Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a question-and-answer website for programmers. It is the flagship site of the Stack Exchange Network.[2][3][4] It was created in 2008 by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky.[5][6] It features questions and answers on certain computer programming topics.[7][8][9] It was created to be a more open alternative to earlier question and answer websites such as Experts-Exchange. Stack Overflow was sold to Prosus, a Netherlands-based consumer internet conglomerate, on 2 June 2021 for $1.8 billion.[10]

For the general term, see Stack overflow and Stack overflow (disambiguation). For the parent company, see Stack Exchange.

Stack Exchange, Inc.
Screenshot in June 2022
Type of site
Knowledge market
Question and answer
Available in
  • English
  • Spanish
  • Russian
  • Portuguese
  • Japanese
OwnerProsus
Created byJeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky
CEOPrashanth Chandrasekar
URLstackoverflow.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
Launched15 September 2008 (2008-09-15)[1]
Content license
  • CC BY-SA 2.5 (until April 2011)
  • CC BY-SA 3.0 (until May 2018)
  • CC BY-SA 4.0
Written inC#

The website serves as a platform for users to ask and answer questions, and, through membership and active participation, to vote questions and answers up or down similar to Reddit and edit questions and answers in a fashion similar to a wiki.[11] Users of Stack Overflow can earn reputation points and "badges"; for example, a person is awarded 10 reputation points for receiving an "up" vote on a question or an answer to a question,[12] and can receive badges for their valued contributions,[13] which represents a gamification of the traditional Q&A website. Users unlock new privileges with an increase in reputation like the ability to vote, comment, and even edit other people's posts.[14]

As of March 2022 Stack Overflow has over 20 million registered users,[15] and has received over 24 million questions and 35 million answers.[16] The site and similar programming question and answer sites have globally mostly replaced programming books for day-to-day programming reference in the 2000s, and today are an important part of computer programming.[17] Based on the type of tags assigned to questions, the top eight most discussed topics on the site are: JavaScript, Java, C#, PHP, Android, Python, jQuery, and HTML.[18]

History

The website was created by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky in 2008.[5] The name for the website was chosen by voting in April 2008 by readers of Coding Horror, Atwood's popular programming blog.[19] On 31 July 2008, Jeff Atwood sent out invitations encouraging his subscribers to take part in the private beta of the new website, limiting its use to those willing to test out the new software. On 15 September 2008 it was announced that the public beta version was in session and that the general public was now able to use it to seek assistance on programming related issues. The design of the Stack Overflow logo was decided by a voting process.[20]

On 3 May 2010, it was announced that Stack Overflow had raised $6 million in venture capital from a group of investors led by Union Square Ventures.[21]

In 2019, Stack Overflow named Prashanth Chandrasekar as its chief executive officer and Teresa Dietrich as its chief product officer.[22]

In June 2021, Prosus, a Netherlands-based subsidiary of South African media company Naspers, announced a deal to acquire Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion.[23]

Security breach

In early May 2019, an update was deployed to Stack Overflow's development version. It contained a bug which allowed an attacker to grant themselves privileges in accessing the production version of the site. Stack Overflow published on their blog that approximately 184 public network users were affected by this breach, which "could have returned IP address, names, or emails".[24][25]

2023 controversy over AI-generated content and moderation strike
This section is an excerpt from Stack Exchange § June - August 2023 moderation strike and outrage.[edit]
On June 5, 2023, nearly 20% of moderators and over 1,000 high-profile users announced a strike primarily to protest a series of policy changes by Stack Overflow, Inc. and particularly focusing on AI policy changes.[26] The company had rolled out a series of unpopular changes. First, on April 17, the CEO made a controversial blog post about community and AI.[27] This was followed by a series of 5-6 AI tools announcements, on April 19,[28] May 4, May 10, May 18,[29] and June 12/June 15,[30][31] the majority of which were received negatively. Second, on May 22, they announced a new voting button style.[32] Third, AI-generated content had been banned on many sites on the network[33] after the 2022 announcement of the popular large language model ChatGPT; but the company abruptly changed course on May 30[34] and instructed its elected volunteer moderators to effectively allow AI-generated questions and answers.[35] Next, on June 5, the company issued a highly unpopular response to the moderation strike.[36] Then, on June 9, Stack Exchange, Inc. announced that the data dump was not going to be posted,[37] which triggered an outrage and eventually was rolled back on June 16.[38] In addition, on June 20 and then again on June 22, the company posted an announcement of a new prompt design (later changed to GenAI) site, triggering a conflict over the bypassing of the normal site creation process.[39] [40] Following this, on June 29, the company announced a decision to have native ads, causing frustration about Stack Exchange's goals.[41] Next, on July 11, the company announced two new collectives, with much negative feedback on the lack of community around them.[42] Finally, on July 17, Stack Exchange Inc. announced a conference in Berlin, triggering another outrage, this time over the agenda completely overlooking the issue of AI.[43] The strike finally ended with an agreement on August 2 which is considered a victory for the striking users and a defeat for the company, as the company gave into all but one demand with nothing in return.[44]

Content

Stack Overflow only accepts questions about programming that are tightly focused on a specific problem. Questions of a broader nature—or those inviting answers that are inherently a matter of opinion—are usually rejected by the site's users, and marked as closed. The sister site softwareengineering.stackexchange.com is intended to be a venue for broader queries, e.g. general questions about software development.[45]

Closing questions is a main differentiation from other Q&A sites like Yahoo! Answers and a way to prevent low quality questions. The mechanism was overhauled in 2013; questions edited after being put "on hold" now appear in a review queue.[46] Jeff Atwood stated in 2010 that duplicate questions are not seen as a problem but rather they constitute an advantage if such additional questions drive extra traffic to the site by multiplying relevant keyword hits in search engines.[47]

All user-generated content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribute-ShareAlike license, version 2.5, 3.0, or 4.0 depending on the date the content was contributed.[48]

Statistics
Top Stack Overflow tags

A 2013 study has found that 75% of users only ask one question, 65% only answer one question, and only 8% of users answer more than 5 questions.[49] To empower a wider group of users to ask questions and then answer, Stack Overflow created a mentorship program resulting in users having a 50% increase in score on average.[50] As of 2011, 92% of the questions were answered, in a median time of 11 minutes.[51]

As of August 2012, 443,000 of the 1.3 million registered users had answered at least one question, and of those, approximately 6,000 (0.46% of the total user count) had earned a reputation score greater than 5000.[52] Reputation can be gained fastest by answering questions related to tags with lower expertise density, doing so promptly (in particular being the first one to answer a question), being active during off-peak hours, and contributing to diverse areas.[52]

Technology

Stack Overflow is written in C# using the ASP.NET MVC (Model–View–Controller) framework, and Microsoft SQL Server for the database[53] and the Dapper object-relational mapper used for data access.[54] Unregistered users have access to most of the site's functionality, while users who sign in can gain access to more functionality, such as asking or answering a question, establishing a profile and being able to earn reputation to allow functionality like editing questions and answers without peer review or voting to close a question.[55]

Reception

Stack Overflow won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for Community in the category Web.[56]

The site's culture has been criticized for being unfriendly, especially in the context of gender differences in participation and beginners learning computer science.[57]

A study from the University of Maryland found that Android developers that used only Stack Overflow as their programming resource tended to write less secure code than those who used only the official Android developer documentation from Google, while developers using only the official Android documentation tended to write significantly less functional code than those who used only Stack Overflow.[58]

See also

References
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  2. Sewak, M.; et al. (18 May 2010). "Finding a Growth Business Model at Stack Overflow, Inc" (PDF). Stanford CasePublisher. Stanford University School of Engineering. Rev. 20 July 2010 (2010–204–1). 204-2010-1. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 August 2012. Retrieved 23 May 2014.
  3. Jeff Atwood (16 April 2008). "Introducing Stackoverflow.com". Coding Horror. Archived from the original on 3 February 2010. Retrieved 11 March 2009.
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