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Is Stack Overflow a forum?

up vote 63 down vote favorite
26

I was under the impression that Stack Overflow was a forum, or a forum-like object.

And if it is not a forum: Why isn't it? What defines a forum?

discussion faq-proposed forum
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edited Jan 6 at 16:04

asked May 20 '11 at 19:33
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amanaP lanaC A nalP A naM A
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What Stack Overflow does "is synthesize aspects of Wikis, Blogs, Forums, and Digg/Reddit in a way that [the team thinks] is original." -stackoverflow.com/about –  Pops♦ May 20 '11 at 20:28
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Early in the life of Stack Overflow, Joel and Jeff sought to separate it from typical help forums. It's a lot less interesting to people to hear, "It's a different kind of forum, and here are the differences:..." than it is to say, "Forums suck, this is the answer." without completely saying it isn't a forum, but trying to make sure people understood the distinct difference. For the purposes of marketing and branding, Stack Exchange does NOT use the word forum to describe itself, and due to the early forum bashing, there is a distinct anti-forum contingent that still exists. –  Adam Davis May 20 '11 at 20:57
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But at the end of the day, it is a forum. It's just specifically designed to encourage productive discussion by limiting the types of responses people can give. In fact this almost dictatorial adherence to restricting responses to good questions and answers led to the addition of comments, Meta, and ultimately chat. –  Adam Davis May 20 '11 at 21:00
    
Voting to close since OP insist this to be specific to Stack Overflow. –  Shadow Wizard Jan 6 at 16:18
    
@ShadowWizard because that was the original intent of this question. It was on stackoverflow meta –  amanaP lanaC A nalP A naM A Jan 6 at 16:19
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I know, but since the split, such questions can get closed and eventually migrated if the team decides so. Others tried to make it "cross-site" for you, but it's your question so you have the right to overrule this. –  Shadow Wizard Jan 6 at 16:26
    
I have no problem with migrating it to the SO meta. This was a question JUST for SO, unless you think otherwise @ShadowWizard –  amanaP lanaC A nalP A naM A Jan 6 at 16:41
    
All of the answers pertain to Stack Overflow and not to the Stack Exchange @ShadowWizard –  amanaP lanaC A nalP A naM A Jan 6 at 16:41
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Actually the top and accepted answer kind of talking about Stack Exchange in general. –  Shadow Wizard Jan 6 at 18:38
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Since the Meta SE community seems to have an interest in this Q&A being clearly generalized to SE perhaps it could be converted to Community Wiki. It is a very useful Q&A and to have it migrated to SO would seem to be a loss to our community. –  PolyGeo Jan 18 at 3:03

6 Answers 6

active oldest votes
up vote 146 down vote accepted

Stack Overflow is not a forum. Forums are largely discussion-based and tend to follow less strict rules about what posts can be like.

On Stack Overflow (and Stack Exchange in general), we require every new thread to be started with a question and every response to that question to be an attempt at answering it.

For example, on a forum you might ask how to run a game in windowed mode. You will get several responses, some of which will be nothing but "oh, I love that game!" or "I haven't played that in a while, wow." You'll be lucky if you get a relevant response. By contrast, on Stack Exchange you'd get practical responses that are 100% relevant to your question.

Stack Exchange creates communities that draw in experts in particular fields who are interested in communicating and learning at a professional level. This results in writing quality being an important aspect of the site.

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edited Jun 7 '12 at 14:19
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amanaP lanaC A nalP A naM A
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answered May 20 '11 at 19:39
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Anna Lear♦
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up vote 67 down vote

Stack Overflow (Stack Exchange, in the more general sense) is not a forum.

In a dictionary sense, a "forum" is a place where ideas and views can be exchanged. But in a larger Internet context, a "forum" is traditionally regarded as a place where issues (questions) are discussed in a threaded manner. A topic of discussion is posed where people can respond, and responses are allowed to evoke further sub-conversations… which generate still further discussion — ad infinitum until all possible facets have been discussed, or the participants lose interest.

In contrast, Stack Exchange encourages specific questions that have a specific, canonical answers. A question is asked and respondents weigh in with a carefully-thought-out response which is then vetted through voting and wiki-editing (improving on the answer).

The key difference is that each answer posted has to stand on its own. Stack Exchange neither supports nor encourages a "forum-style" of open, free-for-all discussion (many-to-many conversations). This is by design.

The advantage is that users can vote on the best answers which then float to the top. You don't have to worry about breaking the conversation thread, and answers are not buried deep down in the larger context of an entire, vast "conversation."

We prefer this Q&A format over the "forum"-style conversations typically found on the Internet. People who say "this is not a forum" are simply urging users to avoid the patterns that cause traditional forums to fail.

Stack Exchange is built on the premise that forums don't scale. All those open conversations mean that those forums only tend to get noisier and noisier. What inevitably happens is that long-time users get tired of the new users asking the same old questions. New users can't find useful information and feel ostracized. And most find that, the more they talk, the less value they get from the experience. In short, you stop learning.

The chat room/forum problem by Robert Scoble

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edited Oct 1 '14 at 3:46
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bfavaretto
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answered May 20 '11 at 20:36
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Robert Cartaino♦
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What inevitably happens is that long-time users get tired of the new users asking the same old questions. For the record, that happens here too. –  Lightness Races in Orbit Apr 23 '13 at 16:46
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@LightnessRacesinOrbit, but instead of answering or discussing a lot about what has been discussed, you can mark and close questions as duplicates. Forums don't usually have that available to non-moderators, if at all. –  JMCF125 Apr 5 '14 at 12:34
up vote 36 down vote

In this case there is no simple yes / no answer to that question...

Remember this image from the FAQ?

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We are different than just a forum, we are a Q&A site that is on the border of all these different types of sites.

  1. We have a forum aspect in terms of limited discussion in comments and on o

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