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I think that I have now completely read the FAQ here on meta.

Question: Does StackOverflow, or StackExchange, or one of the affiliated sites, have a place for articles?

I had an idea about an article.

I searched for the word "articles" here.

I saw many questions, many answers, but I'm still unclear.

If the answer is yes; someone please point me to the place for it.

If the answer is no, is there a place where wannabe authors can banter ideas around before spending the time to physically type out the words at the keyboard?

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    If you mean "articles" in the terms of blogs, there is Blog Overflow where each Stack Exchange site gets its own blog, but I don't know who is allowed to publish those.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jan 2, 2013 at 1:49
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    Short answer: "no", this is a question and answer site. If you can state the article as a quality question and answer then you can post as that.
    – casperOne
    Jan 2, 2013 at 2:03
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    What type of topics are you interested in writing? Some sites may be looking for authors to contribute to their blogs. Keep in mind the purpose of the articles can't be to promote you or your product; instead, the goal is to contribute to the community...
    – jmort253
    Jan 2, 2013 at 3:54
  • I'm thinking of articles about specific programming topics, perhpas 10 or 20 lines of actual source code; with as much explanation as would be needed. The idea of "peer review" prior to publication is a good one, sort of, kind of, but all peers are not really peers. This is becoming a discussion. Is there a place to discuss this ? Point me to it.
    – User.1
    Jan 3, 2013 at 0:39

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If you want to share knowledge, you need to describe a problem where the knowledge would be useful in the form of a question that would be on topic for the site. That's blogging, Q&A style. The question should be just like any other good question on the site, keep it focused and to the point. You can elaborate as much as you like in the answer. Take care, however, to make the question constructive and narrow. Overly broad or subjective questions will still be closed even if the accompanying answer is spectacular.

You'll see a check box:

This expands an editor for your answer

That will expand an editor for your 'answer', which in this case would be the article you wrote perhaps modified a bit to fit the context of the question as well as it can. Your answer will be posted at the same time your question is.

Stack Overflow doesn't have a community blog in the sense that other sites in the network do. blog.stackoverflow.com used to be the place where the SO team would blog about the site and the Stack Exchange network, later moved to blog.stackexchange.com, but so many people were used to the old one that it was left in place to avoid breakage and preserve history. Not enough interest surfaced to really explore a work around for this.

I've been thinking of ways that we can expand our existing tag wiki system prior to writing a concrete proposal. These sorts of 'gists' have crossed my mind, but they'd have to:

  • Be peer reviewed and vetted, like all other information on the site
  • Not detract from the Q&A nature of the site

... which leaves it rather stuck on 'not detract from the Q&A nature of the site'. So, until (and if) we work out where we're going to blog and how it will be organized, your best bet is to just ask and answer your own question.

As for a place to collaborate prior to posting, each site has a 'chat' link in the header, which was specifically designed to facilitate real time collaboration.

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It depends on what you mean by articles.

If you are talking about something along the lines of a blog or blog post, Stack Exchange allows each site to form a "community blog" in which anybody could contribute, edit, and write posts. You can see a list of sites with blogs on Blog Overflow. The problem here is, Stack Overflow does not have a community blog as it's community is so massive. Although, Programmers.SE has a community blog whose scope greatly overlaps with that of Stack Overflow. For more info on how to contribute to that, ping me in the Programmers Blog chat room or comment on this post.

If you are talking about writing a article on the site, you can still do that just not in the traditional way. Basically, you still have to put your "article" in Q&A form, and you still have to make sure it abides by the FAQ. For more info on that, see here.

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  • What I'm thinking is that so often; and it's getting to be the majority of the time; I can't understand something, and then sombody explains that very thing that others obfuscate, and they explain it with sample source code that makes sense, at which time the big Ka-Bam happens, and I change from the big dunce into the smartest expert in the world. What I'm thinking of doing is stuff at the NewBeeNoClue level. I'm not sure if these ideas are in line with the goals of this place or not; and as much benefit as I have gained here (in less than a month) I want to be as popular/helpful as possible.
    – User.1
    Jan 2, 2013 at 16:01
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    @User.1 In that case, it depends on what the topic is. If the things you are going to be writing about are on-topic and constructive (basically abide by the FAQ) then go ahead and ask a question, and then answer your own question as I said in the second paragraph. If it doesn't abide by the FAQ or is not constructive and is a subjective question or topic, write a blog post, and follow the steps in paragraph one.
    – Dynamic
    Jan 2, 2013 at 16:14
  • Thank you. NewbeeNoClue at the controls here; why does the "@User.1" appear in your comment to me, but my "@Dynamic" in my comment (this one ?) does not appear in my comment to you ?
    – User.1
    Jan 2, 2013 at 16:18
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    It's my post, so I get alerted on any comment in my post. You don't need to "@Dynmaic" me :-)
    – Dynamic
    Jan 2, 2013 at 16:20
  • Okay, so the alerts go to your E-mail ? Or onto the little red dot on this site ? Thanks for comments. I really like this place; just currently wearing the dunce cap most of the time. Looking forward to when I'm giving out the answers instead of asking all the questions
    – User.1
    Jan 2, 2013 at 16:29
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    @User.1 Alerts got to the "little red dot".
    – Dynamic
    Jan 2, 2013 at 16:29

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