Should I downvote answers that were good when they were written but are now outdated? [duplicate]

2026-04-13T10:09:43Z

I came across an answer that was perfectly fine when it was written, but it’s now outdated and people coming on the question page should prefer the other answers. However, I feel bad removing rep to the author, because they did nothing wrong. What is the etiquette here? Should I edit the answer to add a warning saying it’s outdated instead?

Generalist badge - What happened on Dec 10, 2022 - Algorithmic bug deleted questions? Inflation / many weird awardings

2026-04-13T09:33:43Z

I was surfing around the badges and saw something weird with the generalist badge....

Specifically, the link : https://stackoverflow.com/help/badges/15/generalist

And I see it has been awarded close to 2581 times... And quite a FEW of those times were on Dec 10, 2022 ... Actually... pages and pages of those...

I remember this was one of the most difficult badges - last time I had checked it was something like 550 awards.

What is even more weird, is I checked the script for progression (randomly) for 5 users..and they all come up short of the requirements... (not just a little short)...

e.g. from page 4: https://stackoverflow.com/help/badges/15?page=4

e.g. https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/76727/generalist-progression-updated

2335514

2325987

Why is a moderator harassing me about an answer I posted 12 years ago about a supposed “flaw” in my answer that does not negatively impact its use?

2026-04-13T02:18:40Z

The interaction described in the title bizarrely happened on an answer I posted about 12 years ago.

Why is the user/moderator “mickmackusa” behaving this way? They somehow pop onto that answer, and others from other users, from over a decade ago. Yes, their suggestion makes a smidge of sense, but my accepted answer was posted and accepted 12-ish years ago. The supposed “flaw” in my logic doesn’t negatively affect performance or output; so I see no problem.

But now, on a lazy Sunday night 12-ish years later, I am forced to endure this pedantic moderator’s odd behavior.

A screenshot of the first iteration is below. Others have since been doubled-down on and even tripled- and quadrupled-down on.

Is this the behavior of a valued and useful moderator on this site?

PS: I am barely active on Stack Overflow nowadays, so it seems odd that something like this would happen. I have no idea why this particular moderator has taken to posting pedantic comments across my answer and others.

Update: Since the moderator in question has commented, “It looks like subsequent context was excluded from this question.” I will add context via screenshots; these are comments that occurred after the screenshot above. Please excuse repetition in these two new screenshots—side effect of scrolling and screenshotting.

Again, is this kind of comment thread indicative of the “quality” of Stack Overflow specific moderators nowadays? Or is this moderator an aberration? I hope it is indicative of the latter…

In Open Ended Question why downvote contributes to overall rep of user while upvote does not

2026-04-11T13:31:43Z

I answered an open ended question and noted that when someone upvoted my answer, my rep doesn't change but when someone downvotes the rep decreases by 2. Is this intentional design or was this overlooked by the design team etc?

I think if downvotes count then upvote should also count for user reps.

Here is the proof(screenshot) that shows -2 from my reps on a answer I posted on an open ended question:

Another proof is that it is still visible on my rep history on march 1.

The announcement for this content type states:

We will not tie these new question types to reputation or privilege-earning opportunities.

Comment/reply timestamp links on open-ended questions are pointing to a post timeline page instead of to the comment/reply itself

2026-04-10T18:23:39Z

When clicking the timestamp link of a comment/reply to an open-ended discussion (e.g. on Formatting and adjusting thr), the browser navigates to a post timeline page (for example, https://stackoverflow.com/posts/79923713/timeline)

This is a bug--these timestamp links should be jumping to the anchor element for the comment/reply itself, like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79923678/formatting-and-adjusting-thr/79923713#79923713.

Rate Limit is not applying to Opinion-based Content

2026-04-10T17:36:38Z

I've noted that new users appear to be able to post multiple questions in short succession, despite the rating guidelines stating that there is a 90 minute rate limit for new users on Stack Overflow.

Asking

Users with < 125 rep on the current site, 40 minutes since their last question anywhere on the network (This applies to the user's IP address, not their account. If the user shares that IP with other users, they can be limited by the other user asking a question anywhere on the network; similarly, if the same user posts a question from a different IP address, they may not be limited.)

Other per-site limits may apply; e.g. on Stack Overflow, new users can only ask once every 90 minutes. Some of these per-site limits do also check the account, not just the IP address.

While the limit is waived for users with 125+ reputation on a given site, questions posted on sites where one has 125+ reputation still count toward the rate limit for sites where one doesn't. For instance, if you ask a question on a site where you have 150 rep, you can't ask another question on a site where you have only 100 rep for the next 40 minutes; however, you can ask them in reverse order immediately (first on the 100-rep site, then on the 150-rep site).

For example this user posted 4 questions in 15 minutes: 1, 2, 3, 4. Another posted 3 questions in just under 90 minutes: 1, 2, 3.

Considering the low-quality value that many of these questions have, the rate limit should definitely apply here, and it seems like a bug that a user can ask many questions in such a short amount of time.

Answers are a different problem, because there are no answers on OBC, so the rate-limit there, unfortunately, needs to be waived; it still should not be for posting questions.

Providing operational clarity to Q/A on Stack Overflow

2026-04-10T13:57:55Z

Providing "make and model" around posts on Stack Overflow.

Stack Overflow can be a great resource for figuring things out. Over time, many stack overflow questions become quite dated. This bazel/golang question for example. It was 100% accurate in its time 8 years ago, however, it showcases old practices no longer relevant in bazel. Why does my Bazel 0.11.1 build fail when my project has an internal dependency?

It is great to have articles for historical context - there is no easy way to go back and provide an update to this type of Question / Answer. This archive almost needs a relevant version applied - as this clearly predates bazel 7. I can take a related example from the automotive industry. Oftentimes, the make and the model are included in online forums - this provides additional context.

Code block automatically scrolls up when I try to scroll down [closed]

2026-04-10T06:21:55Z

I was writing an answer to the question which include multiples line of code block, when i tried to scroll down in the code block. it automatically scrolled up each time.

https://www.loom.com/share/8fda6a5084dd4bbb999ca9f0fbe306ce

Filtering out "best practices" questions [duplicate]

2026-04-09T14:39:21Z

Is there a way to automatically filter out "best practices" questions? They seem to be primarily very low effort questions that have little or nothing to do with best practices, and they are just a waste of time for people trying to actually help folks out (at least in [sql]).

What are the guidelines for accepting or closing "Open Ended Questions"?

2026-04-09T06:46:21Z

I'm really struggling with the changes to Stack Overflow that allow open-ended questions and which questions I should just close or which should be responded to. Many are horribly vague and make little sense on the site I know as Stack Overflow. The question that prompted this post is I have this github project, but I'm not sure if I'm on the right track.

In the past I've just looked at such questions and evaluated them based on the old Stack Overflow How do I ask a good question? criteria. But I've been told in comments that doesn't apply to open-ended questions. If it doesn't, then what measuring stick are we supposed to use when evaluating these new type questions?

If using the normal Help Center criteria, I find very few pass muster, maybe 20% or less. But that leaves a lot of new open-ended, advice type questions I'm just not sure of. I mean if I saw the linked question in a Review Queue, I would expect that to be one of the test questions I should reject/close, or be told to go away for 24-hours if I missed closing it. But what are the criteria I should use? I mean I generally like helping people if possible, but these are really low-quality questions?

Would allowing specific Gold Stack Overflow badges to be exported as verifiable certificates improve user motivation and retention?

2026-04-08T16:31:31Z

Would allowing specific Gold Stack Overflow badges to be exported as verifiable certificates improve user motivation and retention?

I’m not referring to simply linking a profile or displaying badges as flair. Or adding a volunteer section to your webpage/linkedin and linking to your profile/fair.

What I propose is something more formal: for example, e.g. issuing verifiable certificates for Gold badges.

The idea is not centered on reputation itself, but rather on introducing additional incentives that exist independently of reputation thresholds. This could be particularly relevant for contributions that require sustained effort but are less visible - e.g. review tasks.

This could be an additional incentive for these contributions, beyond the existing reputation/badge system.

Did you stop upvoting questions on Stack Overflow after the 2019 question upvote scoring change?

2026-04-07T15:39:40Z

I've been an active member of the Stack Overflow community since 2012. At first, I was only asking questions and was reading the answers. I was receiving so much help from community members that after a while, I began to feel obligated to give back to the community somehow. So, I started answering other people's questions.

My admiration for the Stack Overflow ended on November 13, 2019, when @schipps Sarah Chipps announced that upvoting questions would give the same amount of points as upvoting answers.

Before this change, I always upvoted both the question and the best (imho) answer. The author of the question received 5 points, the author of the answer received 10 points, and I considered this fair.

On November 13, 2019, I stopped upvoting questions and started upvoting only answers because I don't believe that an ignoramus and a professional should receive the same reward. What about you? Are you still upvoting good questions? I do believe that Sarah Chipps has harmed our community with this decision. Do you agree?

What is the rationale behind a suspension for 100 years? [duplicate]

2026-04-06T14:54:58Z

I found a user that is suspended for 100 years and wondered: why do you do this?
Can't you "deactivate" a user if you decide to doom them forever?

A quick search of "100 years" didn't yield anything useful.

Support for collapsible sections [duplicate]

2026-04-06T08:33:11Z

Please introduce support for collapsible sections. Similar in effect to this:

<details>
  <summary>Click to expand</summary>

  This content is hidden until the user clicks the summary.

</details>

Rationale.

SO requires MREs for debugging questions. Yet, even a plain pom.xml may be quite long. Once all the snippets of the MRE are included, it may take some unreasonable amount of scrolling to actually get to the answers — even considering the fact the snippets are automatically individually wrapped in a scroll pane.

It may be an idea worth considering to also automatically collapse long snippets.

Is something up with rep calculations?

2026-04-05T03:41:25Z

There are a bunch of deleted answers I downvoted and should be getting +1 back for (e.g. all the deleted answers on this question.) Usually this happens by the end of the day the answer is deleted, but it’s been 2 days now. What’s up?

Before and after images to prove I am not a crackpot:

Retiring the beta site

2026-04-01T20:57:11Z

I am here today to update you on the beta site and its future.

First, thank you for all of the feedback - your thoughts are appreciated and have significantly impacted the decisions that we’ve made about how we move forward.

TL;DR - We will be retiring the beta site shortly and will be removing the button to get to it and ceasing support for it.

We will not be migrating the unified posting experience to the main site. Not migrating the unified experience to the main site will obviate the need to solve the issue around the conversion of comments and answers to “replies”, because that was tied to this unified post experience.

We will be massaging the subjective/opinion based content that was submitted in the beta site to the Q&A format, but we are still figuring out exactly how this will work. We will need to do this with sensitivity to the fact that “replies” were more conversational than answers would be.

We will not be migrating most of the design elements from beta at this time: for instance, the homepage, the navigation, the left and right sidebars, and the wider layout.

The retirement of the beta site will happen in the coming weeks, and we’ll communicate more as we get closer.

I think it’s important to recognize the hard work of everyone who put their energy into the beta experience - it did exactly what a beta should do: it explored what new directions and iterations we can take on the site, even if that means eliminating ideas that don’t work. While there’s no question that there were some fumbles in the rollout, I think that ultimately we’ve learned a great deal about how to make major, substantive changes to the site in a way that respects the desires and wishes of all who built and continue to contribute to this incredibly important resource.

Note: This is not an April Fools joke.

Which InfluxDB questions are on-topic?

2026-03-26T17:01:27Z

I asked a question on Stack Overflow and it was closed for not being on-topic. I deleted it afterward and posted it on DBA: Is it safe to delete bolt-path and engine-path in InfluxDB?

However, I found this question which is quite similar to one I was asking but it's quite popular.

So I want to know what InfluxDB questions are on topic on SO?

Isn't that too many ads? 1 question only on a page and 4 ads in place of the others

2026-03-18T19:52:02Z

Here's my current display; 1 question for 4 ads:

I know porn sites that are more sober than that.

Are we willing to make SO users flee?
Who can stand this?

Currently, my StackOverflow is not usable for browsing

Open-ended questions should not be in the triage review queue

2026-02-24T06:22:52Z

https://stackoverflow.com/review/triage/37100271 is apparently a "open-ended question" in the Triage review queue.

There's nothing I can do with this. The question is hopelessly lacking in detail, but doesn't fit any of the few flag reasons allowed for open-ended questions.

Normally I would review it as "needs author edit", but if I select that and click "submit" nothing happens.

New site design and philosophy for Stack Overflow: Starting February 24, 2026 at beta.stackoverflow.com

2026-02-18T16:16:31Z

Update April 1st, 2026

The Beta site is being retired.

Update February 27th, 2026

Another post discussing the changes with the Chief Product and Technology Officer is here.

Update February 26th, 2026

As was mentioned on February 20th, we have another post covering more of our thinking and plans on how we are going about improving question closure.

Update February 24th, 2026

The new Stack Overflow beta experience is now available. Users can visit the beta site directly at https://beta.stackoverflow.com/ or by clicking the "Try new site (beta)" toggle on stackoverflow.com.

We are currently in the process of rolling out and troubleshooting certain issues with the beta. Additionally, we wanted to proactively communicate the features not yet accessible on https://beta.stackoverflow.com/. As we continue to make updates to the beta site, please use the classic site to access these features:

Viewing comments on a question, or adding a comment on a question
Editing posts
General purpose moderation tooling
Changing your vote on a post (except for the default Troubleshooting / Debugging type questions)
Viewing most post notices
Real time notifications without reloading the page (updates on a post, inbox notifications, etc.)
Changing the list of one's Communities in left navigation menu
Certain actions on a post like Follow, Save, Start a bounty, etc.
Staging Ground

Update February 20th, 2026

We’d like to clarify the announcement that review queues and question closure will not be going away for the time being. We do believe that curation is important. It has been central to what makes Stack Overflow valuable. Removing all review queues or curation altogether is not the direction we currently plan to go. We also want to have more flexibility in the content we allow and make our experience more welcoming. We do believe that there's room for improvement on how site curation is implemented and plan to work more collaboratively with the community on the best way forward. You can expect to hear more from us by February 26th, 2026 to learn more.

As we roll out the beta, we'll continue to add in features. The review queues and question closure will not be a part of the initial release, but will be included in the scope of the overall redesign and will be incorporated as the beta graduates to general availability.

Last July, we announced a redesign of Stack Overflow. In October, we shared a first look into the upcoming design changes and our reasoning behind them. After several rounds of discussion with the community, we’re happy to announce that the first stage of our redesign will soon be ready for you to try out.

Starting next week, head to beta.stackoverflow.com and try the first stage of the redesigned experience! We welcome your thoughts as we shift over to our new design and brand image. Details follow.

Three upcoming major milestones for the Stack Overflow redesign

The team has worked hard to bring you a new design for Stack Overflow, and we’re proud and excited to be able to share it with you soon.

We are breaking the release of the new design into three major milestones:

Soft beta launch: Users will be able to try the site, but not all parts of the site will be built yet. We will continue to make updates, fix issues, and release updates and features on a rolling basis. During this phase, users will be able to switch between the beta site and the “classic” site experience. We’ll be here soon.
Full beta launch: All major features of the platform that are on our roadmap will be implemented and converted over to the new design. Shortly after the full beta launch, we will begin automatically redirecting some users to the new design as we prepare to transition fully onto the new design. We’re targeting this release for around the end of March.
Full release: Stack Overflow will switch fully onto the new design, which will be accessed directly on stackoverflow.com. After a full release, the “classic” site design will be decommissioned. A date for this phase has not yet been decided.

As for when network sites might see the new design, it’s far too early to speculate. We expect that work leading up to a release on Stack Overflow alone, as well as the work that will come after, will keep our arms full for a while to come. Network sites will probably see certain rebranding elements, such as a change in the Stack Overflow logo, in the coming weeks. Aside from these minor updates, however, we don’t expect to update the network this year. You’ll hear more from us once we’re ready to begin work on a network-wide rollout.

What should users expect during the soft beta launch?

During the early period of the beta test, the new Stack Overflow design is still being built. At the time of this release, only the homepage and question pages will be using the new design. We will be actively working to convert more pages over to the new design during the beta. We want to leverage this time for constructive feedback from the community while we are still on this new path.

Most pages that have not yet been converted to the new design will still be accessible through beta.stackoverflow.com; however, they will be using some of the base styles of the new design system. That means some pages may not work exactly as expected until they have been converted to the new design. This is normal and expected at this point in the process.

You will also notice that not all of the tools currently available to users on Stack Overflow have been implemented in the new design. (This includes moderator workflows – mods, please continue to use the main site for now.) We expect some of these tools to be built before full release. However, please note that we plan to retire certain curation workflows, such as close votes and most review queues, in the new design. Additionally, certain post states, such as posts with bounties, community wiki posts, or locked post states, do not yet have a way of being displayed in the new design. During the initial beta phase, posts with these states will be styled the same way as normal posts.

Finally, before full beta release towards the end of March, we expect that questions in the new beta experience will be displayed in a format more similar to that of opinion-based content because we believe it expands how people engage with Stack Overflow and how content is created and shared. We are seeing positive engagement with this format, and we want to continue to evolve it to include accepted answers.

How to provide feedback on the Stack Overflow beta

We are open to all feedback on the new design for Stack Overflow and hope to hear from you soon. You are welcome to provide feedback here on Meta Stack Overflow. There will also be a link in the left sidebar, which says “Help improve beta,” that you may use to submit bug reports, feature requests, and general feedback to the company. Look for this button once you have access to the beta:

For bug reports and feature requests, please be aware that only the homepage and individual question pages are currently using the new design. Bug reports and feature requests concerning these two pages are our highest priority during the early release. We expect issues with the new design on pages that haven’t been fully implemented yet. That said, if you notice any serious issues on any page, we always encourage you to provide those reports as well.

When submitting bug reports and feature requests on Meta Stack Overflow, please ask a new question and tag it with redesign-2026. Please don’t use answers on this post to report bugs or request feature changes. We do not have a way to track our responses to reports in answers over the long term - we’re definitely going to want the ability to do that for this project. Asking a new question and tagging it appropriately helps us categorize questions and quickly respond to issues you raise. (If you forget, we’ll still try to keep an eye out, but a little help from you will make sure these issues don’t fall through the cracks.)

Discussion and general feedback is always welcome and belongs in answers on this post, in new questions, or using the feedback link on beta.stackoverflow.com mentioned above.

We know it can take time to adjust to design changes, especially when the site is so integral to many people’s workflows. Everyone has a chance to try it out now so we can put the most important work in over the next two months. We want to make sure that the classic version of Stack Overflow is still available to use until we’re ready to move over to the new format. We look forward to your feedback soon!

SO inconsistently returns “Error 1101”, when navigated to from Google

2026-02-11T14:14:51Z

When I last navigated to stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vb6?tab=Newest, from google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vb6%3Ftab%3DNewest&ved=2ahUKEwjzltWLzdGSAxVVdUEAHahZDOEQFnoECBMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3KUQi0r-_yR9T5sW4fXkw3, SO returned “Error 1101”:

Per the file: URI depicted, I retain a duplicate of it. From it:

Ray ID: 9cc4620c4f9deeff

Although this was trivial to remediate with a window.location.reload(), this occurs somewhat frequently, hence my report.

If relevant, my environment is:

Name        : firefox
Version     : 147.0.3
Release     : 1.fc43
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: Wed 11 Feb 2026 02:43:05 GMT
Size        : 306510089
Signature   :
              RSA/SHA256, Mon 09 Feb 2026 15:27:37 GMT, Key ID 829b606631645531
Source RPM  : firefox-147.0.3-1.fc43.src.rpm
Build Date  : Fri 06 Feb 2026 13:24:10 GMT
Build Host  : buildhw-x86-03.rdu3.fedoraproject.org
Packager    : Fedora Project
Vendor      : Fedora Project

I've chromium-144.0.7559.132-1.fc43 and firefox-nightly-149.0a1-20260210213212 installed, too, and have yet to encounter this there. However, I very rarely utilise them, so I doubt that that is a scientific comparison.

How does the continued decline in posts since May '25 influence our interpretation of the state of SO?

2026-01-11T09:36:34Z

I've been noticing stories about how our rate of questions is in significant decline, with an accompanying chart. Specifically, this MSO post from May links to a blog post about how StackOverflow is supposedly almost dead.

If we add the developments of recent months, using this SEDE query, here's what things look like:

_{I dropped July 2008 and Jan 2026 to only show full month stats. After posting, I noticed links to a blog post regarding our state of affairs.}

So, the decline in overall posts has continued over the past few months as well. Let's zoom in to 2025, and break the posts down by questions vs answers:

Has this continued trend - which has now gotten us down further than the first full month of statistics - influenced your thoughts on our state of affairs?

PS:

At first, this post focused on just putting the chart out there. I've re-edited it a few of times; sorry for that.
The chart shows all posts, not just questions (so, answers and wiki edits too).
Feb 2026 update: Posts in Jan 2026 continued to go down: Questions from 6866 to 6309 (down 8% from December), answers from 9037 to 8397 (down 7% from December) - but the rate of descent has slowed down significantly.

Display Revisions link on Opinionated Questions

2025-11-03T13:51:39Z

Opinionated questions do not display details of when a question was last edited, by who, nor a link to the revisions page for the post. This is despite the fact that the page does in fact exist if you edit the URL to /posts/<Post Id>/revisions. Opinionated posts should allow easy access to the revisions for users; this allows them to gain context for answers (responses) that may be out of date, or easily rollback malicious changes from a user (which is what highlighted the problem to me).

This should be extended to all posts on opinionated questions; the question itself and the responses (as these are stored as answers in the background, so have many of the "features" of answers).

What opinion-based questions and answers have you come across from this alpha experiment that you liked or didn't like?

2025-10-27T18:07:29Z

Questions are a bit tricky to locate since we don't have the question labeling supported. For the time being I will keep this table updated daily so interested community members can find them easier.

Question Title (As of January 17)	Replies	Score	ContentType	Tags
How to load a website (HTML) and click a button?	3	6	Advice	javascript, c#, html, maui
optional prerequisites in gnu make	0	5	Advice	gnu-make
How to step out chain of promises	1	1	Best Practices	ios, promisekit
How to integrate JaCoCo into a spring boot OCI image to measure E2E testing code coverage?	4	2	Advice	spring-boot, jacoco, buildpack
How to retain CrewAI Short-Term Memory with Azure OpenAI Embeddings?	4	1	Advice	python, artificial-intelligence, agent, crewai
Base class and derived classes in Qt	6	1	Best Practices	c++, qt, inheritance, polymorphism
Ridgeplot with area charts in plotly (or any other free python library)	4	4	Advice	python, plotly, seaborn, altair
advertise RequestedAttribute in service provider metadata in Spring-security OpenSAML5	1	1	Advice	spring-security, opensaml
Omitting missing or Nan columns in python plot	4	2	Advice	python
Parsing with Python html.parser: accessing and using raw tags	0	1	Advice	python, html, parsing, html-parsing
How can I efficiently run a RAG pipeline fully in Node.js using OpenAI embeddings and FAISS without relying on Python?	0	3	Advice	node.js, openai-api, faiss, retrieval-augmented-generation, vector-search
Copy out file from build state to host	4	2	Advice	docker
Automatic Python type hint migration	3	6	Tooling Recommendation	python, python-typing
spring UriComponents tobuilder to UriComponentsBuilder	1	1	Best Practices	java, spring-boot, spring-mvc
PowerShell: syntax sugar to combine parent and child attributes in pipe	6	1	Best Practices	powershell
Configure Spring Context Using Arguments	2	1	Best Practices	java, spring, spring-boot, picocli
Java 21 multi-key map collector	7	1	Best Practices	java, java-stream, collectors
Visual studio vs gcc	10	2	Advice	c++, c, visual-studio, gcc, terminal
How to avoid dual splash screen in Flutter using flutter_native_splash and custom splash screen?	1	3	Advice	flutter, splash-screen
What are the kinds of practical difficulties you've run into when implementing Microfrontends?	7	6	Advice	c#, microservices, domain-driven-design, svelte, micro-frontend
Memory accounting and quotas for subtasks in golang programs	6	2	Best Practices	go, memory, resources, quota
In Common Lisp, replacing "get-setf-method" with "get-setf-expansion" is not always working	16	2	Advice	lisp, common-lisp, sbcl, on-lisp
How to make a js dropdown with description like Microsoft Excel	4	1	Advice	javascript, excel, tooltip, dropdown
Architecture design for multilingual descriptions for several classes	1	3	Best Practices	java, mysql, design-patterns, database-design, architecture
Buffer a polyline by variable distance	4	2	Advice	python, gis
The difference between Credential Manager and Windows Vault	1	1	Advice	windows, security, windows-services, credential-manager
Which paradigm and tech stack for an app that listens to messages and updates shapes on a satellite map	4	1	Advice	python, asynchronous, leaflet, multicast, pyside6
Text-to-Speech function in a 3D Unity game	0	1	Advice	unity-game-engine, game-development, game-engine, text-to-speech, large-language-model
Using the equivalent of an include in an iRule	4	0	Best Practices	tcl, f5, irule
How to best group an iterator's items into batches?	7	1	Best Practices	python, iterator, iteration
Best way to dynamically switch Blade partials with data in Laravel [Question Removed]	0	0	Best Practices	php, laravel, laravel-blade
Schedule publish Revit workshared models every day	2	1	Best Practices	autodesk-forge, autodesk-bim360
PyErr_Format and floating point number	3	0	Advice	python
#ifdef equivalent for constexpr variables?	14	4	Best Practices	c++, c++17
IBObjects for Delphi 13	5	0	Advice	delphi
How can I print very thin lines (e. g. 1/300 dpi) to PDF via Chrome? (Prevent rounding to full css-px)	1	1	Best Practices	css, google-chrome, pdf, browser, printing
Best way to write an Oracle Procedure using Spring Data Jpa	7	0	Best Practices	java, postgresql, oracle-database, spring-data-jpa
Azure DevOps Extension – Prevent recursive onFieldChanged event when updating fields programmatically	0	0	Tooling Recommendation	azure, azure-devops, tfs, azure-devops-extensions
Polymarket totalBought calculation	0	0	Advice	blockchain, trading
High-Performance ACK Generation in NDIS Filter Driver for 10 GbE FPGA Traffic	5	2	Best Practices	ndis
Wordpress: Open one navigation item in a lightbox/modal	2	1	Best Practices	wordpress, navigation
Advice on using css to hide elements	7	1	Advice	html, css
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As mentioned in the post covering the now running opinion-based question alpha experiment, we would like you to share feedback here on specific opinion-based questions that you see as a result of this experiment that you believe are good or bad candidates for Stack Overflow. If you disagree with an example that someone leaves on this post, please share your rationale in a new answer to this question. We would prefer not to start any debates at this juncture and instead want to give community members space to share their thoughts. Feel free to express disagreement or consensus via voting.

Feedback on questions

Please provide the following:

Link to the question
Assessment of why the post is not a good fit as an opinion-based question or is a good fit for Stack Overflow. Please try to provide a thorough explanation. Something along the lines of, "This can't be answered because of X" or, "The question is so vague it's hard to get an understanding of what they are actually trying to accomplish", etc.

Feedback on answers

Please provide the following:

Link to the answer
Assessment of why the answer is not a good fit or is a good fit.

Please provide an explanation of your thoughts and why. This might look something like, "The answer has no value to anyone other than in this specific situation" or "The answer misleads the asker to believe this will resolve their question when it is dependent on other factors not mentioned in the reply", etc.

Any other feedback about the experiment, bug reports, feature requests, etc, can only be left on the original experiment announcement post.

Exploring new types of questions on Stack Overflow

2025-10-02T15:45:00Z

This quarter, the Community Enablement team is focused on researching the asking experience. This research has led the team to consider the types of questions allowed on Stack Overflow and how to expand the process to accommodate more types of questions. Over the next few months, one of our key focuses will be centered on finding a home for a wider range of technical questions on Stack Overflow. We've observed that many valuable questions are closed as 'opinion-based' because they don't fit our traditional format for objective Q&A. While this strict format is the foundation of our site's quality, it also means our library of knowledge has lost out on crucial technical discussions. Our goal, as a company, is to find a way to welcome more extensive questions while maintaining the high quality our community expects. Back in July, we talked about this a little bit on Meta Stack Exchange and the Stack Overflow Blog:

Simplified posting experience: We're exploring simplifying the process of asking questions on Stack Overflow, so that any technical question has a place and can find an answer. Our goal is to make it easier for all technologists to share their knowledge gaps, no matter how specific or broad the problem, while maintaining the quality of traditional Q&A. This means welcoming a wider range of questions and perspectives, ensuring Stack Overflow continues to be a comprehensive and supportive resource as technology evolves. We believe this will diversify the knowledge available on the platform and make it even more valuable for everyone.

In our upcoming experiments, we will explore allowing well-reasoned, opinion-based questions to sit alongside our traditional Q&A. This effort is to simplify how more users want to ask and answer questions that have not typically been allowed. This isn’t an attempt to diminish the valuable and high-quality questions and answers we have, but to expand the knowledge base for more types of content to exist alongside it. To be explicitly clear, here are some things we, as a company, are trying to do:

We will not tie these new question types to reputation or privilege-earning opportunities. We are open to considering a new incentive system for them.
Users will not be forced to see this content; community members will have the option to filter their feeds to their liking. Or opt out of opinion-based content entirely.

In addition, here are some commitments we’re making prior to moving forward with this initiative:

We will work with the Charcoal team to make sure that all of these questions are exposed to their tools to help prevent spam. We’ve learned from our experiences with the Discussions project.
We will work with moderators to ensure that the appropriate moderation tools are available to moderate new question types if this becomes a permanent change.
We are focused on attracting any quality technical questions; we do not intend to attract generic homework questions, or frivolous conversations
We do not want to become a generic homework help desk.

I'd like to leave you with a few discussion prompts to consider, thinking about how you would like to see something like this come to life.

What kind of tools would you like to see that allow you to curate your question feeds to include only the content types you are interested in?
Opinion-based content allows for a considerable amount of room in defining what makes a good question. What guidelines would you like community members to see when asking these types of questions?
We don’t believe that reputation as structured today is the correct incentive for addressing these types of questions. How should quality discussion-oriented content be rewarded or incentivized?

We'll be back very soon with more details on how we might alpha test this. We will be monitoring this post for questions till October 16th, 2025

What is a canonical question/answer, and what is their purpose?

2015-04-30T20:26:45Z

Here is wikipedia's definition of "canonical":

Canonical is the adjective for canon, literally a 'rule', and has come to mean also 'standard', 'archetypal', 'typical', or 'unique distinguished exemplar'.

They are mentioned on Meta at:

What is a good way to look for a canonical answer to a frequently asked question?

Introduce a Canonical Question tag

Canonical answers for repeated questions

Process for nominating and promoting canonical questions

Return to FAQ index

Empty the [recycle-bin]

2015-03-26T16:01:05Z

I believe the tag recycle-bin(194 questions) is not useful, because:

It contains many unrelated questions. Most of them are about deleting files or putting them in the recycle bin, be it on Mac OSX, Google drive, Windows... I believe this is a 'meta-tag' because of this.

Some examples:

These tags are used for all kinds of different things, and I don't think they are terribly useful for finding or answering questions.

Some other similar tags I came across and which are of questionable usefulness are

garbage (200, most of these should be retagged to garbage-collection),
recycle (135),
recycling (100),

all of which are somewhat ambiguous, and can relate to various things.

Maybe more specific tags should be created for some of these tags, the questions edited ( and the bad ones closed ), and then the tags could be burninated ?

What do YOU think ?

"An Error Occurred" when adding a tag description/excerpt

2015-02-06T14:29:33Z

I noticed that the tkmessagebox tag doesn't have an excerpt or description, so I tried to add the following:

The tkMessageBox module is part of the Tk GUI toolkit. It handles the creation of pop-up message boxes to show information or present a choice to the user.

Unfortunately, I got an "An Error Occurred" message when I tried to submit it. The tag info page now shows an "edit pending" message, but there is nothing in my activity history to indicate that it was me who made the edit. So, my questions are:

Has this happened because someone else edited that tag at the same time as me? If so, then surely the error message should be clarified to explain that my edit could not be submitted due to an edit conflict rather than a general "error".
Alternatively, has my edit been processed, but not appeared on my activity feed due to an error? If so, then it would appear to be a bug.

How to handle answers which copy their whole content from another answer with proper attribution

2015-02-04T17:49:50Z

Today, while browsing the android tag, I came across this answer which essentially just copied its whole content from this answer.

The text from the other answer is quoted and there is a link to the original answer, so it is ok from a plagiarism perspective, but it is still basically the exact same answer copied and pasted without any additional information or clarification.

In my opinion this is not an appropriate answer. A comment with the link to the other answer would have more than sufficed. I realise that it is technically a correct answer, but I assumed that answers like this are not wanted on Stack Overflow, so I flagged it as "not an answer"; but to my surprise, the flag was disputed. Now I am wondering if there is something else I should have done. Should I have flagged it as something else? No other option seemed appropriate.

So how should I deal with something like this in the future? I very much doubt that answers like this are actually ok and wanted on Stack Overflow, since they involve no effort from the answerer and are basically just glorified links.

This question is not a duplicate of Copy-pasting the contents of another answer to the same question — with attribution! This question is about how to handle answers which have been copied from another question, and not what to do about edits which contain copied content from answers to the same question.

Burninate [syllable]? [closed]

2014-12-08T05:18:13Z

syllable seems pretty useless; I can't imagine anyone being much of an expert in "syllable" programming, for example. But I haven't been around long enough to be comfortable using the machete on fully 23 questions, so is this the good idea I think it is?

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