The Stack Exchange is a collection of question-and-answer websites on varying topics in diverse fields, with each website covering a particular topic and the questions given and answers provided are subjected to a reputation award process. This reputation mechanism permits websites to self moderate. Upto the end of August 2019, the three most important and most actively-viewed websites on the Stack Exchange are the Stack Overflow, Super User and Ask Ubuntu.
Every site
on the Stack Exchange is modelled after the parent website, the Stack Overflow,
which is also another Q&A site dealing with specifically computer
programming questions, that was created by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. All
user contributions, since around 2018, have been licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 Internetional, and older contents under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
The foundation and growth of the Stack Exchange.
Precisely in 2008, Jeff Atwood along side Joel Spolsky, created Stack Overflow, a question-and-answer website for mainly computer programming, which they explained as a contemporary to Experts-Exchange, another programmer forum. Later, in 2009, they initiated additional websites similar to the Stack Overflow model, the Server Fault, which was meant for questions concerning matters on system administration and another website, the Super User, which concerns itself with questions from computer power users.
While in September 2019, Spolsky's company, the Fog Creek Software, introduced a beta version of the Stack Exchange 1.0 platform as a means through which third parties can create their own communities similar to the software behind the Stack Overflow platform with monthly fees. This was not very successful, as customers were few and its growth was hence very slow. However, in May 2010, Stack Overflow raised about 6 million USD in venture capital only from its Union Square Ventures and investors. Consequently, it switched to focus on developing new sites that Will take questions on particular subjects.
Stack Exchange 2.0 users voted on new site issues in a staging area referred to as Area 51, where algorithms will decide which topics have critical mass for the purpose of their ceation. In November 2010, Stack Exchange site topics in 'beta testing' comprised of Physics, Mathematics and Writing. Finally, Stack Exchange was established in January of 2011 with precisely 33 websites, 27 employees and well over 1.5 million users. At that time after the launching, Stack Exchange included advertising as well. For this reason, it was compared to Quora, which was founded as far back as 2009, that also specializes in giving answers to contemporary issues. Other similar sites with the same objectives were WikiAnswers and Yahoo! Answers.
Later onwards, in February 2011 precisely, Stack Overflow created an associated job board known as the Careers 2.0, which charges fees from recruiters for access to their sites and later renamed it to Stack Overflow Career's. Later in March 2011, Stack Overflow generated over US$12 million in additional venture funding, and the company was renamed to Stack Exchange Inc., which is sited in Manhattan, New York City, USA. Finally, in precisely February 2011, Atwood parted ways with the firm. On April 18, 2013 CipherCloud gave Digital Millennium Copyright Act( DCMA) takedown notices in a bid to prevent discussions of likely weaknesses of their encryption algorithm.
Stack Exchange Crypto group actually discussed
on the algorithm which was censored, though it was later re- installed, but without
pictures. Until recently, around September 2015, Stack Exchange was not referring to the company, but
only to the network of question-and-answer websites, but is now itself referred
to as Stack Overflow. Finally, in 2016, Stack Exchange got more sites, which
pushed the boundaries of conventional question-and-answer
websites. For instance, the company, Puzzling, offers a medium for users who might
have answers to questions that over power their peers to answer unlike the
usual Q&A sites where users do not have the answers.
On relationship between users and the company.
Precisely in the year 2016, Stack Exchange made public the second iteration of its Quality Project, in which they tried to implement particular features required by the community to satisfy a clearly defined priority of set goals. With the enthusiastic response of users through giving feature ideas, they lamented on lack of enough action on the part of the company itself. And in October 2018, the company removed its interpersonal skills site from the Hot Network Questions list sequel to complaint by a user on Twitter.
Later, one of their employees who was part of the SRE team, that was not community facing, posted tweets in obvious attack on the moderators. On September 27, 2019, one of the moderators with Stack Exchange was dismissed from her position based on connections with behavior associated with future changes to the Code of Conduct( CoC) regarding gender pronouns. On account of this development, several moderators resigned from their posts and others suspended their moderator roles in obvious response to the dismissal.
The company replied albeit with poorly crafted messages that have
long been deleted. In December 2019, Stack Exchange posts a message revealing
that the company had reached an agreement with the moderator and also expressed
regret over what had happened earlier and whatever damage that might have been
done to her reputation. Unavoidably, these nasty developments, along side the
departure of several community managers led to issues related to poor trust between
the community and the company. Many of the site's most active users, including
community-elected moderators and even a manager, left en masse in just a few
months.
Announcements of licensing changes.
On September 2, 2019, a change was introduced regarding the terms of service ( including the footer of every server) were changed suddenly to referencing the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike( CC BY-SA) license's 4.0 version, instead of its 3.0 version. This shocked users beyond every comment with regards to how Stack Overflow obtained the rights for this curious licensing of their previous contributions, with users positing that they did not subscribe to the idea of their contributions getting licensed under CC BY- SA 4.0.
Many users were disturbed that, if this relicensing was found to be
a breach to CC BY- SA 3.0, Stack Exchange
would make itself incapable of distributing the content under any CCBY -SA
license and may consequently have to rely on its perpetual and irrevocable right
and license to use, copy, publish or store any content instead.
Stack Exchange Features.
The basic goal of the stack exchange website is to enable users to post questions and also give answers to them. Users are at liberty to also vote either for answers or questions as they wish. Through these processes, users can earn reputation points, which is a form of gamification.This voting process was likened to Dogg at the beginning of the Stack Exchange platform. Users are liable to earn privileges by generating reputation points, depending on their ability to vote and also make comments on questions and answers.
Their ability
to moderate many aspects of the site is also taken into account too. Consequent
upon the reputation of Stack Exchange profile in web search results and also
the Stack Overflow Careers job board, users may get the chance to game the system. Beside sending questions
and answers, users can equally pass comments and also edit the contributions of
others. All these activities generate more points for you and thus increase
what you may eventually earn. All stack exchange sites have what is called a 'meta'
section where users are enabled to settle
disputes or disagreements.
The technology of Stack Exchange.
The Stack Exchange usesIIS, SQL Server and also the ASP.NET platforms,
which are all generated from a lone code base for all Stack Exchange sites
except probably the Area 51, which operates off a division of the Stack
Overflow code base. Other blogs such as WordPress were formerly used, but they have
basically been discontinued. It also uses Redis, HAProxy and Elastic search. The company
strives to keep abreast of the latest and newest of all technological innovations
from Microsoft, via the latest releases of any particular framework. The code
is basically written in C# ASP.NET MVC through the Razor View Engine. Stack's preferred
IDE is Virtual Studio and the data layers use Dapper for data access.
Stack site
creation.
All sites created on the Stack Exchange Network go through a
process of Olin depth review which consists of six steps: (1). Discussion. This
is where potential ideas are discussed. (2). Proposal. Proposals are drafted
here and posted for users to discuss on.
Proposals should address three basic issues: the topic, the targeted audience,
sample questions and finally at least sixty followers. (3). Commitment. Users
are required to commit themselves to the site through participation and
contributions.(4). Private Beta. This is the podium where committed users
actively use the site.(5). Public Beta.
It is opened to the public so as to reach as many people as possible. (6).
Graduation. It is on this arena that a user gets assessed based on his or her overall
activities and decision taken concerning
their progression.