It's hard. I used to answer regularly, but it's draining to have to sort through a flood of bad questions. Rather than turning into a jerk, I just gave up answering. I feel like the cross-section of people with lots of domain knowledge and people who have the personality to let them gracefully triage questions for extended periods is tiny.
Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
191–200 of 739 posts
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's something she complains about (she posted a screenshot of a comment): "If the error says line 49, it tells you exactly where the problem lies. If you post 7 lines of code here, we clearly cannot tell you what the problem is in line 49." [1] I see nothing wrong with that. As luck would have it, today some random stranger recognized me from my Stackoverflow profile at a Panera and asked me to help him debug his…
Here’s a slightly different response that is hopefully more welcoming. “The error message says the problem is on line 49 but you haven’t shown that line in your example code. Can you please show the code referred to on line 49 and the surrounding code for context?” I think power users on SO are frustrated by newer users not learning the rules and not helping themselves. But if you respond with kindness you’re teachin…
Make a Deep Learning bot inserting whatever ornamentation of sentences you like. You can choose multiple styles and personalize for whatever makes you feel good. Why require one single standard from everyone? The answer that was "offensive" was just a standard dry answer like you hear at any top university everywhere; I found "(brutal) exercise is left to the reader" way more offensive.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue there are way too many variables in that question to present a strong argument either way. One thing I will say on it though is how much of our humanity are we ready to sacrifice on the altar of this mythical "meritocracy" that every online community, especially those built on or around code, seems to aim for? And how long until we're ready to confront the fact that a lot of these meritocracies strangel…
>One thing I will say on it though is how much of our humanity are we ready to sacrifice on the altar of this mythical "meritocracy" that every online community, especially those built on or around code, seems to aim for? i don't mean to imply that we should preserve the toxic communities for the point of good content. but there seems to be a correlation here, and it's worth studying what positive effects the toxicit…
I'd imagine you could exploit all kinds of humanities' worse tendencies (in this case, tribalism) and create something that is "better" in some measurements, the real challenge I think is objectively ranking different communities based on the quality of the content in question, and finding how that correlates to whatever, in this case, "tribe" is being used to make it.
IMHO, no problem ever, software related or otherwise has benefited or been solved better by way of having fewer brains involved, and the shortest path to having more brains is having more people, i.e. being more open and inclusive. It would seem to be that SO already has excellent tools to moderate quality without resorting to allowing users to treat each other in such a poor manner.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#194> 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.
I think the point was that the people being mean don't know the gender, color, etc. of who they're being mean to.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#195From 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…
It is standard silicon valley virtue signaling, by now we should get used to them.
In the entire blog, I still did not find what they have actually done to make it welcoming, other than shoving a CoC (pun-intended).
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#196A site whose founder banned greetings isn't very welcoming, go figure. https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/93989
There are no greetings either on HN (just noting).
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#197It's for several reasons (and why I personally find reddit (of all places!) a much more welcoming and useful community): 1. Points. They're very visible, giving you power. If you want power, you mine for points, and once you earn them, well you worked for your power, you use your power. You are expected by the powers-that-be to close questions for being bad, or for being duplicates, or whatever. In contrast, reddit d…
Points are damaging, especially the way they've done them on StackOverflow. It's fine for anyone who got in on it in the early days, or cares about collecting them. But to make a better community the points need to decay (exponential decay preferably) so there isn't such a power imbalance.
This would incentivize everyone to gain points by being helpful, rather than enjoying being an 'authority'.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#198I'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…
Same situation as Wikipedia: Absolute power corrupts absolutely - but so does a small, petty amount.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#199Earlier 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 agree feeling targeted does not necessarily mean one has been targeted, and I do think that sometimes the feeling of being targeted is the result of past experience (comparable to post-traumatic stress disorder).
Though SO usernames are often pseudonymous, they are not always anonymous. For example, some SO profiles contain photographs of the user. Mine does.
Also, sometimes I search for information about users with whom I interact. I imagine others do the same.
We both agree "being targeted" is different than "feeling targeted". A third thing that is different than both of these is "being affected".
That is, even if someone from a marginalized group is not being targeted for being a member of a marginalized group, the negative effects of perceived hostility may be larger on people from marginalized groups than on people from dominant groups. Not always, but sometimes, and this is what SO seems to be taking to heart.
A few comments have suggested one solution is to improve the climate for everyone by welcoming new users with all their inexperience rather than discouraging them by enforcing standards of contribution achieved by elite longtime users. I wholeheartedly agree.
By encouraging newbies who don't yet know much, SO stands to grow its ranks and help newbies become experienced contributors. As a former educator, I know encouraging students in the directions they are doing well is much more pedagogically effective than tearing down students when they make mistakes.
Communities like SO would improve if they not only discouraged negativity but also encouraged non-elite participation. HN is one such community that does this well and the quality of the content here speaks for itself.
EDIT: reword first sentence; change "old-hands" to "experienced contributors"; add comma in second sentence.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#200> 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…
Totally agree. While I do think “newer coders” may very likely feel unwelcome, as an extension of the elitism issue, there’s no mechanism by which “people of color”, “women”, or “minorities” can even be identified... I fear people are subconsciously correlating these groups with “less able coders”. Obviously this correlation serves only to damage.