag.

  • someGuy (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe

    While this is nice... no way did I ever find this out because after my first run-in with their site, I always avoid the search result.

  • Abico (unregistered) in reply to Shyru
    Shyru:
    Lol, it's funny that there are still people that don't know that answers on expert exchange are viewable by everyone without paying. - Just scroll way to the bottom of the page to find the answer. This is also why GoogleBot finds the answers. :-)
    My searches all bring StackOverload to the top, and I have no reason to click any further. Pardon me for not returning to a site I gave up on years ago.
  • Foo Bar (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    I blocked the sex change experts manually at https://www.google.com/reviews/t

  • Abico (unregistered) in reply to Foo Bar
    Foo Bar:
    I blocked the sex change experts manually at https://www.google.com/reviews/t

    Thank you! I've been trying to find that functionality in Google, specifically for experts-exchange.

  • Dusseldorf (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    Usually if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, the answer will be hidden amongst all the junk there.

  • Dave (unregistered)

    Seriously you guys don't even know that you can just scroll down past the ads and other junk and the answer is right there on the page.

    May need to come in via Google for it to work.

  • Chase (unregistered)

    TRWTF is clicking on "ExpertSexchange.com" in the article shows unicorns and rainbows. Not kidding. Am I the only one seeing unicorns?

  • RuBen (unregistered)

    Ah, ExpertsExchange..

    The Coldplay of websites!

  • (cs) in reply to Dusseldorf

    Hey guess what guys, if you scroll to the bottom to read the answer you get the bonus of reading all their junk too! Why wouldn't you visit for that, it's like icing on the ex-spurt, which I think might be why they needed the sex change.

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Chase

    Yeah, turns out that doesn't do a damn thing if you use NoScript or some other Javascript-blocking add-on.

  • (cs) in reply to Chase
    Chase:
    I highly recommend everyone go back to the article and click on "ExpertSexchange.com" (you'll see a tooltip saying "click me!"). Keep clicking for maximum enjoyment.

    Captcha: plaga

    That's practically Remy Porter's signature. You don't even have to read his name, just poke around and see if there's a div that links to the cornify_add() function.

    Incidentally you can also use the Konami code. After it recognizes the code, every keypress (including the one that finishes the code) will call cornify_add().

    TRWTF is that it appears to download each image anew every time rather than cache them for better efficiency and less bandwidth. I can't be sure of that though.

  • Quina (unregistered) in reply to Gareth
    Take the URL for the page that your answer is at the bottom of, copy it into a fresh tab (i.e. with no Referer header) and viola! No more answer!
    Cello! You're right!
  • (cs) in reply to Chase
    Chase:
    TRWTF is clicking on "ExpertSexchange.com" in the article shows unicorns and rainbows. Not kidding. Am I the only one seeing unicorns?
    You're the only one bothering to click. It's normal for stuff posted by Remy. Some word or other will have an onclick JS function that "cornifies" the article. "View Source" is your friend.
  • (cs)

    I didn't know about the scrolling down. Usually get too bored too soon. I used to use EE a fair bit, even contributing to it. Then it went all sucky.

    WRT the Google no-no, maybe Googlebot is a paid member and is seeing the answers as such?

  • Damien (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    Just for the record. The answers are visible :) Just scroll down passed all the "become a member now" nonsense to the bottom of the page. The answer is right there, visible in plain sight.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    Not Peter's fault. I've dealt with sites that have Omniture tracking. They give you a large chunk to copy and paste and you're not allowed to touch it. Even for whitespace minimizing.

  • Kate (unregistered)

    If you scroll to the bottom, the answers are free.

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