Getting stacked with Salesforce!

For the last two years (thanks to a successful Area51 Beta) Salesforce has had it's own branch of the Stack Overflow product, in which users can ask, answer, discuss and vote on Salesforce issues, problems and features they are working on. This is the Salesforce (beta) StackExchange.

Over the last two years, this product has exploded in the Salesforce developer domain, with (at the time of writing, in February 2014) statistics in the region of:

8,729	questions
12,841	answers
90%	answered
4,330	users
11,338	visitors/day

With useage, and success rates like that, it's easy to see why the StackExchange is becoming the go to place for Salesforce questions, with answers typically being provided in a matter of minutes, to some of the most complicated questions.

With thousands of users, from every timezone in the world logging in every minute of the day, it is clear to see why and how if you have a query about Salesforce, there is going to be someone out there who has experienced this before, or has the knowledge to guide you through to a solution.

But is that the real reason the StackExchange is so popular? Of course not, it's all about badges and reputation of course!! One of the most addictive types of gamification in the modern arena is earning reputation from your peers for assisting them, and by providing the best service over your peers!

The model has completely hooked me. I even find myself logging on from my smartphone during bus rides to see if there is a question I can help out with! The buzz of finding someone you can assist is matched only by the excitement in your hands as you rattle out an answer at a typing speed that would make the Clerk of the Houses of Parliament blush.

The other great aspect of the reputation model, is the philanthropy,  as well as enjoying earning it by assisting your community, you have the power to award it as well, if you see an answer that you wholeheartidly agree with, you can vote it up, making it clear to the community that this is a quality answer, and also awarding the user reputation in the process.

Good questions, equally, can be voted up if you think them especially pertinent, and even the smallest aspect - comments - can be flagged as useful or helpful making sure everyone knows which snippets of text are good or bad.

Some of the questions that I have asked and answered include:

Getting the value of an inputField on the page

Which has been viewed over 3,500 times.

Can you redirect to a Custom Object List Page from a Controller?

and 

How can I compare datetimes in a SOQL query to return a list to a Visualforce page?

My answer for which was selected from several options, after a extended exchange of comments between users trying to solve the developers problem.

I can safely say I will be using the Salesforce StackExchange to both ask and answer problems on Salesforce.com for the foreseeable future.