I think part of the problem is reputation points. People are so competitive for no reason about having the best answer that they're fine writing nasty notes about the next person's comment. I'm almost wary when I see an applicant with high SO reputation. It's like, you probably had to walk over a lot of people to get this.
Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
211–220 of 739 posts
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Sneering comments from neckbeards" Condescension, like any other dismissal, can be rough and is definitely detrimental to communication. That said, I encourage you to be the change you want to see. Name calling as you've done here, and snark, as you've done elsewhere in this thread, similarly degrade conversation and communication.
I'm not directing this at anyone in particular and so I will use "bad", yet colorful, words for people behaving bad. No one is going to read these comments and think they are the neckbeards, but most people who have participated in Stack Overflow have interacted with a preening, sneering neckbeard and neckbeards are indeed a problem on Stack Overflow.
The idea that it's ever okay to use language that demeans other people—in their presence, directed at them, or elsewhere—is part of the culture that allows people feel that it might be okay to do so directly. It's a habit we all should be working to break.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same situation as Wikipedia: Absolute power corrupts absolutely - but so does a small, petty amount.
I think it's significant though that both wikipedia and stack overflow, despite being ruled by petty assholes weilding the smallest amount of power in seemingly the stupidest way possible, have become two of the most valuable references in existence. Do toxic communities produce better content?
No, it is not that toxic communities produce better content, it is just the fact that encyclopedic content websites tend to atract borderline autistic people obsessed with some subject who sound like absolute jerks for everybody but themselves.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ins…
Sometimes it's helpful to have a question that's worded differently so that there's multiple ways of finding the answer. And sometimes a duplicate question gets an even better answer than the original before it gets locked.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#215More 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?"
Answering those questions is probably the best way to rack up SO karma.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ins…
I haven't been active for a long time now so this may have changed.
Back then the reason behind locking rather than deleting was because the duplicate may be asked in a different way, using different keywords. So keeping it viewable allowed people searching for an answer to effectively have multiple entry points into finding the answer because perhaps they were googling the wrong combination of keywords to get the original to show up, but the duplicate would match.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#217> 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…
>> Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness
> Because at the end of the day, we need to kill the 'brilliant jerk' archetype already.
We need to recognize that everyone shifts significantly towards the autistic side of the spectrum when they're online. You're looking at text, and trying to infer emotion from words, and do it quickly. That people are as good as they are reflects a fairly amazing amount of patience from the average person.
These "jerks" that we're going to brand intolerable and kick out are probably fairly decent people.
Honestly, most moderation systems would benefit hugely from a simple "please rewrite this post" feature.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#218Earlier 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.
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.
My guess is that although you don't know the race/gender of the person there's a chance that they'll use a different questioning style. More senior/regular users then frown upon this different style not necessarily because they're being racist/sexist just because they don't like the way the question was asked.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 hav…
Or:
Our culture encourages women and minorities to speak up. White men are expected to endure abuse in silence.
Consider how much attention complaints from women and minorities receive, and how little attention (and how much hostility) complaints from white men receive (unless those men are individually powerful, of course). People tend to repeat actions that are effective, so women and minorities learn to speak up, white men learn to keep their complaints to themselves.
Edit: I'd like to thank those who downvoted this comment for providing a live demonstration of the phenomenon.
Re: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ins…
[deleted]