How does Meta Stack Overflow work?

Search first

Before you post, please use the search function. It's extremely likely that what you are going to ask has been asked/discussed many times before. It's probably a good idea to search Meta Stack Exchange as well -- it contains lots of relevant material.

Don't complain if you're treated a bit rough for posting a duplicate question

You were told to search first, weren't you?

Bring your sense of humor

Meta Stack Overflow can seem to be harsh at first, but it's actually far from it. Just be polite and don't act in a trollish manner. Everyone here is here to help you.

Voting

Like on Stack Overflow, Meta Stack Overflow allows members to vote on questions and answers. For most posts, votes reflect the perceived usefulness: well-written, well-reasoned, well-researched posts tend to get more attention and more upvotes. Highly-voted and frequently-linked posts may become part of the community-curated or codified as part of the site’s Help pages.

Unlike the normal Stack Overflow site, Meta Stack Overflow invites the community to discuss, debate and propose changes to the way the community itself behaves, as well as how the software itself works. On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself.

To promote free discussion, votes have no effect on your reputation. Instead your reputation is copied from the main site, once every hour. You can still earn badges here, separate from the main site, however.

Closing as "duplicate"

Normally, voting to close as an exact duplicate of another post means just that: the post to be closed is an exact duplicate or a subset of another question. On Meta sites, however, it's not unusual for a question to be closed as a duplicate of another post that merely covers the same topic, especially if the second post is a faq entry. This helps people find/learn about the sites' policies, which is a significant part of Meta's mission.

Required Tags

When asking a question on Meta Stack Overflow, you must include one of the four following required tags. This helps classify questions according to the type of response needed.

bug

You've found an erroneous or unexpected behaviour in the system that needs to be fixed. Your question will include what you did to discover the bug, the steps required to reproduce the problem, the given system output, and the expected system output. If necessary to document or explain the issue, include a screenshot in your post. Liberal use of freehand circles is strongly encouraged.

discussion

You want to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

feature-request

You have an idea for a new feature to be added to the Stack Overflow engine. Your question will contain the details of your proposal, along with a justification that the new feature is needed.

support

You need help with the use of one of the network sites' features.

Moderator-only Tags

These tags can only be applied and removed by diamond moderators or SE staff members. They appear in red, not the usual gray, and confer a degree of official status.

community-ads

Indicates that a post is an official poll for community ad selection.

faq

Indicates that a question is a part of the official Stack Overflow FAQ.

featured

Marks a question for important meta discussions. A question with this tag can be seen on the main site, in a special sidebar, in the questions list, and when viewing individual questions.

status-bydesign

Indicates that a submitted issue is actually due to the existing design of the system and is not considered erroneous behaviour. In other words, "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"

status-completed

Indicates that a feature request has been implemented, a bug has been fixed, or another type of request has been processed.

status-declined

Indicates that a request (usually a feature request) has been considered, but will not be implemented.

status-deferred

Indicates that the issue will be reviewed in the future.

status-norepro

Indicates that a reported erroneous behavior cannot be reproduced by the development team.

status-planned

Indicates that a feature request has been considered and received positively enough that its implementation has been placed in the development queue.

status-reproduced

Indicates that the symptoms of a bug report have been reproduced/confirmed by the development team.

status-review

Indicates that a feature request or possible solutions to a bug are set to be internally reviewed.

Accounts

When you have an account on Stack Overflow, you have an account on Meta, too. If your main account has a reputation of 5 or more, you get to participate here on Meta.

Voting here does not cost or earn you reputation; your Meta reputation is simply a copy of your Stack Overflow reputation (synchronised once every hour). This means that downvotes on your posts do not subtract from your reputation, and upvotes do not add to it. This site is meant for everyone to participate in, and downvoting and upvoting happens more freely for it.

You can still earn badges separately here; no badges are copied from Stack Overflow and you earn badges here independently based on your participation.