Stack Overflow is changing: Meet Collectives
Tags: stackoverflow, webdev
Published: 2021-06-25 18:19:52

Stack Overflow [released a new feature](https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/23/collectives-stack-overflow/) that promises to change the way Q&A moderation is done within the platform. We're talking about the initiative called [Collectives](https://stackoverflow.com/collectives-on-stack-overflow).

Although the platform works with a [gamification model with badges and points based on the user's contribution](https://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-reputation) and also some initiatives to improve the quality of the Q&As that are introduced to thousands daily, the platform that on the last June 2, had its name highlighted in the press with the [news](https://www.wsj.com/articles/software -developer-community-stack-overflow-sold-to-tech-giant-prosus-for-1-8-billion-11622648400) of its sale to the Dutch company Prosus for $1.8 billion, seems to bet on Collectives to try to qualify the platform's content through the help of opensource companies that already have their technologies in Q&As.

Watch the video about the new feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Zk1CKkCY0

> Collectives™ helps technology organizations empower the community that already exists around their products on Stack Overflow. Share knowledge at scale. Find and grow your advocates. Get actionable insights. It’s all right here.

The new feature will give opensource companies the ability to directly create and moderate their communities within Stack Overflow:

> Collectives is a new set of spaces on Stack Overflow where content related to certain technical languages, products, or services can be grouped together. It's a place for users who regularly interact with this content to collaborate, and for organizations who help build or maintain this technology to share their expertise.

As the initiative depends from companies create their Collectives directly inside Stack Overflow, SO invited Google as a partner to launch its first two Collectives in order to give strength to the initiative. In Google Cloud Collective page, we can see that in its context menu, in addition to the traditional platform Questions and Answers, we now have `Articles`, `Members` and `Tags`.

https://stackoverflow.com/collectives/google-cloud

![Google Cloud Collective page](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6movtky0x7m76nni7jbo.png)

## Tags
Stack Overflow has always worked with tag categorization and that will not change. Some of Google Cloud tags on the SO:
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/google-app-engine
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/firebase-realtime-database
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/google-cloud-firestore

However, from now on, we can notice on Google's Collectives page, it starts to moderate the contents of tags related to its existing technologies.

https://stackoverflow.com/collectives/google-cloud?tab=tags

## Members
A new user type categorized as `Recognized member` appears on the scene. I get a piece of [official announcement](https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/23/collectives-stack-overflow/) to understand how a traditional user can be categorized in this way and what additional features are enabled within a Collective:

> With this launch we are creating a new Collective-specific user type: Recognized members are either employees of an organization, part of its Developer Recognition Program, or users selected by the organization within the Stack Overflow community that are knowledgeable about the organization's technologies. These users will have a badge identifying them when they post/edit a question, provide an answer, or write an Article that is associated with a collective through its tags. They will also have the ability to recommend an existing answer within their Collective, highlighting that, from their perspective, this is a recommended way of solving the problem.

https://stackoverflow.com/collectives/google-cloud?tab=members

## Articles
This new feature allows a recognized collective member to publish about content related to your technology without using the traditional problem and solution model. How to guides and specialized content should be published in this section.

https://stackoverflow.com/collectives/google-cloud/articles/68104924/listen-for-authentication-state-in-android

The other Collective launched in partnership with Google is about [Go Lang](https://stackoverflow.com/collectives/go). Both collectives have the same model.

In addition to the internal changes within the company itself, some [comparisons](https://dzone.com/articles/github-discussions-bringing-the-open-source-commun) have recently emerged about the release of the Github new feature called [Discussions](https://docs.github.com/en/discussions) which now competes directly with Stack Overflow, for dev Q&A publications. You can see an example of [discussion page in Github](https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions), in case, NextJS repository.

Since I know Stack Overflow, I believe this is the biggest change they've ever made. 

And what do you think about this change? Leave your comment and contribute to the discussion!