Talk:Stack Exchange

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Wikipsofacto, 1mitch3 (article contribs).

It is not a forum

Regarding (in the lead):

The sites are modeled after Stack Overflow, a forum for computer programming questions

Stack Overflow is specifically not a forum. In fact, it was created as a reaction to some of the failure modes for forums when it comes it pure questions / answers (as opposed to discussion). See e.g. Is Stack Overflow a forum?. It is also quite well documented in the Stack Overflow podcasts, e.g. episode 4, from 04 min 38 secs: "Stack Overflow is not a forum" -Jeff Atwood

--Mortense (talk) 15:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I think that forum is used in a more grammatical and less technical sense here so yes it is a "forum","a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.CombatWombat42 (talk) 16:52, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Stack exchange is not a forum, and open questions are not entertained unless they support a fantasy basis on the science fiction portion. It is a commercial website for developers, designed for financial gain, but not an open community in any sense of the word. The profile here should be revised to reflect this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coffeeinthecup (talk • contribs) 21:50, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Also, Stack Exchange was build by Jeff Atwood, Joel Spolsky (but not a forum.)2606:A000:6604:D700:4C35:747:3CAE:424F (talk) 00:39, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

This article should mention the downside of the user vote system

Users can vote up and down on both answers and questions, and through this process users earn reputation points, a form of gamification. However, this process has severe flaws, as the votes are anonymous, don't need to be justified or explained and the users are not really peers (in the academic sense). So, for instance, a good answer in Physics from a PhD may get few votes (and even down votes) from users who actually don't understand the answer. It is not unusual to see short, simplified, incomplete (and even incorrect) answers to have a higher score of votes than correct complete answers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.197.213.188 (talk) 12:20, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Merger Discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Requested: Merge Stack Overflow into Stack Exchange.David Condrey (talk) 11:13 pm, 22 May 2014, Thursday (1 year, 6 months, 5 days ago) (UTC−5)

Banners are finally installed GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 04:03, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

• Is anyone still discussing this? because I agree they should be merged. CombatWombat42 (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

@CombatWombat42: I don't think they should be merged because Stack Overflow is a popular QA website than all the other QA websites that are hosted by the Stack Exchange. Also, Stack Overflow is a product of Stack Exchange Inc. which means that any products that can be discriminated based on popularity should merit their own Wikipedia page. Although I can see the logic to merge the two, my fears are that a merged Wikipedia article will become bloated with information from a whole array of QA sites that are hosted by the Stack Exchange network. This proposal does not have my confidence and it is best to maintain the current collegiality that is maintained between the two Wikipedia articles. For that, I agree to a compromise where we can recursively refer to either article without resorting to original research nor breaching none of Wikipedia's rules and guidelines. Vormeph (talk) 19:53, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

@CombatWombat42: I disagree with the merger. Stack Exchange holds several other sub-domains called 'Communities' which discuss specific topics e.g. economy, typography, foreign languages, super user (for *nix & linux users), server fault (for Ops), english language, (not sure, but I think I've seen a community dedicated to) UFOs, which per se, have a significant number of users. The community influences people and that, in turn, may create(or might have already created) many cultural changes which are worth recording on their dedicated wiki pages. The articles will only get larger with the passage of time and it is advisable to keep this out of the stack exchange page.

Keep separate.

Stack Overflow isn't "just" the most distinguished Stack Exchange site, it is the free Q&A site for programming in general. As such, it is in my view a prime example for Q&A sites in general, and deserves its own article. Seeing that Stack Exchange is one of the largest hosters of free Q&A sites in general, and in my opinion hosts the top free Q&A site for several other fields of knowledge as well, it also deserves its own article. --217.7.72.1 (talk) 15:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request for deletion

Stack Exchange was officially changed to be named Stack Overflow in 2015. Please refer to: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2015/09/were-changing-our-name-back-to-stack-overflow/

This site should be merged with the Stack Overflow page, or deleted all together. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.153.212.167 (talk) 18:54, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Oppose. Have you tried actually reading that blog post beyond the opening? They're changing the company name. "Our Q&A sites will still be collectively known as the Stack Exchange Network." Qwfp (talk) 19:01, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Suggested Edits

I appreciate if anyone working further on this article composes a matrix for comparison of the

• stack exchange network
• its platforms
• policies
• collection of sister sites*
• contribution-based culture
• content licensing model
• hierarchy of privileges
• bureaucracy
• global sign-ins
• user banning
• elections and moderating users
• any statistics (DB size,... )
• etc

with that of Wikimedia foundation, its projects and media-wiki platform. Alfa80 (talk) 09:38, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Potential Revisions

The following are a few revisions that I am considering for this page:

• The have been some enhancements to the architecture since the last update. Therefore, the technologies used section will be enhanced using information from https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition/.
• There is a portion under Technologies Used that requires a citation. I will find information supporting the claim or potentially get rid of the sentence.
• The site creation process could potentially utilize a flowchart for ease of reading.

Please feel free to comment and let me know any thoughts. 1mitch3 (talk) 02:51, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

More Revisions

In the coming week or so I will be making some changes to this page as a part of Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. If anyone watching has concerns regarding my proposed changes feel free to let me know. I intend to:

• Update Alexa Ranking
• Fix dead reference links
• Elaborate slightly on sites in the network in the Introductory section.
• The 'History' section lacks updates from beyond 2013. A bit of insight into the Company's name changing as referenced in on this Talk page, will be added for clarification.

Wikipsofacto (talk) 02:55, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Controversy section has to be added.

Please add a controversy section, because this site is highly controversial and criticized. It has been awarded the more hostile community in the Internet.

Do you have a source for your claim? 134.39.171.65 (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't know about an "award", but there is certainly quite a lot of "buzz" to support the claim that the site is "controversial and criticized". In my experience, "buzz" never rates as an acceptable source in Wikipedia, no matter how obvious it is to all. But here's something that you might be able to use... Jeff Hanlon, the Executive VP of Culture and Experience at Stack Overflow is on the record stating, "Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place..." . So yes, there is controversy, and there have been criticisms. Hanlon's reference to "Zuckerbot" in this blog post seems clear enough: In the aftermath of the FaceBook debacle, Stack Overflow is now concerned about their reputation. And given their revenue model, perhaps their fears are legitimate. The company makes money showcasing their unpaid volunteers to corporate recruiters, and selling their contact information to them. It's just another way to parlay other people's personal information into profit.

Seamusdemora (talk) 20:58, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

There are plenty of stories and articles about the decline of SO as a useful resource, they even recognise the problem themselves

https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/

Criticisms are widely levelled at SO across many other forums:

++ https://blog.codinghorror.com/farewell-stack-exchange/
++ https://www.quora.com/Is-Stack-Overflow-dying-in-2018
++ https://www.quora.com/topic/Stack-Overflow-4
++ https://hackernoon.com/the-decline-of-stack-overflow-7cb69faa575d
++ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/54f62f/the_decline_of_stack_overflow/
++ https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/what-happened-to-stackoverflow-com-it-sucks-now.2125313/
++ http://varianceexplained.org/r/are_users_quitting/