I've read in the Help Center that…
Meta Stack Overflow is the part of the site where users discuss the workings and policies of Stack Overflow rather than discussing programming itself. It is separated from the main Q&A to reduce noise there while providing a legitimate space for people to ask how and why this site works the way it does. Meta is for...
- ...Stack Overflow users to communicate with each other about Stack Overflow (asking questions about how the websites work, or about policies and community decisions)
- ...Stack Overflow users to communicate with Stack Overflow the company (posting bugs, suggesting improvements, or proposing new features), and
- ...Stack Overflow the company to communicate with the community (soliciting feedback on new ideas or features, or discussing policies that affect the whole network)
…but that doesn't answer all of my questions.
Meta Stack Overflow appears to have different rules and user behavior from the "regular" Stack Overflow site. How is it different?
Individual questions answered below:
- Do I have an account here? What happens to my reputation and badges?
- What do votes mean on Meta? Why was my well-written post downvoted?
- When should posts on Meta be set to community wiki?
- Why are there posts closed as "exact duplicates" when they're not exact duplicates?
- Should I do anything before posting on Meta?
- What are required tags? Why do I have to include them?
- What is special about the red tags? Why can't I add or remove them from a question's tags?
