Questions tagged [discussion]
Questions that may not necessarily have a clear-cut right or wrong answer and are often subjective. If your question isn't a bug report, feature request, or request for assistance, or question with a concrete answer, it's probably a discussion.
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Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange sites do I post on?
There seems to be more than a few computer science/programming Stack Exchange sites. Stack Overflow, being the first, has by far the most users, questions, and answers.
What is the reasoning for ...
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Formatting Sandbox
Notes:
Answers will occasionally be moved to the Sandbox archive when there are too many of them. When using them to report bugs, keep an eye on the post.
You may also want to take a look at the ...
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Should 'Hi', 'thanks', taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?
I edit a lot of posts every day. I often run across posts with 'Hi' and 'Thanks' on the top and the bottom of the post respectively. I also run across things like:
--User
Should these items be ...
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Enable automatic deletion of old, unanswered, zero-score questions after a year?
Related to Meta Super User efforts:
Old unanswered inactive questions with low views/votes
and Meta Server Fault efforts:
Cleaning house, really old, unloved questions
We already auto-remove ...
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Fastest Gun in the West Problem
I feel like there's a problem with Stack Overflow, as the number of people prowling it increases.
Each question's answers are sorted by descending score and then by descending time of posting. This ...
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Are answers that just contain links elsewhere really "good answers"?
I have often wondered at the practice on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and the other sites where someone will ask a question and an answer will come in that says "Look here: https://link ...
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Are there any clones/alternatives for running a Stack Exchange style Q&A site?
Since the source code for this site isn't available for purchase or external use, I'm looking for software that can run a Q&A environment similar to Stack Exchange. Are there any such pieces of ...
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Could we please be a bit nicer to new users?
There is a distinct decline in the level of civility on all the sites here. Some of this is due to new users coming in and posting spam and other nonsense, but the off-topic and downvote buttons are ...
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Exit strategies for "chameleon questions"
I'm not sure if there's already an existing term for this, so I'm inventing my own.
(tl;dr: I call them "chameleon questions" because they change every time you submit or edit an answer. If ...
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The Follow Questions and Answers feature is now live across the Network
We are happy to announce that the previously announced follow question and answer feature is now live across the Network, including Stack Overflow, all Stack Exchange sites, and all Meta sites. (...
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Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?
It is possible to migrate a question from one Stack Exchange site to another by closing, but if I have a question that I think is on-topic for multiple Stack Exchange sites, is it OK to post it on ...
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How do I participate in Meta and not die trying?
Meta doesn't like me; I can't seem to keep my points. How can I make good posts that are well-received?
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What are the reputation requirements for privileges on sites, and how do they differ per site?
Formerly Reputation requirements compared.
What are the reputation requirements for privileges on the various sites in the network?
Also, how do reputation requirements for various privileges compare ...
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Firing mods and forced relicensing: is Stack Exchange still interested in cooperating with the community?
The last weeks and days have seen some erratic behaviour by Stack Exchange Inc., such as likely illegal changes to the content license and the firing of an upstanding community moderator with no ...
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Recent Reputation History Changes
Update (March, 2012): This has been rolled out to all sites in the network except Area 51.
Behind the scenes we've been hard at work making some changes to how we track reputation. Here are some of ...
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What is the XY problem?
What is the XY problem?
When asking questions, how do I recognize when I'm falling into it? How do I avoid it?
Return to FAQ index
Other languages:
ES, JA, PT, RU
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Can we prevent some of the low-quality questions from entering our system?
Stack Overflow has been wildly successful. And maybe in some ways too successful.
I am concerned that Stack Overflow is being inundated by a stream of low-quality questions from users who are ...
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The current review system encourages fake reviews; some people upvote everything rather than actually fixing problems
I went to a Late Answers review queue that had four items in it and started reviewing the first one by editing it into shape rather heavily.
By the time I was done, someone else had reviewed the ...
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What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting? [duplicate]
While browsing Stack Overflow, I noticed that I lost a lot of reputation:
Is this serial downvoting? Will it be corrected by a rep-recalculation? How often are those done?
Here's a second ...
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A new search engine for Stack Exchange
After the performance problems we have run into with Lucene.NET we've decided to make a change, we're moving the network on to elasticsearch.
Here's where to get started: https://stackoverflow.com/...
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Six simple tips to get Stack Overflow reputation fast
From "6 Simple Tips to Get Stackoverflow Reputation Fast" at codexon.com:
Be the First to Answer. Even at the cost of quality.
Use Downvotes and Comments Strategically
Use obnoxious in-...
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Jon Skeet Facts
I'm looking for Chuck Norris Facts style answers. In case anyone is curious, this question was inspired by Jon's own comment to this question.
Now with official sanction from the powers that be!
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Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized
After a ton of discussion, work and input from the community, we're rolling out the remainder of major closing changes that you've helped us design, as discussed in these prior posts.
They're live, ...
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Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?
I think we can all agree, this sucks:
If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as "The Answer&...
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How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes? [closed]
I'm on SO pretty much every day researching something to do with programming, and over the last month or two, I find I'm growing frustrated and a little disgusted at how many interesting questions ...
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Is it legal to copy Stack Overflow questions and answers?
I just found http://programmingfaq.w3ec.com/faq/4761/whats-the-hi-lo-algorithm which has an exact copy of this Stack Overflow question, What's the Hi/Lo Algorithm, with all its answers and no ...
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The future of meta.stackoverflow and meta.stackexchange
Historically this site, meta.stackoverflow, has been the place to ask questions about not just Stack Overflow, but the functioning of the entire Stack Exchange (2.0) network, including Area 51 and ...
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Turbocharging the Roomba: solutions for premature deletion
A couple weeks ago, I asked for help: How can we stop premature deletion?
And I got some fantastic responses. A big thanks to everyone who participated in that discussion - you're the reason I don't ...
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How do I write a good title?
A good title helps your question get the attention it deserves. What goes into a good title?
Return to FAQ index
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Review queue workflows - Final release
All good things must come to an end and so must the review queues project. This project would not have been successful without the community. Thank you all for the hours of reviewing, testing, and ...
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What formula should be used to determine "hot" questions?
Right now the front page Popular tab is fairly broken -- it's a simple descending sort by views. As Joel said in podcast #18, it is "a self-fulfilling prophecy." But this is not intentional, ...
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Can we get some consensus on what flag to use for link only answers? [duplicate]
Related: Since moderators are just asking users to flag a custom "Link only answer," can we permanently make this a flag option? (not a dupe, that's a feature request and was closed as a ...
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Should I vote to close a duplicate question, even though it's much newer, and has more up to date answers?
I have seen this many times, a question is being asked because a previous, duplicate question was asked and answered a few years ago and has no longer relevant answers.
The recommendation is to edit ...
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Is "Don't do it" a valid answer?
If someone asks how to do XYZ, and you think doing XYZ at all is a Bad Idea™, is it valid to post an answer saying so? You aren't answering the question, but instead, arguing the question's validity. ...
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Network-wide HTTPS: It's time
Update 2017-05-22
stackoverflow.com is now https://. I've written up a lot of what it took to get here in a blog post.
Next up is chat and then https-only cookies. We'll be ramping up HSTS max-age ...
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We're switching to CommonMark
I’m Ham and I’m a developer on the Teams team here at Stack Overflow. Over the past few months, I’ve been heads down working on the way we turn Markdown into HTML when writing and editing posts across ...
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The new top bar is out on meta. Consider it a beta
EDIT Dec 4 - We're doing it live! Please post bugs or concerns as questions tagged [top-bar]
We have rolled out our 95% completed top bar for feedback.
Note:
We are still adding a few final ...
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Are Stack Exchange sites forums?
I was under the impression that Stack Exchange sites were forums, or forum-like objects.
If they are not forums: Why aren't they? What defines a forum?
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Changes to syntax highlighting
locked for the history - please post bugs and feature-requests separately.
-Shog9
We're changing the way syntax highlighting is done on the Stack Exchange engine.
As you probably know, we use ...
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Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites
Back in April of 2010, Joel shared our assumptions about the role of small sites in the newly minted Stack Exchange network:
If a site does not have enough activity at the end of 90 days, it will be ...
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Please stop using SoftwareEngineering.SE as your toilet bowl [closed]
Stack Overflow users have been using the "off topic - belongs on SoftwareEngineering.SE" close reason as an alternative to all the other close reasons. It'd be helpful if people actually read the FAQ ...
user149432
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Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow [closed]
Today, the size of the close-votes queue is 55k questions and growing. Is that a problem?
Which action could be taken to clean it up? It seems to be growing faster than Stack Overflow members ...
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Is it okay to use Stack Overflow as the support forum for a product or project? [closed]
I recently saw a question about a problem (or possible bug) with some product on Stack Overflow. At first, I wanted to suggest that the asker post his question to that product's support forum.
When ...
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New responsive Activity page
Update 2 - December 8, 2021: We’ve shipped a bunch of refinements over the last 24 hours or so. We’re going through the bugs and design requests and marking them with the proper tags. There’s a lot ...
Dan CormierStaff
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Should I not answer my own questions? [duplicate]
I asked a question recently, looking for examples of an online tool. Per the FAQ, I answered my own question with a few examples that I had already found. I did this so that these examples would be ...
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Posting and answering questions you have already found the answer to [duplicate]
Sometimes you spend a day or more solving a technical problem, and when you finally solve it, you may want to post it on your blog (if you have one) to share with the community.
However, most ...
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Changes to "close as duplicate" (part deux)
I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. Due to me being an idiot miscommunication, a partial change snuck out early, and even though we announced it we didn't really explain why we made the change. ...
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How can I link to an external resource in a community-friendly way?
I would like to help my fellow Stackizens, using material from my blog or other website. But external links are sometimes viewed as excessive promotion. From the FAQ:
Be careful, because the ...
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Are we discouraged from fixing typos and misspellings on Stack Exchange sites?
I just attempted to fix a typo on a question on cooking.stackexchange.com and saw this
Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:
Your edit summary must be at least 10 characters
This ...
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New Post Notices are live network-wide
For further issues, bugs and feedback that have not been covered by existing answers here please feel free to ask a new question.
A few minutes ago, new Post Notices were launched across the Stack ...
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