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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

#201

Post by legostormtroopr »

What the StackOverflow company fails to get is that their product is assholes and industrial level asshole production.

Every question is moderated by volunteers, who have curated every high value question there. From an askers perspective, sure you may have asked 1 slightly off-topic question, but for a reviewer, that’s the 30th off-topic question today - and SO gamifies reviewing so you are encouraged to do so.

I used to be on StackOverflow and had high enough rep to access nearly all of the moderation tools. The quantity of garbage that gets submitted daily is astounding. And when your contribution to the community of high quality content is keep quality up you get tired of saying “hey can you please add more code” for the 100th time and just hit dupe. Because if the asker isn’t trying, why should you?

Ultimately, this leads every reviewer to become an asshole, because to keep up with the quantity of rash coming in you need to be.

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

#202

Post by sharpercoder »

One thing with reputation systems which is not accounted for I feel in many websites, is that higher reputation must translate to higher responsibility. It's nothing other then the good ol' "With power comes responsibility" adagium, also known reversed as "Power always corrupts".

In my humble opinion, there should be also a system that ensures increased power is applied correctly. SO does not have this, and that's a major problem.

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

#203

Post by 0x00000000 »

stuartd wrote: post #170
TravelTechGuy wrote: post #116

It's funny reading this article after seeing one of my questions from 2011 edited today, to remove the word "Thanks!" from the bottom. I've been on SO since 2009. I can confirm the community is getting harsher, less patient, and more exact. HOWEVER, I can see the other side. I see tons of questions that are not fit to be on the site: one-liners, opinions, "help me with my homework", and utter spam. Not to mention peo…

> one of my questions from 2011 edited today, to remove the word "Thanks!" from the bottom. A successful edit is a way to gain reputation, which is hard to get these days for new users. I know it feels a bit odd when someone else edits your question: you could roll it back, but then again why should you be bothered? It's the same question, with one less word.

I guess that explains why literally almost every single question and answer has been edited by a high ranking user to add a comma or change one word usually

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

#204

Post by herogreen »

commandlinefan wrote: post #63

More than once, I've googled a question, had the top hit be SO, clicked through it to see my exact question asked... with the top answer "haven't you ever heard of Google, n00b?"

I would be genuinely interested in seeing such a question.

That could be a problem due to the search engines giving to much credits to SO whatever the content of the post (It is astonishing to see that if you post a question or an answer it pops up on the first page of Google within 2 minutes !).

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

#205

Post by bitL »

"Alright, I am a white male. I started programming when I was 10, winning programming competitions as a kid, after years of hard work, sleepless nights and study, heavily postponed pleasure and significant relationships, watched with disbelief what other teenagers do instead of working on their future, I am now suddenly privileged and biased, because I try to answer Stack Overflow/Reddit/etc. questions straight to the point, and somebody instead expects that I will provide them with complete answers including encouragement for free, instead of them working hard on acquiring the necessary skills. Then I get blamed that somebody felt bad about themselves, and suddenly I am the problem."

Now why would anyone with this profile want to contribute to Stack Overflow ever again? What's the point? They should just shut up, keep their knowledge to themselves and instead offer $2000/month training courses to those "less privileged". Instead of getting beaten for their generosity and wasting time answering badly formulated questions.

Specifically the solutions talked about will bring massive toxicity to the platform.

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

#206

Post by icc97 »

ggregoire wrote: post #61

I've been an active user for 7 years… and I lived my very first case of moderator abuse last week. A moderator closed a 1.5 year old question[1] with 20 upvotes, 25 stars, 9000 views and an answer at 28 upvotes without any vote or consultation, because it was too broad for him. StackOverflow has all the tools to allow the users to moderate the platform by themselves, kinda democratically. From my experience, it works…

My first and probably last post to Skeptics SE was a fairly intense affair [0]. I posted an answer that got quite a few votes but then got deleted.

As you say - then there doesn't seem to be any clear guidance about what you can do after it's deleted/closed. By luck I came across a friendly moderator in the chat that gave me hope of getting it re-instated. I wrote a Meta post how to get a post re-instated [1] which got some positive feedback from the moderators.

[0]: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/39887/37853

[1]: https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4090/so-yo...

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

#207

Post by vkou »

rhapsodic wrote: post #62

> It was hard to accept some of the (valid) criticism, > especially the idea that women and people of color felt > particularly unwelcome. The article fails to offer any examples women or POC were treated more shabbily because of their gender or color. Does anyone know where this is coming from?

It's not that they are getting worse treatment, it's that that the impact of the same treatment on them is worse.

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

#208

Post by ben509 »

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…

> Trying to make this about minorities feels like a desperate attempt to fit in with the 'social justice' sphere, and to virtue signal to people on sites like Twitter.

I'd rather look at the merits. If I recognize a good idea, I'm going to signal that I'm on board with it, so virtue signaling in itself is, at worst, a bit gauche.

The reason I'd avoid making these things about social justice is that it's very hard to show that social justice as a concept actually works to promote comity. When you put things in terms of oppressor and victim, you deepen divisions rather than heal them. When you search for reparations and retribution, you have to harm people.

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

#209

Post by saint_fiasco »

rossdavidh wrote: post #194
icc97 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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.

Look at it from the other side. The person who is getting mean comments tells someone at SO about it (maybe via a survey). Then the SO admins notice that in the surveys women are overrepresented in the population of "people who complain about hostility".

Perhaps minorities already get enough abuse and hostility every day on meatspace, so they are less tolerant of even minor hostility over the Internet. Since they have a limited amount of fucks to give, so to speak, they are more likely to leave the site for good after an unpleasant interaction.

Think of minorities as the canary in the coal mine. They are more sensitive, so they start leaving the moment the environment starts to become toxic. Left unchecked, the toxicity will grow and push away everyone else too, so you can't just ignore them for being "snowflakes" or whatever.

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

#210

Post by kadenshep »

metalliqaz wrote: post #79
kadenshep wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like this was directly addressed in the article: >especially the idea that women and people of color felt particularly unwelcome. There’s a weird paradox with bias. Those of us who have privilege, but care deeply about reducing bias should be uniquely positioned to help, but we struggle the hardest to recognize that we are (unintentionally) biased ourselves And this line in your post: >pointless virtue si…

Bias is real, and privilege is real. I don't argue otherwise. Let's be honest here. If you are able to post on SO at all, you are in the global top 10% of privilege. If you scale it down to a company, it's like the President vs a VP. I choose not to spend my energy splitting those hairs.

You are spending your energy attempting to ignore people's view points.

You called SO reacting to complaints and feedback "pointless virtue signaling" You are now attempting to say you personally wouldn't bother with what SO is doing (as if anyone asked) because other people are unfortunate enough to not have access to the same resources we do? Do I really need to illustrate how nonsensical that is?

What's your angle?

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