Not sure if Stack Overflow needs donations or if its rich. But since I get help from the community, I'd be happy to make a donation. How do I do this?
101954
Besides contributing  and answers, are there any other ways that I can contribute to Stack Overflow and its family of websites?  I would be happy to    give a  donation contribute code   SFOU has been helping me tremendously, so it's only fair if I can give back something.
21295
Recently, I've seen many questions with this structure:   a wall of code a request for the community to debug it by inspection   You can find a nice selection .  I offer, as a thesis, that these questions are not consistent with the stated goals of SO. They do not, usually, create a resource of use to other people.   As a community, we could politely but firmly tell these askers to do enough of their own work to come up with a concrete, specific, programming question, other than 'can someone tell me what's wrong with this?'  Don't get me wrong. I'm sympathetic to people with problems. I have not been downvoting or voting to close these, because the community seems to be inclined in general to be helpful. I'm asking, are we really doing the right thing by encouraging the site to populate with these?  If the consensus is 'yes' then I'll just slink back to my cave. I'm not interested in starting a campaign here.
20137
I've literally just signed up to Stack Overflow and I tried asking my first question, unfortunately I keep getting this error message      You can only ask 50 questions in a 30-day period.   Having just signed up, I haven't asked any questions yet, and definitely not 50!  I am currently living in the halls at my university, could this be causing the problem? And if so, is there anyway I can get around this as I really need some help :(
33334
Where should I post question like:     Where can I find books on [some programing subject]?   or      Online sources for learning  [some programing technique]?   ? ? Should it be community wiki? or is it a taboo in the ?
24006
I think I've done due diligence in searching, and I cannot find a StackOverflow newsletter archive.  Does one exist?  If not, would it be possible?
8190
SO is not Open-Source, but I like the whole idea of Stack Overflow :   Giving bounties for Questions Up/Downvoting Questions The Badges The intelligent use of Ajax-Technologies Highly Rated users have administrative powers Reputation system Editing posts like a wiki   So I would like to program a (what is it called) Q&amp;A site / board / wiki system. Am I allowed to?
29895
I just came across a question by a new contributor to a Stack (in this case, ), as indicated by the new contributor indicator. Since it was an ID request, I launched into a comment linking to  and was about to invite them on the [tour], when I checked their network accounts and found that they had 17k+ rep on Stack Overflow.  Now I know that not everyone will welcome new contributors like that, but still, it would be useful to have an indication if a new contributor is new to Stack Exchange and may not even realise they can edit their own posts (yes, I've encountered those; self-answering just to add new information), or merely new to the current Stack and may only need a couple of pointers on topicality and tagging conventions. Likewise, someone may be a regular on the main Stack, but new to meta.  So please, expand the new contributor indicator to indicate if a user is new to the current Stack, new to the current Meta, new to Meta in general, or new to the Stack Exchange Network.    I realise that a reputation of 101 may indicate a user having received the association bonus, so they may have some experience elsewhere on the Stack Exchange Network. However, that doesn't tell me if they're 200+ on their highest reputation account, or 20k+. The former may still need some help using basic features while the latter doesn't.    I came across a request to . That sounds useful as well, so I've edited my question to incorporate that request.
81187
I was really surprised with the way Stack Overflow question  was answered. One user had posted two answers ( and ) instead of using the "Edit" option on any one of the posts. The most surprising thing is the upvotes. The answers posted by the user got three upvotes for both of the answers. Is this the correct way of using the answering mechanism?  Please provide your thoughts.
32165
I am wondering why/how Stack Overflow is so fast.     "Stack Overflow is a programming Q &amp; A site that's free. ... And fast. Very, very fast."   -
20221
Saw this in the reopen queue tonight    The question is closed as off-topic/general-computing and the OP apologizes for having to post it here.   Sure enough, that is what the company directs customers to do:  From:       Need some help? Ask a question on Stackoverflow with the tag    nitrousio and our developers (and other developers) will reach out to help you.      newest questions tagged nitrousio - Stack Overflow      ....list....   I guess no one anticipated that not all product support questions will be valid programming questions.  Or maybe it is about turning support into a profit center by attracting other customers.  Not sure that makes sense, though.  I mean, I'd like private support tickets when I contact a service provider.   This has been addressed previously back in 2009 by Jeff Atwood in an answer to   However, there is a newer 2012 duplicate  where the answer is effectively "OK, if..."  I thought I would post this here so the community can chime in on where the limits of this kind of thing should be and enable the proper people to take care of it.
120650
There is a gap between the online help available on stack overflow and the offline help of real-world mentors, this is my modest proposal to correct that.   Here is a link to my original article:   Here is the content from said article:   First off, I love Stack Overflow. In the way that only someone who taught himself programming via outdated books, and old-school programming forums can. I think it’s the best way to ask most programming questions on the web, but that doesn’t mean it can’t get better.   Background: Today I just helped my girlfriend  @rubyku signup for a stack overflow account. I did this because she found the exact answer to her question already answered on Stack Overflow and felt the person who answered the question rightfully deserved some recognition. After we got her signed up, we went to give credit where credit is due, and “up vote” the answer, when suddenly we discover wham! we can’t because she doesn’t have enough reputation points. So she closed the window and moved on. While she got the question answered, she didn’t engage with the community and was frustrated by the interaction.  Reputation: On Stack Overflow reputation is measured in points and does two things, it keeps spammers and people trying to game the systems at bay. It also encourages users to provide good answers and ask good questions. I think the reputation system does a great job to accomplish these things, but it inadvertently does something else. It discourages new users from becoming part of the community and engaging since someone who just started can’t fully participate. They first have to ask or answer a question to get reputation.   Solution: Use mentors to merge real life reputation with online reputation, since i’m mentoring someone in person, i should be able to mentor them on Stack Overflow. I can vouch that she isn’t a bot, or a spammer, and I can give her real world motivation and incentive to get involved online and off. It should (could) work like this: I give up some chunk of my reputation to this new Stack Overflow member, and in return I get notified any time they make an action. This allow the mentor to help guide a student’s questions, comments, and up votes as only a real live person can, while giving accountability to student. But why would someone want to be a mentor, give up their points, and be bugged constantly? Besides caring about someone and wanting to see them succeed, there is a greedy reason built in the system. Since a mentor gets notified about any post the student makes, they get first dibs on questions, and in the long run if they are consistently helpful and answer their student’s questions, then their reputation will increase dramatically more than if they had never given up points to become a mentor.   Whether or not Stack Overflow ever implements such a model, we as programmers should always remember that there was a time when we needed help and sometimes an IRC channel or forum post, just wasn’t enough. While many of us are “self taught” programmers the most successful of us had some help along the way. Stack Overflow is a tool to help someone become better at programming, but not THE solution. We need to start bridging the gap between people who care, and people who need help. The more we use technology to bring these two groups of people closer together, the more we all win.
5964
So much I don't know.  Would love to be able to ask, learn, and discuss as I do in your other forums.
106624
I was just trying to find out if there was a public API for the Stack Overflow site. I want to know so that I could maybe use it for whatever it would let me use it for (like web-service or non browser application that can access Stack Overflow). I have a few (specific) ideas but I don't want anybody to get the jump on me before I have a chance to implement one of them ;). I know that is a little silly since there are a limited number of things that such a thing could be used for. It's not about $$ or copyright* or anything like that; I just want to do it my way first if possible. Anyhow I tried googling this and you can imagine how many results you get for "StackOverflow public api".
30076
Is there any online facility to donate to Ubuntu on a recurrent (monthly) basis? Are there any fiscal/tax deductions for doing so? If so, in what countries?
18885
I am posting this question just to get a better understanding of the questions that can be asked on Stack Overflow.  I find that  can several answers based on users opinion and cause a discussion.  Why is this a good question when several other requests for books and tutorials are not acceptable?
41172
Is there any way of getting to the first 15 reputation (at which point you can actually do something) on Stack Overflow other than by asking questions?  My problem is this: if I see a good answer that works, I can't vote for it (not enough reputation).  I have been programming for many years and often see a question I could contribute, but I can't (not enough reputation).  I so far have never needed to ask a question (I know how to use a search facility, and so can find an already existing answer).    Therefore asking questions can't possibly be the only mechanism to get enough reputation to get started, can it?  Because if it is then as more and more questions get asked on Stack Overflow, the need to ask new ones will diminish, so if this is the only mechanism of gaining those first few reputation, soon all new joiners will never be able to contribute, or will need to re-ask already answered questions (not good for anyone).  Advice on how to get those first few reputation gratefully received.
61021
I'm a member of the community (StackOverflow).  This community is here to discuss that community.  Why, even though I'm a 10k+ user on the real community, am I treated like a second-class citizen here?  It seems kind of cliquey.  I want to volunteer my time to StackOverflow, but not usually through meta discussions.  But when something hinders my ability to work on SO, I want to be able to discuss it here without being stifled.  I also understand that this community has unique considerations from a moderation standpoint.  An SO moderator might not make a good meta.SO moderator.  I suggest we draw a line between permissions that facilitate participation and those that facilitate moderation.  Here are the ones I think primarily facilitate participation:   Leave comments Vote up Flag offensive Edit community wiki posts Vote down Show total up and down vote counts (because it allows you to guage the actual popularity of an opinion).   Allowing anybody to leave comments was a great first step.  My proposal is that the above permissions would either be granted to all people who have the equivalent permission on SO (or even another sister site?) or to all people (i.e. no rep requirement).  Incidentally, since votes in SO often are used to guage the popularity of a suggestion, I don't think there should be penalties for downvoting but that's another, related topic.  It just makes no sense to me that you can have people that have full participation rights on meta.SO even though they have never really participated on SO, meanwhile I'm a very active member on SO and am hindered from talking about it here.  It's like having a town hall meeting but only inviting the people who hang around town hall.    To sum up some of the comments, in reality much of what I'm talking about you already get from account association so I'd be totally satisfied if we lowered the vote down and vote split rep requirements to 100.