Stack Overflow playbook

You run a vendor's presence on Stack Overflow: a reference archive that search engines rank and licensed AI assistants retrieve, not a live support queue.

Rules that get staff accounts flagged

The first four are published in the help center.

• Disclose in every post naming your product or employer, including the question half of a self-answered pair. A profile bio does not count.
• Answer the question, not the product. Some answers may be about your product, never all. Show the working solution; link-only answers are deleted.
• No generative AI. Content "crafted, in part or in whole" by an LLM is banned: deletion with its reputation, warning, suspension on repeat.
• One person, one account. No shared or agency accounts. Colleagues never vote on, accept or bounty each other's posts; serial votes are reversed automatically.
• Hands off others' work. Never downvote, flag or retag competitors' posts. Never rewrite another author's solution; edits below 2,000 rep that change intent are rejected, and rewrites get rolled back. Post a new answer instead.
• Never paste one answer on many questions; flag copies as duplicates. Posts are CC BY-SA 4.0, so reuse others' answers in docs with attribution.