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Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

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Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#181

Post by wwweston »

warent wrote: post #45

I've experienced a form of hostility in StackOverflow just recently--as in a couple of days ago. On a whim, I visited the website and answered a couple questions, something I'd never done before. I realized it was actually a lot of fun, so I started rapidly answering the all JavaScript questions I could as they were asked. Suddenly a "higher ranking" individual started leaving comments on my answers that I needed to…

> Suddenly a "higher ranking" individual started leaving comments on my answers that I needed to stop answering certain questions, and only address "well asked" questions.

I love Stack Overflow, and it's sure a valuable if imperfect resource, but this is something that drives me bonkers about it.

If the question is intelligible enough to receive an answer, and if your answer is potentially helpful to the asker, then it's well-asked as far as I can tell, and the scoring system can take care of its relative utility.

The additional level of moderation doesn't seem to have added much value over my time participating. The closest thing I can think of as nice is combining duplicates, though moderators often seem to miss subtle differences between questions and in some cases information gets lost in the end. Generally, the moderation focus often seems legalistic or driven by artificial incentives rather than primarily focused on improving the breadth, depth, and quality of the site as a technical resource.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure that a significant portion of the hostility people experience is coming from moderation actions.

I might hope the SO team has the intention of going to town on that problem in general, but I don't see it specifically mentioned in today's discussion. I'm sure that if they took it deeply seriously and engaged with enough specific situations where it's been a problem, they could find ways to do better.

I think today's announcement is a really good indication, though, that they're listening to people who are having problems with their SO experience, not just to people who'd congratulate them for their (deserved!) accomplishments and for whom everything is more or less fine.

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#182

Post by wcarron »

fidels wrote: post #38
metalliqaz wrote: post #19

From the linked article: > Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups Breaking that down... "...people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place..." This is obvious just by looking at the discussions that happen here, or, even by observing the SO-related memes that bubble up to the top of Red…

I don't think what they mean is that when a minority goes to SO and they get a condescending response it's because of their race/ethnicity/gender. What they mean is that, since minorities might have insecurities about their ability to code because there are not that many people who look like them in the industry, when they receive a condescending response their insecurities aggravate. Therefore, SO can be consider mo…

While I agree that SO can be hostile, I hardly think it's fair to assign the blame to SO for the insecurities of some users. If the answer is given without regard to race, religion, creed, sexual orientation, etc., then misconstruing it as doing so is the doing and fault of the asker.

It's looking for offense where there is none. Frankly, I have never seen racist comments on stackoverflow. I have seen curt, and even rude answers; but not bigotry.

At the risk of sounding intolerant, if for example, a black programmer takes personal offense at a brusque technical answer on SO, he/she can get the fuck over it. We are not on SO to talk about their insecurities. We are on SO to find answers to programming problems. It's not the community responsibility to tiptoe around a users self-esteem issues.

Again, this isn't to say SO couldn't be a kinder place, but dear god, spare us the bleeding heart spiel for once.

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#183

Post by scardine »

metalliqaz wrote: post #19

From the linked article: > Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups Breaking that down... "...people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place..." This is obvious just by looking at the discussions that happen here, or, even by observing the SO-related memes that bubble up to the top of Red…

People feel intimidated on SO, specially if they have low self-stem. This is a real problem but not because veterans there are bad people - after all they are helping strangers on the Internet for free. I'm one of them[1].

Moderators there tend to be borderline autistic people obsessed with some subjects. Yes, we sound like jerks and some people there can be really infuriating but it is not personal: we are just obcessive people with very low social skills. These OCD traits are both our weakeness and our superpower, why we do such a great work maintaining top quality questions and answers while sometimes sounding needlessly rude.

Being on the spectrum is not an excuse to be a jerk but many people will take "you are being pedantic" as a cumpliment because their brain is wired differently. Most of them will be more careful if you tell them they are hurting people even if they can't understand why.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/users/444036/paulo-scardine?tab=pr...

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#184

Post by bitL »

minimaxir wrote: post #5

As relevant context, the impetus for this post was likely this Medium article + initial tweet, which received replies from SO leadership: https://medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-stack-overflow-c4641... As an aside, if anyone has a good heuristic to identify bad behavior on Stack Overflow, I'd be interested in looking into it since SO data is public. (please do not suggest "build an AI to identify toxic comments")

That medium post is downright nasty - if you know how people use "victimhood" to achieve their hidden goals, this is like 101 example. She should be ashamed of herself to use references of real suffering in making money and getting herself known by attacking established players in sneaky ways. Absolutely disgusting.

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#185

Post by saint_fiasco »

manigandham wrote: post #149
mistersquid wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is a beautifully written and well-considered reply. As someone who has had both academic and career success (and failures), I know I am capable as a developer and able to contribute meaningfully to technical discussions. As a person of color, however, I have also experienced harassment by police, suspicious looks from shop owners, and outright hostility from drunken young men. So, whenever I encounter what appe…

How does that work if the usernames are anonymous? Saying you feel targeted does not mean you are being targeted.

I think what they mean is that because of their experiences they have less tolerance for hostility than you do.

Most of the time people are verbally hostile towards you nothing terrible ends up happening so you eventually learn to ignore minor hostility. However if you had the sort of bad experiences minorities have, you would learn to be wary of minor hostility, as it is often the precursor to major hostility or even physical harm.

You know how evolutionary psychologists often attribute human stupidity to adaptations that made sense in prehistoric times? Like your instincts tell you sugar is good for you because it used to be found mostly on fruit and nutritious berries, but nowadays the instinct leads you to eat junk food. In the modern world sugar has nothing to do with high food quality (just the opposite) but the instinct remains.

For minorities, their instinct to recoil at minor hostility is like that, except that instead of an ancient adaptation to deal with the life at the Savannah, it is the habit that helped you keep your sanity this very morning at the office when your asshole coworker yelled at you. In Stack Overflow nobody is going to yell at you or punch you or try to get you fired, but the instinct remains.

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#186

Post by cf498 »

kristianc wrote: post #138
herogreen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally very much like SO. I have However a friend of mine (that I believe as a better level in programming than me) has the same feeling of "bizzare community" that you have, so I know that the issue is complex. That said I really have zero ideas about what they could do to improve the way they are seen by everyone without breaking the way the site currently works. Have you heard about the term "help vampire" ?…

I wonder if there's a bit of "5 Whys" going on here. Most of the times I end up on Stack Overflow, I arrive via Google. I usually have to check for around 5 answers before I find one that hasn't been locked as "not constructive" or for some other arbitrary reason. Is it any wonder that people find it easier to ask their own questions? The name "help vampire" is so telling of how SO mods see themselves (as arbiters an…

>Most of the times I end up on Stack Overflow, I arrive via Google. I usually have to check for around 5 answers before I find one that hasn't been locked as "not constructive" or for some other arbitrary reason.

Thats kind of the point though isnt it? The idea is that you should find the right question and answer and not the x-th repost of them.

Anyone familiar with the side know why reposts arent simply deleted instead of locked? It seems locking them only worsens the problem they aimed to combat?

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#187

Post by herogreen »

kristianc wrote: post #138
herogreen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally very much like SO. I have However a friend of mine (that I believe as a better level in programming than me) has the same feeling of "bizzare community" that you have, so I know that the issue is complex. That said I really have zero ideas about what they could do to improve the way they are seen by everyone without breaking the way the site currently works. Have you heard about the term "help vampire" ?…

I wonder if there's a bit of "5 Whys" going on here. Most of the times I end up on Stack Overflow, I arrive via Google. I usually have to check for around 5 answers before I find one that hasn't been locked as "not constructive" or for some other arbitrary reason. Is it any wonder that people find it easier to ask their own questions? The name "help vampire" is so telling of how SO mods see themselves (as arbiters an…

I was not thinking of malice / incompetence but simply of laziness. Whatever the problem is it is easier to have people search for you.

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#188

Post by bdcravens »

commandlinefan wrote: post #102
bdcravens wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not, but I think the point they're trying to make (but don't really agree with) is that of cultural norms, or more specifically, the cultural norm of overly-assertive, insensitive nerds (most of which who are younger white males), so that it's an unwelcoming environment to outsiders.

But most actual programmers are Indian, not young white males...

Probably true, but even shifting the demographic mix (with a large % of interactions on SO still being white male) is male Indian culture and communication style inclusive towards females and other groups? I may be off-base, but my experience is that Indian males are very point-blank and strongly assertive in their communication style, so the underlying assertion about inclusiveness would still ring true I think.

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#189

Post by marcAKAmarc »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #75
ajross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot recall ever, even once, seeing someone's race, sex, or orientation being mocked or even mentioned. If all you're doing is googling for mature, well-curated answers, then you're not seeing this. Go post a "dumb question" and see how you're treated. And the contention isn't that people are being deliberately mocked, it's that they don't feel welcome, which is a different thing. So... how might a woman (or wh…

A “dumb question” is mocked because it’s dumb. No one knows who you are online, for example nothing about my username gives away my sex, race, religion or sexual orientation. If some with a pseudonym like mine was mocked for asking a dumb question, their minority status would have nothing to do with it.

I think you are right that minority status rarely has to do with the mocking, but I also think this might be beside the point. I think really the concern is that people who might already feel like outsiders are easily discouraged and made to feel even more like an outsider. And as it turns out, it isn't even hard to identify as an outsider on stackoverflow, even if you are a great coder! I just checked out the stack overflow public survey for 2018 [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018] - 92% of users are male, and 74.2% is white or European decent. Seems significantly homogeneous.

Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

#190

Post by makapuf »

icc97 wrote: post #164
CM30 wrote: post #59

> Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place True. There's definitely an elitist undertone at Stack Overflow, and the voting system has a huge effect on that... > especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. But this isn't true. No one knows anything about a user on Stack Overflow unless they explicitly announce it, and generally my perception seems…

> > especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. > But this isn't true. No one knows anything about a user on Stack Overflow unless they explicitly announce it, They don't say it out in the open, they contact the SO admins directly or through surveys.

But how would you know about reactions to genre, skin color or other group if they weren't mentioned in the first place? And in that case why mention them at all on SO of all sites ? Or maybe it was about Perl coders? Be kind with them please.
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