Is there a community on Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow sites like there is on Quora?

TL;DRYes and No.You have two questions. Answering the first: Is there a community on Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow sites like there is on Quora? Yes. There most certainly is. The main difference is that the communities on Stack Exchange are built around different goals.The http://stackexchange.com/sites Network consists of many sites, each of which is so different from the rest that it’s hard to look at every one through the same lens. Let’s look at sites based on age and traffic: SOFU (http://stackoverflow.com, http://superuser.com, and http://serverfault.com/): Each of these were part of the original group of sites that were launched and are pretty huge compared to the rest of the Network. On these sites, there are many sub communities that exist, some of them being around tags, and others being around overall site moderation. Communities around tags generally consist of users who are active in asking and answering on questions related to the technology covered by the tag. These communities tend to consist of experts and some new users. Most new users on these sites are of the drive-by variety; these ask a few questions distributed over a long time. Hence, only the most regular users tend to become a part of such a community and once users get recognized, things get pretty social and friendly. Some tags have http://chat.stackoverflow.com/ associated with them where the community members hang out and socialize; the most popular ones being the http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/10/loungec , http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/6/python and http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/11/php. These communities are very hard to find and recognize, even more so, if you are an "outsider". The second type of community that forms is around site activities and moderation. These users are almost always present on meta, in http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/ and can be found in the review queues with high frequency. Here communities tend to form around expertise about the site and the way things work, and always consist of the Community Moderators. These users are the ones who will be at the forefront reporting bugs and asking for features, providing support and clarifying odd system behaviors. They will also be the ones most frequently closing, deleting and downvoting posts. Essentially, this community is the one which faces most of the wrath and anger (of which there is a lot) of users who do not understand the platform, and they are the ones who invest the maximum time ensuring things work correctly (some might argue too much: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/44188/how-do-i-participate-in-meta-stack-overflow-and-not-die-trying a Q&A by the moderation community on becoming a part of the community). The tag community (-ies) ensures content keeps being created while the moderation community ensures expected standards are being upheld. Both work together on the high volume Stack Exchange sites to make them a success. (There are overlaps between the two.) http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=launched: These are all the SE 2.0 sites which have passed the beta phase and have proven that there is an audience interested in participating and maintaining it. As these sites are very specific in terms of domain, there are very rarely any distinct tag sub-communities unlike what is seen on SOFU. Hence, there is just one big user community and a moderation community. Moreover, the division between the moderation community and the user community is blurred. There is a large overlap between the two however, there are subsets of users who still belong almost exclusively to one side. These sites have much smaller communities consisting of <200 users where most users know everybody else within their part of the site (or in their community). http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=beta: These are the sites which are in beta and may or may not stay online at the end of their beta periods. On these sites, there is just one community and almost never any sub-community (unless the site is nearing graduate site size, in which case the above description holds). Depending on how far the site has progressed, such sites may have a community of <10 to <50 users. These sites are generally built around very specific domains and hence, there is not much scope for tag communities. Also, the volume of activity is very low, hence there is almost no need for a specific moderation community. Therefore, these sites just have one community consisting of domain experts, newbies, user moderators and Community Moderators. In my opinion (which may be biased, see below), this type of community has the highest degree of cohesiveness compared to the rest. Everybody knows everybody else, the community itself is extremely visible, and the presence (absence) of every member is felt and seen. One thing that you may have noticed is that I didn’t mention any (user) names. This is one of the positives of a community built on a platform that doesn’t support socialising. Users are rarely known for their name or by a few popular posts but rather, are identified through consistent participation and visibility on the site which is an entirely different ball game compared to any social network. See the reasons mentioned in for more.Coming to your second question: Is Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow less social and/or friendly? Yes and No. It depends on where you are and how involved you are.As mentioned above, there are two types of communities, user and moderation communities. User communities are where people know each other only through technical participation and prowess and hence, these communities tend to be more about content and technical experience rather than socialising. So, yes, domain-specific communities may be less friendly and welcoming.Coming to the moderation communities, because of the very nature of participation in these, the amount of socialisation is comparable to Quora levels. While SE may not have any social networking features, users who are a part of the moderation community almost certainly interact and socialise with each other through chat and/or through external platforms. So, these communities are as friendly and social as any other network. The only difference is that, people tend to act a little more professionally than they would on Facebook, and hence it may appear that it’s all about work, to people not involved in the community.Beta communities are very special on this front and cannot be lumped with either of the two above. Beta communities are extremely friendly, welcoming, helpful, and (in some cases) social. The proportion of positive discussions and debates on such sites is much higher than other sites and hence these are comparatively more social.http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=beta are in their formative stages and there are no existing community (social) norms. Hence, every new user can shape the way they turn out. If you feel there is a need for change, go ahead and bring it about on the beta sites!This is based on my experience from participating on a whole bunch of sites on the http://stackexchange.com/users/1609527/asheeshr?tab=accounts Network.

Is there a community? Yes. Is it like Quora? Sort of. Firstly, each site has its own legends. Not necessarily the top reputation users, but usually that's the case. The "main" SE sites are focussed towards content, and not discussion -- discussion is explicitly disallowed! (aside from comments and short discussions that have a potential for improving the post). We do have chatty comments though; even I leave them at times and delete them afterwards. Participating in these sites, one does get a feeling of being part of a "community", just that it isn't obvious from the outset. In fact, the feeling is much better (imho) than on Quora, because the community is a focussed community. Quora is full of random people with random interests, and while that makes it strong in many aspects, it makes the "community" more nebulous -- you don't get to know each other much. On SE, this does happen between most people who spend some time on the site. (Maybe not so much on SO) There also is a chat site: http://chat.stackexchange.com / http://chat.stackexchange.com/ , and this is one place where the "community" bit really happens. Instead of cluttering questions with tangential discussions, we have them in chat. The discussion isn't limited to technical topics, we chat about anything and everything. And this gives a really strong sense of belonging. There's a similar feeling on the meta sites.

The purpose of the Stack Exchange network is NOT to support and maintain international online communities!In fact, an honest and fair thing to do for Stack Exchange, in particular on scientific sites, would be to much more clearly state (for example, at the beginning of the guided tour) that the Stack Exchange network is NOT intended to support and/or build any international (academic) communities, but to get a library of Q&As (useful for external (!) viewers) written by volunteering contributors.Making this very clear to any (in particular new) users would avoid many "local community vs Stack Exchange disagreements" concerning policies, allowed questions, resolving conflicts, etc. right from the start.It took me more than two years (!) to finally get this important point, which also explains many for an inexperienced outsider at first not obvious strange rules, guidelines, the dispensability of individual contributors upon disagreement (even by the local community much appreciated very knowledgeable ones up to professors), etc...Mathematics SE, MathOverflow, and also Theoretical Computer Science are the only exceptions I know (there might be others though, Astronomy is ok at present too) who are successful in maintaining nice academic in spirit (and concerning the two last examples even very high-level) communities, that are not bogged down by large bureaucratic overheads and strict rules intended to make the site useful for external viewers by all means at the expense of the local community.Of course there is nothing wrong with the company rigorously persuing its goals, and indeed some rather useful and nice stuff comes out. But I personally think it should be more clearly stated what a Stack Exchange site is (volunteers writing stuff for external viewers) and is not (free academic community) meant to be, to not (maybe unintentionally) lure in people, who expect something else...