.

Coffee Powered

code and content
Feb
07
2009

Desuckifying Experts-Exchange

Experts Exchange minus the suck!

Experts Exchange minus the suck!


If you’ve ever searched for an answer to a programming problem, chances are good that you’ve run into results from experts-exchange. Everyone hates them. The information usually isn’t that good, and even if it is, you have to scroll past sixteen pages of ads and spam to get to them. Unfortunately, there’s the occasional nugget of info that’s what you’re looking for. There’s just too much crap to dig through to get to it.

We’re gonna fix that.

You’ll need:

<Config version="1.0">
	<Page name="Experts Exchange" url="http://*experts-exchange.com*" enabled="true">
		<XPath comment="">//div[@class='s sectionFour shFFF5 sgray expGray allZonesMain taSearchRow']</XPath>
		<XPath comment="">//div[@class='bl blQuestion']//div[@class='answers']</XPath>
		<XPath comment="">//a[@class='startFreeTrial']</XPath>
		<XPath comment="">//div[@id='relatedSolutions20X6']</XPath>
		<XPath comment="">//div[@id='compSignUpNowVQP32']</XPath>
	</Page>
</Config>

Go to your RIP options, click “Import Rip”, and import that rip config. Presto chango, Experts-Exchange looks like a sane, readable website.

Enjoy.

Edit: It appears that Experts-Exchange only inlines answers for unregistered users if you have a search engine referral URL, obviously so they can saturate search results to bait-and-switch people into registering for the service without getting smacked for information cloaking. There’s an easy answer, though.

1) Grab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/953
2) Set your referrer for experts-exchange.com to

http://www.google.com/search?q=woo+woo+woo+woo&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

3) Yay, information.

  • huh?

    why bother?????????

  • http://thoughts-and-findings.blogspot.com the one who blogs

    I recommend voting it down in Google results instead.

  • mike

    What the heck are RIP options? Where are they? This seems to be an incomplete post.

  • http://www.extopian.com Tyler Onbekend

    Keeps giving an error that's an incorrect version when attempting to import.

  • innocent bystander

    "What the heck are RIP options?"

    RIP = Remove It Permanently

  • c

    Save as what type of file?

  • http://livinginminnesota.com Chris

    Does it still require you to have a membership, or does it get around that too? "The One Who Blogs", great idea on voting it down in Google results, the fact that it hasn't been banned from their results is a testament Google's waning dedication to "do no evil".

  • innocent bystander

    Save it as .xml.

    You don't need a membership. The results are always on the same page, just at the bottom of a ton of other crap. I don't think you'll have much luck "voting it down" in Google.

    Ironically, the people who need expert help the most…nevermind.

  • Robert Lefebvrey

    Expert Excnahge model is flawed and they are loosing it to Stackoverflow. Check out this guys comparison:
    http://blog.refactoringin.net/?p=22

  • steve

    the provided RIP seems to hide everything (including the solution) but the question and banner ads on the right.

    ee still sucks. :(

  • Agent Smith

    Geesh people, read the post. It's straightforward and simple.

    Copy/pasting the text does leave some line numbers, but you remove them.

    Remove It Permanently…let's think….R….I…P. You know I bet that RIP=Remove It Permanently.

    *golfclap*

    There should be an IQ test required for people to use the Internet.

    Chris, thanks for the info, this is AWESOME.

  • lowell

    Agent Smith

    Your humor kind of sucks. Given your namesake, that's to be expected, I suppose.

  • misc

    Still doesn't work for me. All the ads etc. are removed, yet I can see nothing else but the question.

    See for instance: http://img21.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cellphone…

    Could somebody please post a comprehensive idiot's guide on how to view the solutions?

  • http://coffeepowered.net Chris Heald

    Can you give me a link to the question in that screenshot? I'll take a peek at it.

  • misc

    http://www.experts-exchange.com/Databases/GIS_GPS…

    Randomly chose that question for no particular reason. It's the same for all others.

    Thanks in advance.

  • zombo

    fuck experts exchange – fuck you gays.

  • John

    I believe the answers at ExpertSexChange are only displayed at the bottom if you reach the page through a Google search. If you just go to ExpertSexChange and search there, you'll get nothing without a membership.

  • http://waytogo Josh

    This is a great solution especially when it RUINS a great resource by forcing them out of business.

    Instead of doing this, how about you just scroll to the bottom of the EE site and view the answer. It is there, I promise. While you're at it, click on a few links and if you're a really heavy user FRIGGIN REGISTER you leech.

  • http://coffeepowered.net Chris Heald

    EE is hardly a "great resource". It's a pile of crud that pollutes search results while actively working to keep people away from information unless you sign on their dotted line.

    I'll be more than happy to stop ripping the crap out of their site clientside when they stop giving me a reason to rip it out. I'm hardly a heavy user. I'm an occasional victim of their unfortunately-too-successive SEO. Usenet and mailing lists are a hundred times more useful, and yet EE manages to google-bomb their way to the top of the results.

    If a site gets hostile towards me, it's fair game to get hostile right back.

  • http://coffeepowered.net Chris Heald

    misc – looks like they only inline the answers if you have a search engine referrer, likely to saturate search engines with results but avoid getting blacklisted for cloaking. More deceptive, crappy user abuse, whee.

    1) Grab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/95…
    2) Set your referrer for experts-exchange.com to
    http://www.google.com/search?q=woo+woo+woo+woo&ie…
    3) Yay, information.

  • THANK YOU

    Thank you so much for this. Worked perfect for me. I look forward to blocking ads everywhere. Is there a site where I can download pre-configured .rip files for this?

  • misc

    That worked! Now EE might be of some actual use to me. Thanks a lot!

  • http://www.extopian.com Tyler Onbekend

    I appreciate what Chris is trying to do here, but I eventually decided that instead of the overhead of another FF add-on, I'd just bolster one I had installed already; Greasemonkey. There are a couple Greasemonkey scripts that accomplish the same thing. I found three in about five minutes Googling (after picking through the EE search spam, grin) and I'm going to compare them over the next couple days.

  • lqdice

    As said before, just scroll down to the end of the page. The real answers are there. They just put some fake "cloaks" on the top to fake users into thinking the information is all hidden.

  • nico5038

    When you get the crappy EE question using google, just use the "in cache" link to see what's there when the google bot did index the page.

    As stated before, many Q&A's are incomplete and "nuggets" hard to find. This is a $$ driven company using cloaking for forcing people to pay for informaton they ca get for free on other sites like http://www.bytes.com and the newsgroups.

    Just ignore the Experts Exchange hits from google is probably the best advice. And when annoyed by this put a complaunt at Google, as this showing a different result for the google bot and the user is considered cloaking and not according the Google guidelines.

    Nic;o)

  • mythos

    thanks bro! :)

  • http://www.phototacular.com phototacular

    Thanks for the tips! The site looks MUCH cleaner now.

  • John

    So, if EE is so crap why are you using it? Answer a few questions a month and you get no adverts.

    Funny how everyone expects help with their problems, but never gives anything in return.

    I also don't know how you google results get "flooded" with EE results. Never happens with me. Do you think it's possible you're searching for such lose terms that google thinks EE is perfect for you because you don't know what you looking for?

  • Alex

    You the man!

  • Webbit

    Seem EE locked out this hack.

    Just stop working.

  • bricktop

    Had trouble figuring out how to save the file.

    Saved it as an XML file & stripped off the numbers.

    Thanks. It works for me.

  • EEvangelist

    1. if the question has been answered and spidered and not just the title spidered, the answer will be there if you scroll down.

    2. EE is a great place to ask technical questions – if you do not want to pay, become an expert for free, answer a few questions in your related field a month for full, free, ad-free access to ask and search.

    3. Yes, StackOverflow is free, it also has ads, elitists who ridicule you if your question is too vague or not programmatically interesting and there is room for SO and EE and any other site that wants to help people regardless of the site’s revenue model. So stop hating. EE will eventually learn that they need to lower the paywall to stop pissing people off.

  • Zizzy

    Here’s an updated RIP file that works as of 2001-08

     
       
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[3]/div[4]/div/div/div/div/div[2]/div[6]/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[3]/div[5]
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[3]/div[4]/div/div/div/div/div[2]/div[6]/div/div/div
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[1]
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[2]
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[3]
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[4]/div/div
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[5]/a
            /html/body/div[2]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[2]
       

  • Zizzy

    Typo. As of 2011-08, not 2001.