name: Stack Overflow Vocabulary
description: >-
  Vocabulary for Stack Overflow covering its Q&A platform, reputation system,
  developer community concepts, Teams knowledge base features, and API terms.
created: '2026-05-02'
modified: '2026-05-02'
terms:
  - term: Stack Overflow
    definition: >-
      The world's largest Q&A community for programmers and software developers.
      A Stack Exchange network site where developers ask and answer programming
      questions, with content under CC BY-SA license.

  - term: Question
    definition: >-
      A programming or software development problem posted to Stack Overflow
      seeking a solution. Questions include a title, body, and tags.

  - term: Answer
    definition: >-
      A post providing a solution to a Stack Overflow question. Answers can
      be voted on, commented on, and one may be accepted by the question asker.

  - term: Article
    definition: >-
      Long-form knowledge content in Stack Overflow for Teams. Articles are
      for documentation, how-tos, and reference material that doesn't fit the
      Q&A format.

  - term: Tag
    definition: >-
      Keywords categorizing questions by programming language, framework, or
      technology (e.g., javascript, python, react, docker). Questions can have
      up to 5 tags.

  - term: Reputation
    definition: >-
      A numerical measure of community trust earned through upvotes on
      questions and answers. Reputation gates access to features like voting,
      commenting, and editing.

  - term: Badge
    definition: >-
      Achievement awards given for reaching milestones or demonstrating
      positive behaviors. Bronze, silver, and gold tiers exist.

  - term: Bounty
    definition: >-
      Additional reputation points offered to attract quality answers to a
      question. Bounty questions are featured prominently.

  - term: Stack Overflow for Teams
    definition: >-
      A private, searchable knowledge base for organizations built on the
      Stack Overflow platform. Enables internal Q&A, documentation articles,
      and knowledge management.

  - term: Subject Matter Expert
    abbreviation: SME
    definition: >-
      A designated user or user group in Stack Overflow for Teams with
      expertise in specific topics (tags). SMEs are notified of unanswered
      questions and can review tag wikis.

  - term: User Group
    definition: >-
      A collection of users in Stack Overflow for Teams that can be assigned
      as SMEs for tags or used for access control. Groups simplify team
      management.

  - term: Personal Access Token
    abbreviation: PAT
    definition: >-
      Authentication credential for the Stack Overflow for Teams API v3.
      Passed as a Bearer token in the Authorization header.

  - term: API Wrapper
    definition: >-
      The Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow API response envelope containing 'items',
      'has_more', 'quota_max', 'quota_remaining', and 'backoff' metadata.

  - term: Quota
    definition: >-
      Daily API request limit. For unauthenticated requests: 300/day.
      For authenticated requests (with access_token + key): up to 10,000/day.

  - term: Filter
    definition: >-
      API mechanism to control response field inclusion. Reduces response
      payload size by returning only needed fields.

  - term: Unanswered Question
    definition: >-
      A question with no upvoted or accepted answers. The /questions/unanswered
      endpoint returns these questions specifically to help connect askers with
      answerers.

  - term: Featured Question
    definition: >-
      A question with an active bounty. Featured questions are highlighted to
      attract answers from the community.

  - term: OAuth 2.0
    definition: >-
      Authentication framework used by the Stack Overflow public API. Clients
      register at StackApps and use the authorization code flow to obtain
      access tokens.

  - term: StackApps
    definition: >-
      The Stack Exchange site for developers building applications and tools
      that integrate with the Stack Exchange API. Used for app registration,
      showcasing apps, and API support.