Breakdown of StackOverflow's Online Community
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StackOverflow is an online community for programmers launched in 2008 that has grown to 50 million monthly visitors. It enforces strict moderation policies to ensure high quality questions and answers. Members earn reputation points and badges for participating. The community is focused on getting great answers to great questions through gamification and rewards.
Breakdown of StackOverflow's Online Community
- 1. A D E TA I L E D B R E A K DO W N O F S TA C KO V E R F L O W ’ S O N L I N E C O M M U N I T Y By Richard Millington, www.feverbee.com
- 2. StackOverflow was launched in 2008 as a Q&A site for programmers. It has since grown to 50 million monthly visitors and is the crown jewel of the expansive StackExchange network. StackOverflow enforces extremely strict moderation policies designed to get great answers to great questions. It does not allow casual chatter on the main community platform. This is unique amongst most organizations. StackOverflow earns direct revenue from the community via recruitment (talent), advertising (ads), and helping companies create their own private instance of StackOverflow within their organization. C O M M U N I T Y C O N C E P T StackOverflow is an online community for programmers CONCEPT AND BACKGROUND
- 3. O V E R V I E W O F S T A C K O V E R F L O W ’ S O N L I N E C O M M U N I T Y STACKOVERFLOW’s Community QUESTIONS BUSINESS SOLUTIONS USERS TAGS DEVELOPER STORIES JOBS Members can browse through the list of users and search by keywords Users This is where members can create their ‘online resumes’ Developer Stories For businesses who want to hire, advertise, or use StackOverflow in their work. Business Solutions Programmers can search and find jobs published by paying advertisers on the community. Developer Jobs Tags These are keywords or labels that members can browse through to find relevant information Questions The community is entirely orientated around ‘questions’ which also appear on the landing page of the community.
- 4. H O M E P A G E D E S I G N
- 5. 5 THE COMMUNITY HOMEPAGE(S) A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY The community has a different homepage for visitors compared with logged in members. This is really smart to do. Visitors have different needs than logged in (and returning members).
- 6. 6 THE COMMUNITY HOMEPAGE A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY The community is entirely focused on the latest activity. Members are expected to scroll through and find questions to answer. This is a fixed list rather than infinite scroll. Good use of showing the popularity of questions by votes, answers, and views. People know how popular a question is without having to click the link Most of the questions here seem very unpopular. This is due to the sheer ferocity of questions StackOverflow receives. Might be worthwhile showing questions which are popular but not answered yet. Excellent display of tags. Clearly showing what the question is about. Nice integration to show the latest news about the community here. Doesn’t intrude on the main activity, but lets people know the broader community news The ‘Ask Question’ button is a little hard to see. Clear gamification features and notifications on previous posts here Love this simple way to add and update favourite tags. This advertising works. It’s not too intrusive upon the rest of the site. The ‘latest activity’ metrics show a clearly active site. This is good to show before clicking the question. Search box is slightly hidden, but not too hard to find. Good selection of tabs. But it’s not clear what the difference between interesting and featured is. Can probably remove a few of these.
- 7. ASKING A QUESTION / GETTING HELP A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY The mobile version of the visitor homepage removes the registration form and tags. It focuses purely on showing the latest questions. The ‘ask question’ option has also curiously vanished. Presumably, most people ask questions via desktop computers while programming. The slimmed down nature of the site makes it ideal for visitors looking to scroll through questions - possibly without participating. SLIMMED-DOWN MOBILE SITE
- 8. U S E R E X P E R I E N C E A N D P A R T I C I P A T I O N
- 9. ASKING A QUESTION / GETTING HELP A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY StackOverflow is hosted on a custom-built site. While most main platforms have auto-complete search, StackOverflow does not. The search bar expands, but does not display the relevant questions and discussions in drop down mode. However, given the programming-nature of the site, there might be a very functional reason behind this. NO AUTOCOMPLETE SEARCH
- 10. ASKING A QUESTION / GETTING HELP A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Search works well. It shows not just relevant questions, but also the specific and highest voted answers to those questions. The speed of search is also faster than any other site we’ve seen. SHOWS ANSWER AS WELL AS QUESTIONS
- 11. ASKING A QUESTION / GETTING HELP A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Next to the search results are also ‘advanced search tips’. This is an incredibly useful and interesting addition to programmers. It helps people find the answer to their question even faster. ADVANCED SEARCH TIPS
- 12. 12 ASKING A QUESTION / GETTING HELP A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY This is REALLY interesting. StackOverflow tackles the ‘repeat question’ problem by forcing you to thoroughly research the answer first. This is the screen you see when you select ‘ask question’ Good tips with relevant links. I suspect the quantity of text might encourage some people to skim past this. I love this ‘tick box’ along with the ‘open mind’ text to confirm that this has been read. Haven’t seen this before, but could easily be adapted to any other online community out there today. More links to ask a good question. It might be a good idea to guide newcomers to read this before asking a question, otherwise I suspect most people will ignore this.
- 13. ASKING GREAT QUESTIONS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY StackOverflow continues its maniacal focus to ask good questions by providing prompts at each stage of asking a question. Here there is a prompt in default the title itself to be specific along with advice on the right hand side to provide details, share research, and ask unrelated questions about the community in the meta area. StackOverflow also provides a relevant link to the help center. This ensures people begin questions with the right mindset and a good, specific, title. NOTIFICATIONS TO ASK GOOD QUESTIONS
- 14. ASKING GREAT QUESTIONS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY When you click on the box to enter your question, formatting help appears on the right-hand side. Each of the main tabs (links, images etc…) also drops down to reveal further advice as part of advanced help. StackOverflow is focused on ensuring they only receive good questions which other members can answer and help improve the site. As you begin typing the question, it appears in preview mode below so you can see exactly how the question will appear. Similar questions will also appear on the right-hand side. FORMATTING QUESTIONS
- 15. ASKING GREAT QUESTIONS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY This appears complicated as you begin typing the question. However, if StackOverflow detects something which is incorrect, you receive a bright red notification. You cannot post the question until you’ve resolved this problem. You can also see the advanced help above, the preview below, and the similar questions on the right hand side. Again, every question that gets posted must be terrific. ERROR MESSAGES
- 16. ASKING GREAT QUESTIONS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY The community clever shows suggested tags from those mentioned in the question or using AI from previous questions. If you begin to to type your own tag, a drop-down box of relevant tags appears below along with a description. This makes tagging really easy. SUGGESTED TAGS
- 17. R E S P O N S E S A N D E M P A T H Y
- 18. RESPONSES AND EMPATHY A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Questions are clearly displayed with regard to the audience’s expectations. Coding is properly formatted and shown within the questions with simple tags. Members can do two things. They can either vote, favourite, comment, or answer the question. However, newcomers are not allowed to vote on questions until they have a 15-point reputation score. QUESTIONS ARE WELL DISPLAYED
- 19. RESPONSES AND EMPATHY A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Commenting on a question is a novel feature of StackOverflow. It’s designed to improve the quality of the question and provide feedback to the original poster as well as providing more information for people to create good answers. This would be distracting in most online communities, but works well when good quality answers is the overriding part of the community concept. COMMENTING ON QUESTIONS
- 20. RESPONSES AND EMPATHY A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY As we can begin to expect now, answering questions contains further prompts about what to do to provide a really good answer. The link to further tips on writing great answers is also a great practice. ANSWERING A QUESTION
- 21. RESPONSES AND EMPATHY A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY One of the truly unique aspects of StackOverflow’s community is the ability of members to edit the questions and answers of other members. Everyone has the ability to do this, although the process is peer-reviewed. Edits are used to fix grammatical errors, clarify meaning, correct minor mistakes, and add related resources. Aside from Wikipedia, I haven’t seen any other community ever implement this feature. EDITING AN ANSWER
- 22. RESPONSES AND EMPATHY A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Unlike most organisations where empathy in responses is a critical part of the response, StackOverflow is designed for an audience that only wants good, quick, answers to questions. Almost all questions receive a quick response. The responses are usually detailed and specific to help the person. In this case, it’s code that the programmer might like to use to resolve the problem they are facing. QUALITY OF ANSWERS
- 23. R E G I S T R A T I O N A N D O N B O A R D I N G
- 24. REGISTERING TO JOIN THE COMMUNITY A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY StackOverflow doesn’t have a separate registration page, visitors are encouraged to register with the fields shown within the header at the top of the page. This also shows Google and Facebook sign on. This is a genius feature to encourage more registrations within the community. The visitor-landing-page copy is designed entirely to get people to register. NO REGISTRATION PAGE
- 25. REGISTERING TO JOIN THE COMMUNITY A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY StackOverflow has the easiest email confirmation page you will ever see. They have reduced the amount of copy to just 9 words. You can consider doing something similar with your email confirmations. EASY CONFIRMATION
- 26. 26 THE PROFILE COMPLETION PAGE A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Simple copy to get people started. Not sure on the logo. Profile photo is easy to drag and drop into place. Notice the ‘all fields are optional’ - I’d move this to the top of the page I like the phrasing of ‘what should we call you?’ Standard feature to select a few topics to receive updates and notification about. A good benefit of using tagging. Not sure why this section is relevant, possibly the only area here I’d remove. Most importantly here is you don’t have to write detailed ‘about me’ paragraphs. You can select the key things that matter. Great way to merge in advertising opportunities.
- 27. WELCOME EMAIL A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY WELCOME EMAIL This welcome email is triggered by participation in the community. The quick summary, learning how to write great answers, and custom views are pretty effective ways to help newcomers get started. I suspect there might be an opportunity for improvement here based upon tags people have selected and what the latest activity of the community is.
- 28. TUTORIAL PAGES A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY TUTORIALS FOR NEWCOMERS Once you join the community you receive a notification with a link to the tutorials page. This tutorial page is detailed and explains each of the steps required you become a great participant of the community. The visual element is especially useful.
- 29. D E V E L O P E R J O B S A N D S T O R I E S
- 30. TUTORIAL PAGES A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY DEVELOPER STORIES The jobs section revolves around developer stories which members are prompted to complete in the community if they want to be open to new job offers. The forms are relatively simple to complete and all fields are required.
- 31. TUTORIAL PAGES A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY THE TIMELINE The developer stories are presented really well, with tags at the top (not shown), and then a detailed timeline of previous jobs and experiences below. Most communities could adapt this idea to immediately upgrade their member profiles.
- 32. USER TIPS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Relatively standard and simple list of job adverts. With a search function and location at the top and list of ads displayed below.This might be the most ‘common’ area of the community Showing the salary, tags, and ‘be one of the first applicants’ is incredibly smart. Showing the previous searches is a nice touch and job preferences. Easy to edit from the front page. Letting applicants create job alerts is also extremely clever.
- 33. USER TIPS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY STANDARD JOB ADVERTS This section is a relatively simple and clean way of showing the job adverts. This might be the least innovative page of the community.
- 34. USER TIPS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY APPLY FROM WITHIN THE PLATFORM A major innovation of the community is to enable members to apply for the job directly within the platform. This includes using their current reputation score to apply for the positions.
- 35. M E M B E R P R O F I L E S
- 36. MEMBER PROFILES A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Showing users where they rank comparatively is a smart where to drive more participating and reward the top members. Number of badges and reputation points are clearly displayed. Over communities where the member participates in. Not relevant for most communities (or here, really) The ‘impact score’ here is genius. A great way of showing a member’s total contribution. Excellent breakdown of a member’s vital statistics. Not sure what ‘4 hats’ are though. This is a further good breakdown of where their expertise lies. You can clearly see where this member’s real expertise is.
- 37. MEMBER PROFILES A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Showing a member’s top posts mid-way down the profile is a great way of letting the member ‘show off their best work’ without looking like an ass.
- 38. MEMBER PROFILES A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Each member’s badges gained are displayed at the bottom listed by date and the reason they earned the badge. This is a simple way of displaying the badges. There might be better ways of doing this however. BADGES DISPLAYED AT THE BOTTOM
- 39. G A M I F I C A T I O N A N D R E W A R D S Y S T E M S
- 40. GAMIFICATION AND REWARD SYSTEMS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY StackOverflow has one of the most advanced gamification systems on the web. This begins at earning privileges for taking simple actions ‘such as creating a post’ all the way up to getting access to analytics with 25,000 points. The ticks next to the scores is an especially nice touch. PRIVLEGES SYSTEM
- 41. GAMIFICATION AND REWARD SYSTEMS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY This the ‘Tom Sawyer’ effect in action. The more privileges you earn, the more likely you are to take on doing work for the community for free full privileges board encourages members to take on more work for free. Showing the next privilege and what’s needed to get there is incredibly smart. A good menu which helps explain what’s required. There are multiple types of privileges members can earn, as broken down here.
- 42. GAMIFICATION AND REWARD SYSTEMS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY There are a near-infinite number of badges members can earn in the StackOverflow community. These range from question, answer, participation, moderation, documentation, and ‘other’ badges. The diversity of badges means everyone can and almost certainly will begin collecting badges from the very early days of the community. EARNING BADGES
- 43. GAMIFICATION AND REWARD SYSTEMS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY All of the systems are fully documented and explained in detailed guides. This limits confusion and potential anger from members when they don’t get the rewards or privileges they expected. It’s usually a smart move to fully document your reward systems. DOCUMENTATION
- 44. C H A T R O O M S
- 45. CHAT ROOMS A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Interestingly, StackOverflow also operates chat rooms which members with a reputation score of at least 20 are allowed to participate in. This type of interaction allows for more general discussion which would be an ill-fit for the quality-information focus of the community. This is a good balance between ephemeral and serious discussions which many organisations struggle with. CHAT ROOMS
- 46. C O N C L U S I O N
- 47. 47 A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY StackOverflow, with the exception of Facebook, has the most advanced and sophisticated community platform on the planet. There are hundreds of tiny details which are all designed to support its core concept of getting great answers to great questions. To support this mission, StackOverflow deliberates limits engagement in favour of quality contributions. This has the desired impact of attracting the highest quality programmers to share their best advice on the community, but it’s a tough path for others to follow. However, platform vendors and organisations can learn plenty from StackOverflow’s homepage setup, gamification systems, onboarding systems, and job pages. There is also plenty to learn here about creating tutorials and nudges throughout the platform to ensure that members make great contributions to the community. Many organisations would benefit from focusing less on driving as much activity as possible and instead focusing on driving the right kind of activity within their community. This is the real frontier of our work today. CONCLUSION THE MOST ADVANCED COMMUNITY ON THE WEB
- 48. 48 A BREAKDOWN OF STACKOVERFLOW’S ONLINE COMMUNITY Richard Millington is the Founder of FeverBee, an online community consultancy, and the author of Buzzing Communities. Richard works to help organisations understand the technology and psychology behind the web’s most successful online communities. In the past decade, Richard has helped 250+ organisations develop successful online communities for their employees, customers and fans. His client roster includes Facebook, Google, Oracle, Lego and many more. FeverBee’s community management academy has also trained 1200+ of the world’s top online community professionals from around the globe. To learn more, please visit: www.feverbee.com ABOUT THE AUTHOR RICHARD MILLINGTON, FEVERBEE richard@feverbee.com @RichMillington