Stack Exchange
Shares rank 9 of 17 discussion forums by recommenders
People recommend the niche Stack Exchange sites for reliable, terse answers from knowledgeable communities. Critics say heavy closing and deletionism make it hostile and hard for newcomers to join.
People recommend the niche Stack Exchange sites for reliable, terse answers from knowledgeable communities. Critics say heavy closing and deletionism make it hostile and hard for newcomers to join.
38 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 24
- approval share
- 37%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 15 years
Median of the 4 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong niche communities with good answers
“There are wonderful sutes in the SE network where you get great answers from very helpful people.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Stack Overflow's forum is dead thanks to AI” “While I generally agree with the narrative of the negative arc that stack overflow took”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time” “Stack Exchange sites such as cooking or latex (and other niche ones) work very well.”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “AI is destroying Open Source, and it's not even good yet” - Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month”
- Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month”
- Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month”
Reliable, high-quality answers
“There are wonderful sutes in the SE network where you get great answers from very helpful people.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Stack Overflow's forum is dead thanks to AI” “I saw it as a way to ensure the site remained valuable as a place for high quality answers.”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph” “you get good, terse, sensible answers there.”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Let go of StackOverflow; communities must take ownership” - Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Calling It Quits on ServerFault”
Searchable Q&A format, well known
“It's still formatted as Q&A so people with the same question can find it”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “How can I build a simple pulse generator to demonstrate transmission lines” “Stack Exchange and ServerFault were universally known in the industry.”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Calling It Quits on ServerFault”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavy closing and deletionism
“I've never understood why so many questions on Exhange need to be closed for minor deviations of moderator norms”
Comment from 11 Oct 2026 in “No Man Is an Island” “It's the deletionism that effectively ended my participation in stack exchange networks.”
Comment from 9 May 2026 in “AI Slop Is Killing Online Communities” “Stack Exchange tends to shut down product recommendation questions”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “AI Thinks the Internet Is Reddit. We Have 8,616 Answers Proving It” - Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph”
- Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Google Search as you know it is over”
Hostile, toxic community
“my account and the entire IP of my office had been banned & blocked from entier Stack Exchange network”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month” “StackExchange sites have always been among the most hostile communities on the Internet.”
Comment from 27 Jun 2026 in “Why does kinetic energy increase quadratically, not linearly, with speed? (2011)” “the Stack Exchange metaphor seemed to draw those kind of people like moth to flame”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month” - Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time”
Hard to break into
“StackExchange had ridiculously high barriers to participation, making it inclusive to the long-time users on the site, but exclusive to the newbie participants”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph” “This has bootstrapping issues, is hard to break into the community, and risks creating moderator cliques.”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag” Users banned by automated flags
“my account and the entire IP of my office had been banned & blocked from entier Stack Exchange network”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month” “On both SO and SE their hunter bots immediately flagged me for doing this”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Is Stack Overflow Dead?”
Other discussion forums people recommend
The four most recommended other discussion forums, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker News | 361 | 156 | 70% | 12 | 10 yrs17 owners | Approved |
| 261 | 988 | 21% | 13 | 14 yrs54 owners | — | |
| Lobsters | 105 | 31 | 77% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| Old Reddit | 60 | 47 | 56% | 12 | — | — |
| Stack ExchangeThis page | 14 | 24 | 37% | 7 | 15 yrs4 owners | — |
What people said
40 of the 43 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“my account and the entire IP of my office had been banned & blocked from entier Stack Exchange network”
“They've been falling apart for years.”
“All Stack Exchange sites had the same user hostility problem”
“Gateway errors, "try again in a few minutes", etc.”
“I love you stack exchange and all related sites.”
“the demise of the SE network (not just SO) owes a good bit to this rigid application of the hacker mindset”
“the Stack Exchange metaphor seemed to draw those kind of people like moth to flame”
“The other communities really are good stuff.”
“I really do love their other communities so much more.”
“the other Stack Exchanges can be interesting, they deserve more spotlight”
“I've never understood why so many questions on Exhange need to be closed for minor deviations of moderator norms”
“Stack Exchange and ServerFault were universally known in the industry.”
“The stackexchange sites are too fragmented into too many narrow topics for the traffic.”
“IMHO it's far more reliable than AI.”
“I'd prefer if he answered on a StackExchange site”
“Stack Exchange tends to shut down product recommendation questions”
“I have to use browser extensions to filter out stuff like Stack Exchange suggestions for interesting topics”
“Stack Exchange has degenerated to the point of overt deletionism”
“the answers and comments are intersliced with advertisements”
“StackExchange had ridiculously high barriers to participation, making it inclusive to the long-time users on the site, but exclusive to the newbie participants”
“I saw it as a way to ensure the site remained valuable as a place for high quality answers.”
“It also had ridiculous rules to enforce "quality" but in the end it was to enforce user work by convention.”
“StackExchange sites have always been among the most hostile communities on the Internet.”
“StackExchange is pretty friendly to beginners in my experience.”
“There are wonderful sutes in the SE network where you get great answers from very helpful people.”
“Stack Exchange committed suicide by closing all the questions.”
“This has bootstrapping issues, is hard to break into the community, and risks creating moderator cliques.”
“It's the deletionism that effectively ended my participation in stack exchange networks.”
“Stack Exchange sites such as cooking or latex (and other niche ones) work very well.”
“prioritizes discussions from 10 years ago on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, rather than up-to-date questions and answers”
“It's still formatted as Q&A so people with the same question can find it”
“I always got the impression that they tried to scale into places that ultimately attracted too much noise”
“I could have enjoyable interactions on the math, Ux, written language, and aviation exchanges”
“While I generally agree with the narrative of the negative arc that stack overflow took”
“I'm always blown away by how incredibly toxic the threads are”
“The entire Stack Exchange network is collapsing”
“On both SO and SE their hunter bots immediately flagged me for doing this”
“you get good, terse, sensible answers there.”
“Nobody over there is going to fix it.”
“I don’t need to look for Denver 069 2004 post about MQTT request response options where someone pointed him to a now 404 link”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.