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Type of site | Question & Answer |
---|---|
Owner | Stack Exchange Inc.[1] |
Created by | Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky |
URL | stackexchange |
Commercial | Yes |
Stack Exchange is a network of question and answer websites on diverse topics in many different fields, each site covering a specific topic, where questions, answers, and users are subject to a reputation award process. The sites are modeled after Stack Overflow, a forum for computer programming questions that was the original site in this network. The reputation system is designed to allow the sites to be self-moderating.[5]
In 2008, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky created Stack Overflow, a question-and-answer Web site for computer programming questions, which they described as an alternative to the programmer forum Experts-Exchange.[6] In 2009, they started additional sites based on the Stack Overflow model: Server Fault for questions related to system administration and Super User for questions from computer "power users".[7]
In September 2009, Spolsky's company Fog Creek Software released a beta version of the Stack Exchange 1.0 platform[2] as a way for third parties to create their own communities based on the software behind Stack Overflow, with monthly fees.[8] This white label service was not successful, with few customers and slowly growing communities.[9]
In May 2010, Stack Overflow (as its own new company) raised $6 million in venture capital from Union Square Ventures and other investors, and it switched its focus to developing new sites for answering questions on specific subjects,[9] Stack Exchange 2.0. Users vote on new site topics in a staging area called "Area51", where algorithms determine which suggested site topics have critical mass and should be created.[6] In November 2010, Stack Exchange site topics in "beta testing" included physics, math, and writing.[10] Stack Exchange publicly launched in January 2011 with 33 websites; it had 27 employees[11] and 1.5 million users at the time, and it included advertising.[3] At that time, it was compared to Quora, founded in 2009, which similarly specializes in expert answers.[3] Other competing sites include WikiAnswers and Yahoo! Answers.[12]
In February 2011, Stack Overflow released an associated job board called Careers 2.0, charging fees to recruiters for access.[13] In March 2011, Stack Overflow raised $12 million in additional venture funding, and the company renamed itself to Stack Exchange, Inc.[14] It is based in Manhattan, New York City.[15] In February 2012, Atwood left the company.[16]
The primary purpose of each Stack Exchange site is to enable users to post questions and answer them.[10] Users can vote on both answers and questions, and through this process users earn reputation points, a form of gamification.[17][16] This voting system was compared to Digg when the Stack Exchange platform was first released.[8] Users receive privileges by collecting reputation points, ranging from the ability to vote and comment on questions and answers to the ability to moderate many aspects of the site.[17] Due to the prominence of Stack Exchange profiles in web search results and the Careers 2.0 board, users may have reason to game the system.[13] Along with posting questions and answers, users can add comments to them and edit text written by others.[18] Each Stack Exchange site has a "meta" section where users can settle disputes, in the style of MetaFilter's "MetaTalk" forum, because the self-moderation system for questions and answers can lead to significant arguments.[19]
Notable parts of Stack Exchange include sites focused on physics,[20] video games,[21] and patents.[22]
All user generated content (questions and answers) posted on the Stack Exchange Network is licensed under a Creative Commons license,[16] Attribution Share Alike.[1]
Stack Exchange runs on WISC[23] (A loosely coined acronym for Windows IIS SQL C# ) from a single code base for every stack exchange site. (Except Area51, which runs off a fork of the SO code base). Blogs run under WordPress. The team also notably uses Redis, HAProxy, Elastic Search and many other non-WISC technologies.[24]
Stack Exchange tries to stay up to date with the newest technologies from Microsoft usually using the latest releases of any given framework. The code is primarily written in C# ASP.NET-MVC using the Razor View Engine. The preferred IDE is Visual Studio and the data layers uses Dapper for data access.[25]
Every new site created in the Stack Exchange network goes through a detailed review process consisting of 6 steps:[26][27][28]
On 18 April 2013 CipherCloud issued DMCA takedown notices in an attempt to block discussion of possible weaknesses[29][30] of their encryption algorithm. The Stack Exchange Crypto group discussion on the algorithm [31] was censored, but it was later restored without pictures.