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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A Terms of Service update restricting companies that scrape your profile information without your permission
Update (April 19, 2016): This change is now live. You can view the updated Terms of Service here, or read about them below.
tl;dr:
We’re planning to make some changes to our Terms of Service to stop ...
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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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Stack Overflow is doing me ongoing harm; it's time to fix it!
Over the last month, Stack Overflow has violated its own policies
and precedents to cause egregious and unnecessary harm to me -- to my
reputation (personal and professional), to my health, and to my ...
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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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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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Thank you, Shog9
@Shog9, a longtime Community Manager here at Stack Exchange, has just tweeted that he is no longer working at Stack Overflow:
@shog9: Well... I suddenly find myself in need of work.
If anyone's ...
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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 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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Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers
Update
On August 2nd, 2023, negotiations between community representatives and representatives of the company concluded with an agreement being reached. The details of the agreement can be found at ...
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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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Firing Community Managers: Stack Exchange is not interested in cooperating with the community, is it?
Less than a month ago, there was some settling of the incident with firing Monica. It's obvious that there was not a lot of approval from the community on the course of action chosen by SE, or the ...
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Why aren't people voting for questions?
While at least some answers from every question seem to have been up-voted as a "helpful" answer:
about 49% of questions have score of 0 or 1.
another 21% of questions have a score of 2.
Most ...
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Net Neutrality and Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange
It's July 12th! (2017) (in Coordinated Universal Stack Exchange Time)
Today we're gonna be showing a banner directing readers to the blog post (and thus, indirectly, this discussion) from every Stack ...
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Thank you, Robert Cartaino
The title says it all.
Thank you, Robert Cartaino, for everything you did for SE and the community.
I don't post much on MSE, but have been a mod for about eight years. There is a lot that can go on ...
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Moderation strike: Results of negotiations
We have reached the following conclusions during negotiations between community-selected strike representatives and representatives of Stack Exchange, Inc. This aims to address most of the concerns ...
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New Feature: Table Support
Update: I've just enabled this feature network-wide. All sites across Stack Exchange are now able to use tables. Thanks for all the feedback. We'll keep monitoring this question and we'll continue to ...
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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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Stack Exchange Public Q&A access will not be restricted in Russia
Like so many people around the world, we are watching the tragic and unlawful invasion of Ukraine unfold. Several of the discussions on Meta and in conversations with us have raised the question of ...
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Dear Stack Exchange: a statement and a letter from your moderators
Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.,
We know you know about this already, so we'll keep this brief. The past two weeks have been rough. Lots of moderators have lost confidence in you; for some, it was the final ...
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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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answers
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Help us test the shiny new "User Activity" page! (Plus a bunch of new features.) [duplicate]
We've launched! Please give feedback here.
Today, we're shipping the new "Activity Page" of the Profile here on Meta SE, so you can test it out and hopefully share some feedback and ...
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Monica's situation continues unresolved. Is SE hoping the problem just goes away?
This surfaced in the apology thread, but I believe it deserves more exposure.
The apology thread was posted October 6th, 2019. In it, the idea was expressed that SE, the company, had done wrong by ...
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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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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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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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Winter Bash 2016 - All Hats [closed]
I decided to start the traditional secret hats post, but instead of just another "here is how you get the secret hats" post, to also add in all the hats. There are two answers: one for the ...
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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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Change in roles for Jon Ericson (leaving SE)
It’s a bit surreal to be writing this post—not many people can say they left their dream job twice. Today is my last day as an employee of Stack Overflow. I’ll be joining College Confidential as their ...
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How to avoid "Hot Network Questions" on the sidebar
This may sound like a 'first world problem', but I am quite easily distracted by the 'Hot Network Questions' sidebar, as I find them quite amusing and some of them quite intellectual
But where the ...
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The company’s commitment to rebuilding the relationship with you, our community
My name is Teresa Dietrich. About a month ago, I joined Stack Overflow as Head of Product and Community, reporting directly to the CEO. During my years as an engineer and technology leader, I saw the ...
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Will Stack Overflow boycott GoDaddy because of their support for SOPA? [closed]
GoDaddy has apparently withdrawn their support for SOPA. Read link for more info: Go Daddy’s Position on SOPA, from their
website; it is obviously yet to be seen whether they will continue to hold ...
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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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The MIT License – Clarity on Using Code on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange
Update (Dec. 22, 2015): Thanks, everyone, for your feedback to this proposal. We're going to digest this one over the holidays and should have a follow-up announcement answering your questions and ...
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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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Global auth is dead! Long live universal login
Update: Universal login is in place and considered "done". If you see anything weird, please submit new bug reports.
As y'all know, our current flavor of "global authentication" ...
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The NEW new "Be Nice" Policy ("Code of Conduct") — Updated with your feedback [duplicate]
Update: Thanks for all the additional feedback below. We incorporated a lot of your suggestions, and this is going live (as https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice).
We're also looking at ways ...
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SE Inc. Director of Public Q&A retweets bad-faith, misrepresentative tweet
As we all know, SE Inc. has engaged in highly problematic and widely criticized actions against the SE community and specific moderators.
Earlier today (Oct 11th, 2019), Ms. Sara Chipps, "...
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Moderation Strike update: Data dumps, choosing representatives, GPT data, and where we’re holding
Update
On August 2nd, 2023, negotiations between community representatives and representatives of the company concluded with an agreement being reached. The details of the agreement can be found at ...
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How does SOPA threaten Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange?
Today's Stack Overflow system message reads:
SOPA is a dangerous law. It breaks the Internet and threatens sites like Stack Overflow. Protect the Internet!
How is it a threat to Stack Overflow?
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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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Thank you, Geoff
It seems that after 11 years, Geoff Dalgas - "Valued Associate #00003" - has decided to hang up his hat as a developer at Stack Exchange.
That deserves... Some recognition and gratitude!
Let'...
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Congratulations to our 29 oldest beta sites - They're now no longer beta!
If you're a user on a long-toiling beta site that's been waiting 7-8 years to get out of beta, this may be the post you've been waiting for.
The 29 Beta sites that are 7+ years old no longer have the ...
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To reach out: on Monica, the Lavender community, and the future of the Stack Exchange network
Over the past weeks, the uproar has been vast, spanning the new Code of Conduct, Stack Exchange's conduct over the years, and more. Gallons of internet ink have been spilled by everyone involved, ...
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Employee profiles are now marked with a “Staff” indicator
As of 31 July 2019, all staff member accounts have "Staff" next to their name on their user profile.
It looks like this:
(This is an updated image from the original one included in this ...
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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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Should Stack Exchange in general be awarding "A"s for Effort?
This just came up again:
homework is not acceptable if the asker has made no effort whatsoever
I'm developing a bit of an involuntary twitch that manifests itself when I encounter the word "effort"...
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An Update On Creative Commons Licensing
We’d like to provide you with an update to our transition to version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license. We realize that this is something that you care deeply about, and that our response to your concerns ...
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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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We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup
We’ve added a “Necessary cookies only” option to our cookie consent banner across stackoverflow.com, all Stack Exchange sites, stackoverflow.co, stackoverflow.blog, and all other Stack Overflow sites. ...
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Can a machine be taught to flag spam automatically?
TL;DR: We did it, so... yes.
What is this?
Charcoal is the organization behind the SmokeDetector bot and other nice things. This bot scans new posts across the entire network for spam posts and ...
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