Some questions and answers are marked Community Wiki and are owned by a community wiki user:
(In fact, this very question is one of them)
One of the goals of the website is to be a continually evolving source of good information. Community Wiki posts help enhance the wiki aspect of the site.
For more information about the proper use of community wiki, see The Future of Community Wiki [1].
Community Wiki posts work by partly transferring ownership of the post from the original author to the community. They make the post easier to edit and maintain by a wider group of users, but they do not contribute to any user's reputation.
Some of the key features are:
There are only three ways that a post becomes community wiki.
The answer's (not question's) author checks the community wiki checkbox when composing or editing the answer. Note that this checkbox isn't available to users with less than 10 reputation. The checkbox also is not available if the question being answered is already a community wiki. 2
If you post an answer to a community wiki question, your answer will also be community wiki.
A moderator has reason to believe that the question or answer serves better in community wiki mode - if you believe your post should be converted [6] to a community wiki, you may flag it for moderator attention [7].
In the past, questions could be made community wiki by their authors or by certain automatic triggers but now the only means is by a moderator converting it [8] to community wiki. When a moderator converts a question to community wiki, all existing answers will also be converted in addition to converting future answers.3
Community Wiki status can only be removed by a moderator. [9]
If community wiki status is removed from a post, reputation is automatically recalculated [10] as if the post was never a wiki.
To search for Community Wiki posts, type wiki:1
, wiki:yes
, or wiki:true
into the search box. See
How do I search?
[11] for more information.
Rollbacks cannot remove community wiki status.
The Community User4 might appear as the last editor of a post, even a non-wiki post. This happens either 1. when an edit by an anonymous user is approved, or 2. when it randomly pokes old unanswered questions so they get some attention. In the latter case, this will only be shown in certain overviews and on a notice on the question, and not an actual revision in the revision history.
If you are looking for an example community wiki post, see this question and this answer. They are all community wikis. You can easily identify community wikis by the text "community wiki" where the author's profile picture should be.
1 The original author of a community wiki post can always edit it, even if they have <100 reputation. Other edits made by users with less than 100 reputation must be reviewed in the usual way before being applied.
2 Since October 2010 [12], there is no community wiki checkbox when asking a question.
3 In the past, converting a question to community wiki would not automatically convert the answers, so you may see non-Community Wiki answers to older Community Wiki questions. Additionally, if a non-Community Wiki question is merged [13] into a Community Wiki question, the imported answers will not be automatically converted. If you would like to edit them, you can flag for a moderator to add Community Wiki status to the answer. (Newer answers to these older questions will automatically be Community Wiki.)
4 See Who is the Community User? [14], or read the Community User’s profile [15].
[1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/