Citing Stack Overflow discussions

Question

I want to cite Stack Overflow answers in scientific publications.

For example, I could be tempted to cite an answer that has provided a good benchmark analysis to a special problem (e.g. arrays vs. pointers).

But since basically anyone can edit the answer, such a citation won’t do. I need a reliable way of linking to a specific revision of an answer.

For answers that have already been edited, this can be done by looking at the edit history of a posting (e.g. once again arrays vs. pointers, different answer). But for at least two reasons, this is insufficient:

1. It only works for answers that have already been edited.
2. It only displays the Markdown source code as text/plain. Formattings included would be much preferable.

Furthermore, linking to isolated answers might not be enough; it would be much better if it were possible to link to a specific revision (kind of a snapshot) of a whole discussion, i.e. a question with all its answers and comments from a specific date/time.

Wikipedia solves this problem by providing each revision of a topic with a unique oldid attribute to construct a permalink.

Is there already a (hidden) solution for this? If not, I posit that Stack Overflow needs one.

By the way, I realize that this may be controversial but I think it’s completely fine to have Stack Overflow discussions as scientific references. After all, discussions in mailing lists, news groups and private communications are bona fide scientific references, and some of the answers here are prime examples of rigorous research.

(One solution would be to link the normal question, along with a “retrieved on” timestamp but I don’t particularly like that solution since it makes it much harder for readers of the publication to check the source.)

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(I’ve seen “How should the Trilogy and Stack Exchange be cited in external works?” and “Stack Overflow as a reference in a professional paper/presentation” but these are different questions.)

Answer 1

We also have official citation support, but this is enabled only on cstheory and math at the moment.

http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1876/what-is-a-good-standard-for-publishing-a-reference-to-a-stackexchange-thread/1902#1902

We now also support deep linking directly to a particular revision; each one has a link next to it:

Like so:

https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/7153659/7

Answer 2

As I said in the comment in the other question, I agree.

There should be a proper permalink system to link to revisions. The GUID URLs are fugly, and they provide source code only - making them effectively useless for use in a publication. (Update: It is possible to link directly to propely formatted versions [yet still with fugly URLs]. See S.Mark's answer for details.)

A permalink scheme like

stackoverflow.com/revisions/12345/8

(or whatever)

would really be in order.

I feel this is something SO simply should have as a growing major resource on programming, no matter whether the feature is going to be used ten times, or ten thousand times a year.

Answer 3

Probably, more user-friendly version of following URL will be needed, as Pekka mentioned.

https://stackoverflow.com/posts/233293/revisions#revd373d0c9-db98-4664-9749-4dec41e80a40

Above link points to Formatted version of certain version

Answer 4

The new “history” feature of questions provides a good solution to the problem of citing questions. For example, this discussion can be cited by linking to the appropriate history timestamp and sort in ascending order:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/49760/timeline?asc=True#rev-497602010-05-13-01-48

Answer 5

Well, there is a GUID associated with every revision, and you can view source on it, so..

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/revisions/e65962f8-0879-406e-9fdc-d70dfce1b013/view-source

for example.

Not optimal, but honestly, this has never really come up in ~2 years of SO until now.

Answer 6

Stack Overflow is like Wikipedia, in that you should rarely cite Stack Overflow directly in the same way that you should rarely cite Wikipedia directly. If you often cite Wikipedia in scientific or academic publications, you're doing it wrong. Instead, you use either resource (Wikipedia or StackOverflow) as a starting point that will point you to something more authoritative and citable — perhaps a link to the official documentation or something similar.

There are exceptions, of course, but generally the solutions posted on StackOverflow are implementations of patterns better documented elsewhere, or samples that demonstrate a programming feature where you'd do better to point to the original documentation for that feature. This generally holds even if the content or exact example in an answer is original. Any answer worth citing is gonna be using techniques that have real academic names and documentation, and that's where you need to point.

Again, an answer may be truly exceptional and worth citing if it provides a truly excellent implementation of an academic principle or pattern or if it creates something truly novel, but the former should always be cited along with an academic reference for the original pattern and the both are exceedingly rare.