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Update on July 8, 2025:

The list of sites excluded from the initial rollout has been updated below.

The company is working to simplify, improve, and consolidate the question asking experience across the Stack Exchange network. Having one unified Ask page format across all sites will also help to simplify the code base, making it easier to roll out fixes and improvements in the future.

What is changing?

Very little is changing on Stack Exchange sites in terms of the user experience. The differences you will notice are:

a preview of a stack overflow question

Special cases and exceptions

Sidebar customizations will be maintained on all sites that have them.

A number of sites will not be included in the initial rollout because the new version of the Stacks Editor doesn’t yet support certain site-specific features, such as Schematics or MathJax for example. To avoid any disruption for those users, the sites listed here (except for those listed under syntax highlighting) are being excluded from these changes until we can enable the necessary functionality.

Please let us know on this post of any other specific sites that may need to be excluded due to custom features on their Ask page. If we accidentally roll this change out to a site that should have been excluded (until those feature are supported) we will roll it back so that users can continue using the custom functionality.

There are some additional changes that are happening only on Stack Overflow, which you can read about here.

Next Steps

The shift to the new Ask page across the network will not be happening all at once. We will start by rolling it out on Super User, and then expanding it to the rest of the network. On each site, we will start by introducing it to a small percent of users and then progressively scaling it up over several weeks.

At a later date, after the Stacks Editor has been updated to support site specific features, we will roll out the new Ask page to the excluded sites, but we don’t have an exact timeline for that yet.

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  • 31
    "Very little is changing ... The differences you will notice are: An upgrade to the Stacks Editor" Um, given the various problems that have persisted with Stacks, and given that the editor itself is probably the single UI element that people who contribute to these sites spend the most time with, I find it a little scary that this is described as "very little".
    – Bryan Krause
    Commented Jul 1 at 18:39
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    According to meta.stackexchange.com/a/216607 46 sites support MathJax.
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Jul 1 at 22:21
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    Does this mean we will be forced to use the Stacks editor when editing existing questions?
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Jul 2 at 7:22
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    How come this is forced onto most SE sites with a "tell us if we did a whoopsie" policy instead of being an opt-in experiment to see how well it performs first?
    – RedStoneMatt
    Commented Jul 2 at 12:36
  • @RedStoneMatt Various experiments have been conducted on Stack Overflow. See meta.stackoverflow.com/q/433034/4014959 & meta.stackoverflow.com/… As you can see, the reception on MSO has been less than enthusiastic...
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Jul 2 at 17:02
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    @PM2Ring So they experimented, saw that it was a disaster, and pushed it on us anyway? Great company management.
    – RedStoneMatt
    Commented Jul 2 at 17:48
  • Code Golf and Coding Challenges does have MathJax, but it is not used too often.
    – The Empty String Photographer
    Commented Jul 2 at 19:00

10 Answers 10

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There are sites with site-specific customizations to the editor that you don't mention as exceptions, such as Mi Yodeya, which has an integrated Hebrew keyboard:

An א button next to the image uploader, which opens an on-screen Hebrew keyboard

Chess.SE has an integrated board editor that allows for displaying chess positions through the question Markdown. BoardGames.SE also - theoretically, at least - has site-specific markup for Go boards. Does the Stacks editor currently support these customizations, and if not, why aren't these sites excluded as well?

In addition, there are other sites that rely on MathJax, such as a significant number of questions on Puzzling.SE. Why aren't more sites with MathJax enabled being excluded at this point?

There's also, of course, MathOverflow, which aside from MathJax also has a citation helper tool. Some sites have YouTube embedding enabled. There's a whole list of site-specific modifications to formatting that should be looked at to make sure nothing breaks when switching to the new editor.

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    meta.stackexchange.com/questions/192318/… BH might have the special keyboard too. I feel like staff ought to be a little more aware of what sites have special needs rather than waiting for them to complain about broken things, as the question reads.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Jul 2 at 2:56
  • It looks like all sites with site-specific post formatting settings have been excluded now.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Jul 8 at 17:42
  • thank you for mentioning these examples. see the updated list of excluded sites in the post.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 8 at 20:12
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The Stacks editor provides a bad experience for many mobile users: Can't use Stacks editor for long posts on iOS because the cursor disappears

Now that it's being pushed to other sites which aren't for either meta power users or people in professions that primarily use desktops, can this be fixed? I'm just going to keep on bugging people otherwise.

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    Just to be clear: the stacks editor has also provided bad experience to desktop users. AFAIK, it's worse on mobile but I still won't (and don't) use it on my PC.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 1 at 18:13
  • We are looking into addressing a number of bugs with the editor as we work to roll it out to additional sites. Meta posts for each bug we fix will be updated as we go.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 10 at 18:00
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I'm disappointed to hear about these plans. I expect it will have some costs that are not acknowledged in the announcement, and that will be negative for my personal experience.

The current editor is reliable. It just works.

The new Stacks Editor has some significant advantages but also has issues that occasionally mess up the formatting under a variety of circumstances; people have been reporting bugs on Meta; and so far there has been a poor track record at fixing the reported bugs promptly. There does not seem to be a high priority to fixing these problems.

I get that the new Stacks Editor is more accessible for new folks because it doesn't require learning Markdown. That's definitely a positive. But for folks who do know Markdown, the new editor seems to me like a step down. It sucks that these two have to be at odds, rather than putting in software development resources to ensure the new Stacks Editor is solid enough to be a pure upgrade for both new folks and experienced folks.

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  • I think you hit the nail on the head with this. There are both pros and cons to the new Stacks Editor. We are hoping to remove at least some cons by fixing some of the existing bugs as we roll this out to more sites. We will update the meta posts for each bug as we address them.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 10 at 18:01
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Your screenshot shows code that's syntax highlighted, but not displayed with a fixed-width font. If that is a live rendering from a development environment, could you please fix that before it goes live?

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    Good catch. This screenshot is just from a design file. It will be fixed before going live.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 1 at 17:15
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    I think it's worrying that the people coding this feature didn't notice the fixed font size issue. Surely any coder should find that immediately irritating.
    – StephenG - Help Ukraine
    Commented Jul 7 at 11:05
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    @StephenG-HelpUkraine It sounds like the screenshot wasn't actually from running code, but instead from a design document (essentially a static image meant to inform developers on how the finished product should look)
    – SaintWacko
    Commented Jul 8 at 19:18
  • @SaintWacko That would be more understandable.
    – StephenG - Help Ukraine
    Commented Jul 8 at 21:07
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As a Super User moderator - while I've had relatively little problems with the stacks editor, this is literally the first I am hearing about it.

While I do enjoy meta 'work', it would have been nice to have a week or two of notice to us specifically, so we'd know we'd need to deal with the inevitable complaints, especially warranted ones and keep a closer eye on our somewhat quiet meta. We'd even be happy to deal with some of the community communications as we are doing with some recent chat improvements. I've got no information about this till now, and I'm unequipped to deal with queries from my community as a result.

While I do realise technically these are changes that have been ongoing over time, keeping moderators up to date when changes are about happen has a lot of value in building trust and spreading the work of communication somewhat.

I don't think the community managers or other staff are really going to, or want to deal with the "this is literally the worst, I am quitting the site" kind of feedback - but that's what we'll get, and what mods need to be equipped to address.

Its very strange that I'm hearing changes on the site I moderate and maintain being volunteered for fairly major changes without consultation via meta first. While I follow meta closely, other moderators on my site or others may not. As a moderator, I feel deeply unappreciated, and this is the sort of entirely avoidable breakdown in communications. I can't imagine that no one thought of spending 5-10 minutes dropping us a line in our moderator chat a little before releasing the news out into the public, and yet this is literally the case here.

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  • I am sorry that this makes you feel unappreciated as a moderator, that was certainly not what I hoped to accomplish with this post! Since this is a change that will be coming to all sites eventually, I was not planning to reach out to each individual mod team ahead of time. But as Super User is first, my plan was to give a heads up in the mod chat the week that the rollout was coming (which will be mid to late next week hopefully, or possibly the week after if we hit some delays).
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 9 at 22:30
  • However I can see how I probably should have done that first, before mentioning the site by name here. Especially since we did not give an exact timeline of when the changes would be coming. I’m genuinely sorry for any frustration that error caused.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 9 at 22:31
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Lacking a better justification than presented, I formally ask Code Review to be excluded from this project. We are a bit of a niche when it comes about asking and what's entirely valid for sites like Stack Overflow can entirely go against our approach. Also, we are one of the sites using a version of MathJax.

This has been known to the Team since '15 at least and I'll happily teach the new team on the finer details if necessary.

Besides, the new editor was poorly received and I personally strongly detest it.

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  • It looks like all sites with site-specific post formatting settings have been excluded now.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Jul 8 at 18:09
  • Code Review will be excluded from the initial rollout, along with all the other sites that use MathJax. However we do plan to roll these changes out to the whole network eventually. We are working on some bug fixes to improve the experience using the Stacks Editor as it begins to roll out to more sites. If there are other specific concerns you have about how these changes will affect Code Review, please let us know.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 10 at 18:01
  • @Sasha Many issues with the editor have been stated before and I haven't seen all of them getting addressed. The new editor is not functionally equivalent to the old one which means a mess is created when editing old posts. I do not consider that acceptable but SE seems to think differently. That does affect Code Review and the last of its regulars yet I doubt that will be sufficient reason for you to exclude the site indefinitely.
    – Mast
    Commented Jul 10 at 19:20
  • @Sasha Please could you let us know when the change goes live on the other sites to have hands on experience to see how the changes would affect Code Review. Thank you.
    – Peilonrayz
    Commented Jul 10 at 19:32
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On each site, we will start by introducing it to a small percent of users and then progressively scaling it up over several weeks.

This is the strategy you usually use for experiments. Are there conditions for halting this rollout? If so, what are they?

The Stacks Editor is not (yet?) fit for purpose: Stack Snippets don't work, so it's not possible to roll this out to even Stack Overflow. You'd be taking a consistent, network-wide user interface, and turning it into a discordant mess that isn't even consistent throughout the Trilogy.

This is transparently a bad idea.

P.S.: I know you're trying to be funny, and I'd usually appreciate it, – but you've adopted the tech industry's "reference fictional tools of evil" convention, without (I think) really understanding it. They use this as a way of bragging. (Also introduced in J. R. R. Tolkien's novel Lord of the Rings are the palantíri. CEO Alex Karp has proudly described one of Palantir's services as a "digital kill chain".) This is perhaps not suitable messaging for an announcement that you know will be unpopular.

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You say that this doesn't affect "most" sites; what will happen to sites that have site-specific customization to the ask page, such as providing extra guidance for specific types of questions?

As an example, Science Fiction & Fantasy has guidance for asking ID questions as well as suggestions for other sites that may be relevant:

The scifi.SE asking page, guiding users asking story-ID questions to a guide and offering other sites, such as Literature.SE and Movies.SE, for questions that may be off-topic

If the goal is to "consolidate" the codebase, that sounds like removal of special cases; can you please confirm if such customizations are going to be removed or not?

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    Sidebar customizations will be maintained on all sites that have them, I will edit that into the post.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 1 at 17:27
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    I said "most" because "all" would have been wrong, since there a few sites that are not receiving the update. I did not mean that some sites receiving the update will be affected more than others. Edited for clarity.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 1 at 17:30
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If you push out that broken, horrible editor without opt out, I think you will lose the few remaining users of the network. There is a limit to how many incompetently implemented "features" you have can shove down people's throats until they eventually pack up and leave. This is probably where a lot of people will draw the line.

Explain what problem the new editor solves. You have too many idle devs twiddling thumbs? If you must keep them busy with pointless busy-work, have them dig a pit in the backyard and fill it again — that way at least they aren't hurting the network.

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    "Explain what problem the new editor solves." well, it's mostly for users who don't know Markdown and don't want to bother with it. However, forcing in on everyone is indeed bad. Even in markdown mode, the editor just doesn't work the same. More than simply "different = bad" rhetoric, it's missing features, and adding useless stuff - markdown mode tries to colour syntax and it's distracting. Moreover, historically, the development of the new editor has been quite bad. It was even abandoned for maybe couple of years and pulled out of the trash to slap us in the face with.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 2 at 8:53
  • @VLAZ It's always been in use on Stack Overflow for Teams: it was never completely abandoned. That said, it's still horrendously buggy, and I avoid posting on SOfT as a result.
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Jul 2 at 9:01
  • @wizzwizz4 the development of it was abandoned. It still remained in half-beta state in various places around the network and even pushed into more ones despite it being a mess and with nobody working on the thing.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 2 at 9:03
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    @VLAZ At least on the programming sites I'd have at least some hope that it would be possible to teach the programmers basic markdown stuff. Or otherwise there's no hope for them anyway as no editor in the world can fix the users. Non-programming sites is another story, but they might have other unique formatting concerns instead, as seen from this meta post.
    – Lundin
    Commented Jul 2 at 9:10
  • @Lundin Bah, programmers should be generating their code, not writing it by hand /s
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 2 at 9:12
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One Ask Page to Rule Them All

Now all we need is to gather the fellowship of brave users who will accompany the Stacks Editor on its way to the Mount Doom where it should be destroyed for all eternity.

Seriously, the Stacks editor is so bad that this is the only viable course of action. Ever since you introduced it, the amount of poorly formatted posts by users struggling to deal with it, is continuously increasing.

The alternative would be fixing the Stacks Editor and make it work properly before applying it on scale (or anywhere, really). But if you could have done that, then it would have been fixed by now. It is not like it is a brand new thing that hasn't been in use for some time now.

Because it has been broken for so long, I highly doubt that you will be able to pull this off and make it work without issues.

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  • As I noted in a couple other comments above, we are planning to fix a number of bugs with the Stacks Editor as we roll it out to more sites. When you talk about needing to “fix” it, do you have specific bugs in mind, or is there a broader issue you see with the editor?
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 10 at 18:03
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    @Sasha I avoid using Stacks editor as much as possible, and I generally don't post that much any more, so I cannot point you to specific bugs other than what was already reported. I also mostly use Stacks editor in markdown mode and I don't like having to switch to see the preview. Another thing that bothers me often is accidentally being in the wrong mode and pasting markdown text there.
    – Resistance Is Futile
    Commented Jul 10 at 18:17

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