is for questions related to policies of Stack Exchange.

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185
votes
2answers
2k views

Please upload DMCA takedowns to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse

I have a request. I'd like to ask Stack Exchange corporate to establish a practice of uploading all DMCA takedown requests that it receives for content hosted on the Stack Exchange network to the ...
54
votes
6answers
2k views

What should be done about a user who makes a threat?

I have recently come across an answer on one of Stack Exchange's sites (Skeptics) that was quite surprising to me. I have been a part of the Stack Exchange network for a while, and this is the ...
49
votes
6answers
603 views

Standardizing & Simplifying SE Site Names

NOTE: We're not going through and re-evaluating / changing every site name in the network. The guidelines below are what we will use for new sites created going forward, and if the community supports ...
45
votes
1answer
366 views

Does the change in “Exact Duplicate” wording imply a shift in policy?

In the past, when we closed a question as a duplicate of another, it had to be: An exact duplicate, in the sense that it should be nearly identical to the original question, and Only the question ...
43
votes
12answers
1k views

Can we agree on a review 'policy'?

On the review page, there is a one-sentence guideline on reviewing. I think that as the number of reviewers increase, it is going to become increasingly necessary to come to some kind of agreement ...
42
votes
8answers
847 views

Are answers that just contain a regular expression pattern really “good answers”?

I have noticed an abundance of regex answers that consist of nothing but a pattern. Obviously, not explaining the patterns will lead the (often clueless) OPs to just copy and paste the solutions. ...
40
votes
4answers
402 views

How to prevent users applying a policy without agreement?

A few hours ago a user posted Let's clean up low-quality posts with profanity on Stack Overflow. The premise of the discussion was to remove the word Damn from posts as it is considered profanity. ...
37
votes
3answers
509 views

Did SE change its Q&A format to just-another-Internet-forum?

The “TL;DR” is at the bottom of this posting, which reads: So did SE change its Q&A policy, is Sound Design a failed beta, or are there just different rules there than on all other SE sites? ...
34
votes
3answers
649 views

Individual community preferences vs. SE network policy: who wins?

In the recent question Where can I ask a question about advice for my job?, the OP asks where the following question would be appropriate: What would be the best way to approach someone that works ...
30
votes
1answer
212 views

Automatic edits should still leave a trail in the revision history

There was a wave of automatic edits recently applied to old posts throughout the network, including one to remove salutations, and another to remove multiple punctuation marks. Now, I don't want to ...
29
votes
0answers
124 views

Stack Exchange Privacy Policy Revision history

On http://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy, there is mention that "If we change this policy, we’ll update this document to keep you in the loop".. Great! However, I have never liked re-reading ...
23
votes
8answers
656 views

Why is the stack overflow community so aggressive about question criteria?

I have found SO very useful for finding out information, largely because Google gives high page ranks to many useful questions. Recently I have had experience of asking questions on SO (not on this ...
18
votes
3answers
289 views

“Close as duplicate” - what if only the answer is a duplicate?

I know it's already established that duplicate questions should be closed but not deleted, so they can act as "pointers" to the one canonical answer. However, I think there's one important aspect ...
18
votes
6answers
489 views

Would you delete these questions? Isn’t closing enough?

This question is mainly motivated by the following case, which I have just noticed on Stack Overflow: Learning Python in one weekend (Snapshot) Learning JavaScript in one weekend The Python ...
18
votes
1answer
495 views

mod_rewrite questions getting migrated to SF

Sometimes when I ask a syntax question about the Apache Module mod_rewrite, I get at least one comment and close vote saying "belongs on serverfault". Recent example here. I strongly disagree with ...
17
votes
7answers
508 views

People abusing deleting questions?

I was looking at the deleted questions list today and came across about 20 questions all deleted by John Saunders, Gulzar and Mehrdad. Why === instead of == in PHP comparison? [closed] is just one ...
17
votes
2answers
903 views

Using code posted on StackOverflow

I was wondering what kind of restrictions there are, if any, for code posted on StackOverflow? In other words, I'm hoping StackOverflow has a clause that makes any posted code completely free of ...
15
votes
5answers
301 views

How is consensus determined on Meta sites?

On our main sites "the best answer" is somewhat fluidly defined as the superposition of the highest voted answer and the accepted answer. Truth be told, the system is rather insistent on allowing ...
14
votes
2answers
263 views

Are identify-this questions allowed on Stack Exchange?

A few months ago, there was a debate on the Gaming Meta site about “help me remember this game” questions. Jeff came out very strongly against them, and many voices in the community spoke for them. ...
14
votes
4answers
189 views

How to deal with a popular but unhelpful question?

One of my old questions is a bit of a search magnet. It just earned the "Popular Question" badge for 1000 views, but neither the question nor its answers are earning any votes. In fact, almost all of ...
14
votes
1answer
90 views

Grammatical error in the SE Content Policy

Content Policy - Stack Exchange In the second paragraph, there is this sentence, error bolded by me: We reserve the right to immediately suspend, without notice, any content, account, or IP ...
12
votes
7answers
446 views

Is it okay to discuss poor security practices?

I have experienced people actively hindering or flaming people who want to make public or discuss techniques that can break good security habits or schemes of languages, software or operating systems. ...
12
votes
1answer
102 views

Are there guidelines on direction for merging questions (which question to close/merge?)

Given two duplicate questions, are there any guidelines on how moderators determine which question is closed/merged, and which question will remain open, or is it up to the moderator to decide on a ...
12
votes
4answers
327 views

Security is Offensive?

I'm new to SO, so I'm trying to understand the rating system employed here as to what's offensive content. In particular, it seems that topics related to game enhancements made through reverse ...
12
votes
1answer
189 views

Inconsistent policy on emacs?

A while ago, I asked this question. The answers seemed to suggest that if the question is about emacs rather than about lisp coding or whatever, then it should go on superuser. So I had a question ...
11
votes
5answers
206 views

Is it acceptable to ask for upvote/accept in an answer when submitting it?

I searched duplicates, and my impression was that requests may be acceptable, or at least tolerated, after questioner has indicated the answer solved his problem, and with the request for points via a ...
11
votes
5answers
337 views

How widespread is the “back it up” principle?

Good Subjective, Bad Subjective refers to the Back It Up principle that was developed on an early SE site. I've seen this principle in use on UX (though I can't find an example right now), and citing ...
11
votes
3answers
237 views

Is there a policy on questions taken from prize-bearing coding competitions?

The subject matter of Algorithm to compute solution set of single simple equation with two variables is on-topic, and the question is well-posed; however, as a comment points out, This asks for ...
10
votes
3answers
156 views

Policy on links either directly or indirectly to pirate content

I recently came across a question asking how the backend of torrent sites worked Included is both links to torrent sites, and direct links to "torrent download pages" for copyrighted content. I took ...
10
votes
2answers
366 views

How to edit? Can we agree on an editing 'policy'?

We've been hashing out editing policy here for a long time now. It's pretty optimistic to think that people who are new to editing (let alone to SO/SE) will somehow 'know' how things work. It would be ...
10
votes
3answers
229 views

Is it OK for users to reopen questions against policy?

So, we are having this discussion on Physics Meta, which has been had in different forms in the past. Two points keep coming up: If a policy objectively says that a post is closeable (not ...
9
votes
7answers
411 views

How to deal with unwritten rules and guidelines on StackOverflow, et al.?

I am going to piggyback on the thread about the 'horrors' of having salutations in your question. Nestled deep in the comments of that thread, someone said that using salutations are "not allowed" and ...
9
votes
5answers
737 views

Teachers/Graders: How do you handle students asking homework questions on SO

I was a TA for an undergraduate programming course and I've been considering doing it again. Since I'm sure some of my students would be requesting solutions to their homework here, I've been thinking ...
9
votes
2answers
90 views

What's the policy on deleting low-quality posts that contain only a code snippet?

I've been pottering through the low-quality posts in the review section, and it appears a lot of them are of the form: Try this: a.b(c).d(); or just simply the code itself: ...
9
votes
3answers
117 views

Unclear policy for duplication by inclusion

I asked a question ("Meaning of acronym SSO"), which was "closed as exact duplicate" as another ("How is std::string implemented?"). But the close requests triggered a discussion, in the comments, ...
9
votes
1answer
116 views

Is there a rule or policy about collusion in moderator elections?

Christianity.SE is having a mod election, and someone suggested colluding to ensure that the 4 pro-tem mods get elected: How can those with a "current mods" preference ensure *all* mods get ...
9
votes
3answers
160 views

Are advertisements allowed within avatars? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Is text in a gravatar frowned upon? What is Stack Exchange's policy on avatars? My avatar on SE sites is automatically picked up from Gravatar. My gravatar was a ...
8
votes
11answers
380 views

Is it acceptable to post deliberately wrong or misleading answers to 'homework' questions?

This question is similar to several others that have cropped up on ServerFault over time, which appear to paste verbatim basic networking questions from certification or university courses. Some ...
8
votes
3answers
468 views

Is it ok to push your own product on SO

Is it ok to use SO to push a (open source) product for which you are offering (commercial) support? By pushing I mean mentioning your product and how it is doing "better" than concurrent products in ...
8
votes
1answer
49 views

Link to relevant meta discussion in 'no numeric IPs' error message

As per this change, numeric links are considered "invalid" and prevent posting with the message: Your post contains a link to the invalid host '74.125.224.135'. Please correct it by specifying a ...
7
votes
5answers
399 views

Is there any way possible to ask legit Adult based questions?

Just after SO dropped out of BETA, I asked an Adult related question which got deleted. I'm not going to ask the same question here (it got deleted for a point, right!) but but was asking a question ...
7
votes
3answers
156 views

Why are non-programming related questions being voted down? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Why the bias against subjective questions? I think it's kind of silly to vote down a non-programming question when it is still highly technical in nature. This seems ...
7
votes
3answers
205 views

DevDays 2011: What equipment is recommended for note-taking and participation?

So, I'm registered for DevDays 2011 in Washington DC. Yay! Now I'm starting to think about what I need to bring with me to get the maximum benefit from the event. This is the first conference of its ...
7
votes
1answer
125 views

What happens when answers become wrong?

What is the policy of dealing with answers that would become wrong after time? As an example, if I asked the question Does java support the Elvis operator ?: the correct answer today is no. The ...
7
votes
1answer
127 views

Discourage pasted problem statements from coding sites?

If you browse the algorithms tag on SO often, you'll see a lot of questions about code challenges found online. I don't see this as a problem, provided people are trying to get help rather than a ...
7
votes
2answers
198 views

How to address SO questions that are deemed “too vague”, or seeking advice

Something I see a lot of on SO are questions from folks that are looking for direction in an area that they are not familiar with, or are in such unfamiliar turf they just don't know how to properly ...
6
votes
4answers
259 views

Destructive effects of overly-restrictive policies and the future of SO

Lately I've been observing some developments that in my opinion are going to have a negative impact on the project and its community. I think I'll bring them to public attention. Probably for the last ...
6
votes
6answers
459 views

Why the bias against subjective questions? [duplicate]

It seems more and more lately that people on this site dislike subjective questions, as opposed to ones about narrow, technical topics. I don't understand this. I see two reasons as to why subjective ...
6
votes
5answers
265 views

Yet another “community wiki” clarification question

Apologies in advance for not being able to get a satisfactory answer from reading all the related posts I could find. I may be way off base with my assumptions, so I'll just list them. The rep ...
6
votes
3answers
113 views

Policy on inserting OP's code into his question

What is the exact policy on Stack Overflow about inserting the poster's code into his question, given the fact that there is an external link to the code in the post? I've tried to find an official ...
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