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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

#271

Post by jamesrcole »

lainga wrote: post #65
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…

Same situation as Wikipedia: Absolute power corrupts absolutely - but so does a small, petty amount.

And subreddit admins.

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

#272

Post by the8472 »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #247
manigandham wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have less tolerance, how is that anyone else's problem? Some people are also more prone to sunburn than others, but we don't say the sun needs to be less bright. You are in control of your own feelings. Yes, StackOverflow should generally have better language and reworked rules around content, voting and moderation, but that has nothing to do with how susceptible you are to comments on the internet. Also why i…

If some people are more prone to sunburn than others then you shouldn't have a developers' technical conference outdoors in the summer on a tropical area. It may not be your problem or your responsibility to prevent other people's sunburns (they can buy their own sunscreen, right?) but I hope you realize that ignoring their preferences is shitty behaviour that will give you(r website) a bad reputation. And it's not l…

> even people with thick skin will benefit at least a little from a less toxic environment.

That argument is not entirely solid. After all the toxic environment is also the same environment that provides those answers. So if those two were positively correlated then decreasing toxicity could also drive down the answer quality. A cartoony scenario would be a stack overflow where everyone is busy assuring everyone else that their questions are good, non-stupid questions and they should be praised for asking them and wasting a lot of time on those instead of answering questions.

Of course we're unlikely to be at a global optimum here, so things can certainly be improved. You should just be more careful about analyzing those tradeoffs.

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

#273

Post by galacticpony2 »

manigandham wrote: post #232
saint_fiasco wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

If you have less tolerance, how is that anyone else's problem? Some people are also more prone to sunburn than others, but we don't say the sun needs to be less bright. You are in control of your own feelings. Yes, StackOverflow should generally have better language and reworked rules around content, voting and moderation, but that has nothing to do with how susceptible you are to comments on the internet. Also why i…

> If you have less tolerance, how is that anyone else's problem?

Call me a radical, but people should have a modicum of social responsibility towards each other.

> Some people are also more prone to sunburn than others, but we don't say the sun needs to be less bright.

Luckily, we don't need to, having invented sunscreen.

> You are in control of your own feelings.

No you're not. Feelings are sneaky that way.

> Also why is it that minorities always comes down to not being male or white when half the planet is female and most of the planet is not white?

The blog post doesn't refer to anyone as "minority", but as "marginalized".

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

#274

Post by waydowntogo »

I tried answer questions the best way I could and I had nice respond from asker mostly like it

BUT

there was almost everytime some smartass (with higher points than me and voted down my answer) who had some problem with that - bad words or word-order (i'm not kinding); too short answer etc.

So I left.

I wanted share my knowlidge but they didn't wanted them. Now admins/owners are crying. Just epic!

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

#275

Post by bcoughlan »

I got downvoted to oblivion the first few times I asked questions on Stack Overflow. It made me review the FAQ and rules and do my utmost to make it easy for the people donating their time and expertise to help me.

You know what I do when someone is mean to me on the internet? I roll my eyes, have a chuckle and get on with my day.

Stack Overflow has a huge problem in the last couple of years with the amount of unhelpful comment spam by karma junkies who know very little about the problem area. There is a problem of declining quality in answers, as answerers have abandoned the site because of frustrations with the low quality of questions.

SO was never designed for beginners. It was designed so that a good question can produce canonical, definitive answers that benefit thousands. Total beginners benefit more from a back-and-forth style to grasp concepts as traditional forums or chat communities cater for.

If they blame their declining utility on the conduct of the users waiting for the admins to do something about the ongoing Eternal September it will be their downfall.

Thankfully I am past the generation that has embraced the idea that having your ego bruised is the worst thing that can happen to you, so I'll just roll my eyes and move on.

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

#278

Post by undefined1 »

ben509 wrote: post #208
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…

Yeah, putting groups over the individual and dividing the world into oppressed vs oppressor is problematic to say the least.

Jordan Peterson is a good resource on this - he's studied it extensively and talks about it a lot. I'd recommend watching his lectures to anyone interested in learning about it.

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

#279

Post by leereeves »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #263
leereeves wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awareness of this phenomenon can change what we choose to do. Rather than ignoring or mocking complaints from white men, we could choose to listen.

I think I get it. They could have chosen to act faster, before being forced to act by the politics of inclusivity. I personally don't mind though. In my city many positive quality of life changes were made only after some disabled people complained. I benefit from those changes too, so I don't mind the delay as long as it eventually gets done.

I agree, if someone (SO, your city, or anyone else) finally improves their community in a way that benefits everyone, that's a good thing.

And if, as is often the case, past complaints had little effect until a particularly favored interest group spoke up, it's also an opportunity to listen more effectively to people who may have been ignored.

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