Content deleted Content added
Undid revision 1254383993 by R Holden at gmail (talk) Vandalism |
|||
| (27 intermediate revisions by 18 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{Short description|Question-and-answer website for computer programmers}}
{{for
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{Infobox website
| name = Stack Exchange, Inc.
| logo = {{Dark mode switch|[[File:Stack Overflow DarkMode Logo.svg|250px]]|[[File:Stack Overflow logo.svg|250px]]|logo}}
| screenshot = StackOverflow.com Top Questions Page Screenshot.png
| caption = Screenshot in June 2022
Line 17:
| author = [[Jeff Atwood]] and [[Joel Spolsky]]
| CEO = Prashanth Chandrasekar
| launch_date = {{start date and age|df=yes|2008|9|15}}<ref
| revenue =
}}
'''Stack Overflow''' is a [[Question-and-answer site|question-and-answer website]] for [[computer programmers]].
|title = Stack Exchange API
|url = https://stackexchange.com/legal/terms-of-service
Line 31:
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110426013228/https://stackexchange.com/legal/terms-of-service
|url-status = live
}}</ref>
▲}}</ref> It features questions and answers on certain [[computer programming]] topics.<ref name="secrets">{{cite web
|title = Secrets of social site success
|url = http://www.sdtimes.com/SHORT_TAKES_APRIL_15_2009/About_SHORTTAKES/33403
Line 51 ⟶ 41:
|archive-date = 26 April 2009
|url-status = dead
}}</ref><ref
| title = Spolsky's Software Q-and-A Site
| url = http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/16/1910214
Line 60 ⟶ 50:
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090516073225/http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F09%2F16%2F1910214
| url-status = live
}}</ref><ref
|title = Google Tech Talks: Learning from StackOverflow.com
|url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ
Line 70 ⟶ 60:
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190504031536/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ
|url-status = live
}}</ref>
{{As of|
== History ==
The website was created by [[Jeff Atwood]] and [[Joel Spolsky]] in 2008.<ref name="introducing"/> The name for the website was chosen by voting in April 2008 by readers of ''Coding Horror'', Atwood's programming blog.<ref
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]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Ha|first=Anthony|title=Stack Overflow raises $6M to take its Q&A model beyond programming|url=https://venturebeat.com/2010/05/04/stack-overflow-funding/|publisher=VentureBeat|access-date=23 May 2014|date=4 May 2010|quote=The money we've raised means that, for the next ($6m / monthly burn rate) months, we can take on new projects, hire new people, and build new expert Q&A sites on a wide variety of new topics. Instead of opening sites in exchange for money, we’re about to launch a new, democratic system where anyone can propose a Q&A site, and, if it gets a critical mass of interested people, we'll create it.|archive-date=21 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160421001812/http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/04/stack-overflow-funding/|url-status=live}}</ref>
Line 86 ⟶ 76:
=== 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".<ref
=== 2023 controversy over AI-generated content and moderation strike ===
{{excerpt|Stack Exchange|
== Content ==
Line 98 ⟶ 89:
== Statistics ==
[[File:Top
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.<ref>{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Shaowei|title=An Empirical Study on Developer Interactions in StackOverflow|url=http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/lxjiang/papers/sac13stackoverflow.pdf|publisher=Singapore Management University|author2=David Lo|author3=Lingxiao Jiang|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150202001818/http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/lxjiang/papers/sac13stackoverflow.pdf|archive-date=2 February 2015|date=18–22 March 2013|access-date=25 February 2014|url-status=live}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ford |first1=Denae |last2=Lustig |first2=Kristina |last3=Banks |first3=Jeremy |last4=Parnin |first4=Chris |title=Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |chapter="We Don't do That Here" |date=2018 |series=CHI '18 |___location=New York, NY, USA |publisher=ACM |pages=608:1–608:12 |doi=10.1145/3173574.3174182 |isbn=9781450356206 |s2cid=4758001 |doi-access=free}}</ref> As of 2011, 92% of the questions were answered, in a median time of 11 minutes.<ref>{{cite book|last=Mamykina|first=Lena|author2=Bella Manoim|author3=Manas Mittal|author4=George Hripcsak|author5=Björn Hartmann|title=Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |chapter=Design lessons from the fastest q&a site in the west |date=2011 |pages=2857–2866|doi=10.1145/1978942.1979366|chapter-url=http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bjoern/projects/stackoverflow/|isbn=9781450302289|s2cid=8706419|access-date=25 February 2014|archive-date=5 March 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140305221429/http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bjoern/projects/stackoverflow/|url-status=live}}</ref>
Line 104 ⟶ 95:
== Technology ==
Stack Overflow is written in [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]] using the [[ASP.NET MVC]] ([[model–view–controller|Model–View–Controller]]) framework, and [[Microsoft SQL Server]] for the database<ref
== Reception ==
Stack Overflow won the [[2020 Webby Award|2020 Webby People's Voice Award for Community]] in the category Web.<ref
The site's culture has been criticized in the past for being unfriendly by one research paper, especially in the context of gender differences in participation and beginners learning computer science.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Brooke |first1=Siân |title="Condescending, Rude, Assholes": Framing gender and hostility on Stack Overflow. |url=http://aclanthology.lst.uni-saarland.de/W19-3519.pdf |year=2019 |access-date=21 July 2021 |archive-date=21 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210721142719/http://aclanthology.lst.uni-saarland.de/W19-3519.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> A 2023 study by another researcher concluded that the website's new users were met with significant difficulties in obtaining help from other users in posts started by the former; an analysis from a sample of 968 posts showed that 49% experienced hurdles such as their questions being closed, receiving no response, or receiving no mention as to why their posts were being negatively scored.<ref>{{cite book|editor-last1=Kaindl|editor-first1=Hermann|editor-last2=Mannion|editor-first2=Mike|editor-last3= Maciaszek|editor-first3=Leszek A.| date = 7 July 2023| title = Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering: 17th International Conference, ENASE 2022, Virtual Event, April 25–26, 2022, Revised Selected Papers| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=V1LKEAAAQBAJ| publisher = Springer Nature Switzerland|
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.<ref>Y. Acar, M. Backes, S. Fahl, D. Kim, M. L. Mazurek and C. Stransky, "[https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2017/cmsc818O/papers/get-where-look.pdf You Get Where You're Looking for: The Impact of Information Sources on Code Security] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210214111923/https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2017/cmsc818O/papers/get-where-look.pdf |date=14 February 2021 }}," ''2016 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)'', San Jose, CA, 2016, pp. 289–305. doi: 10.1109/SP.2016.25</ref>
== Decline ==
Starting from 2023 and as of July 2025, Stack Overflow's questions have rapidly decreased due to AI-enabled solutions like ChatGPT, Deepseek and Claude AI.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Stack Overflow’s decline |url=https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2025/jan/21/stack-overflows-decline/ |access-date=2025-07-21 |website=Eric Holscher |language=en}}</ref>
== See also ==
| |||