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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

#441

Post by cdoxsey »

wwweston wrote: post #181
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…

An example of the duplicate issue: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41148357/force-kill-goro...

The user's question seemed like a fairly standard one: how can I force kill a goroutine. But actually there was a question underneath it. The issue wasn't that they needed to kill the goroutine it was that the library they were using didn't have a mechanism for timeouts.

The sad thing was there was a PR available that fixed the problem.

Its like arguing with someone who takes everything you say completely literally and makes no attempt at a charitable interpretation.

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

#442

Post by nookoking »

matt_j wrote: post #431
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…

There's a delicate balance for moderators to achieve and I don't envy them. Some questions are clearly daft, the person hasn't done any prior research, the question is vague, the problem is not apparent and it's a big waste of time trying to help. These questions are often shut down mercilessly and I think that's probably the best thing for them, but I've no doubt it's a terrible experience for the guy asking the que…

In my experience, SO is just not useful anymore for asking questions.

All the easy questions that could be solved by just RTFM have been answered, many times.

And the more nuanced questions are fraught with bias (see: "The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List").

As for "boiling down" and "re-framing" questions, they won't get answered. Usually ever.

You'll get a few comments from people trying to help, with suggestions you've already tried, pitying your high-effort question with no answers. Then, you'll go search through the annals of your language, either to find that one guy twenty years ago published a piece of your puzzle in his blog, or that there's nothing at all in any sort of literature on how to solve your specific problem.

You'll then end up doing your own testing and research, spending an inordinate amount of time testing and verifying, until you come up with a brand spanking new type of abstraction that solves your problem perfectly. You'll write up your dissertation, post it on your question, and set it as "answered."

Then you'll curse under your breath at how f useless SO is, besides being an over-glorified forum / "selected excerpts from the manual."

I've stopped using SO, because I've realized all of your software problems can be solved with two things:

1). RTFM

2). Explore the software/language

Anything else, IMO, breeds bad habits. I say this as someone who used to rely solely on internet tutorials and other people's examples before I had to do work where my code had to be perfect or else I'd be out of a job/sued/[something violent].

I had to quickly learn how to do things myself and find the answers to my problems by straight scientific method and I know I've become a better software engineer because of it.

Having experience in both, I can say with conviction, that anyone who uses SO as anything more than a pair of training wheels that should be discarded after your first 6-12 months is liable to become a "bad" programmer (see: Ruby developer community).

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

#443

Post by legostormtroopr »

marcAKAmarc wrote: post #189
legostormtroopr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Homogeneous if and only if you consider "white or European" to be a clear cultural classifier. Personally, I think that there are massive cultural differences between the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and every country in Europe.

As an Australian, I'm a global minority and it might shock you but don't identify with many US cultural groups who are the overwhelming majority online.

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

#444

Post by wolco »

warty wrote: post #384
wheelie_boy wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core problem is that they've focused too much on being like wikipedia (a single authoritative, comprehensive answer to each important question), and not enough on helping people to learn. Over time a site will grow a culture, and experts on the site will outweigh and overrule experts on the subject matter. In this case, we're also seeing answerers' needs outweigh askers'. If you could only meet the needs…

There's nuance here. There are plenty of cases where individuals ask XY questions, meaning they've gone down a strange route to solve X and now need help solving Y, and it's always been debated within the community on whether you should solve X or oftentimes go to great lengths to solve Y. I've seen many questions where a solution to X is answered and heavily downvoted. I'm not sure how you resolve that. Question: Ho…

Bad questions bad accepted answers go hand in hand.

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

#445

Post by skybrian »

freeflight wrote: post #249
jakear wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> there’s no mechanism by which “people of color”, “women”, or “minorities” can even be identified That's a legit question: If people don't even know what gender you are/what color your skin is, can they actually be intentionally racist/sexist towards you? Which makes me wonder if the actual wrong turn we took was making social media as prevalent as it is today. 20 years ago people on the www were really careful abou…

re: If people don't even know what gender you are/what color your skin is, can they actually be intentionally racist/sexist towards you?

Hmm, why do you think intentionally is important in that sentence?

It wouldn't surprise me at all if making the site unfriendly towards newcomers affected minorities more. That seems... bad? And if so, anonymity wouldn't fix it.

It's funny how being results-oriented seems to be counterintuitive to many people whenever a discussion touches on morality. Somehow the issue of good intentions (or lack thereof) overrides everything else.

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

#446

Post by fapjacks »

closeparen wrote: post #422
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…

I think the idea is that someone who feels less secure in their place in the programming community may be more powerfully affected by the same level of hostility than a nerdy middle-class white guy who grew up in gamer/internet culture and feels it’s his birthright. It takes a certain sense of entitlement to continue to participate in a community that rebukes you.

I take it you've never been an outsider in any community you've been forced to be a part of.

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

#447

Post by wheelie_boy »

zaphirplane wrote: post #414
wheelie_boy wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core problem is that they've focused too much on being like wikipedia (a single authoritative, comprehensive answer to each important question), and not enough on helping people to learn. Over time a site will grow a culture, and experts on the site will outweigh and overrule experts on the subject matter. In this case, we're also seeing answerers' needs outweigh askers'. If you could only meet the needs…

I think that will result in 10000 questions asking how do I add an entry to a vector. There are a lot of dear internet do my thinking for me, and no way those people are thinking or researching before posting

If there are people who need an answer, and people happy to provide that answer (and perhaps a bit of kind coaching on how to find answers in the future), what is the downside of letting them connect on stackoverflow? Nothing is forcing people to hang out in the novice area answering repetitive questions if they don’t want to.

The downside of disallowing ‘unworthy’ questions is that people feel made stupid for asking, and unwelcome. Also, people feel made stupid for answering, and unwelcome. There is plenty of elitism in tech, and you could keep the main stackoverflow for unique, well-asked questions, as well as adding the novice area.

The advantage of having a novice area of stackoverflow is that more people will use the site. While not every question will be great, the total number of great questions, and the total number of people helped, will be higher.

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

#448

Post by saltyoutburst »

This is a very long-standing problem that Stack Overflow has had so it's good to see them taking it seriously (regardless of whatever the underlying motivations may be).

How long-standing you may ask? Here's my answer from _2010_ to https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/481/whats-the-singl...

I feel sorry for the poor n00bs who come here thinking it's awesome, ask a seemingly innocent question, and then get shouted/voted down for asking a dupe and not searching properly before they asked. And yes, I said 'shouted down', because despite what a lot of experienced users many think, that's what it'd feel like for a new user who's unfamiliar with the S/OFU culture.

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

#449

Post by duxup »

As a noob learning programming one of the issues I see isn't as much hostility as it is the people who seem to vote the most already know the answers.

This creates a bit of an issue at times where folks who know the answer and appreciate an elegant solution provide an answer that while 100% correct... also doesn't tell me much about WHY it is correct. I'm sure it is obvious to the voters, less so to me, and a lot of the "it worked" responses from the people asking make me think they just cut and pasted and I'm not sure learned either.

Having said that there are great people who provide multiple answers in their response with some detail. I don't expect a novel, but I do really appreciate those responses.

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

#450

Post by klenwell »

lambda wrote: post #429
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…

I'm a high-scoring user who has been put off by this exact behavior. The problem is, the behavior is pervasive among other high scoring users, and whenever I advocate against this kind of behavior, I get a whole bunch of pushback about it. No one seems to want to change. No one seems to want to even engage with criticism about the culture; they just push back and pile on when criticism is brought up. After a couple t…

Last time this subject came up on Hacker News here, I was inspired to post an idea I came up with after mulling the issue over a bit: mentors. I posted the idea on Meta here:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/365720/feature-requ...

Turned out somebody posted the almost exact same idea here almost 3 years earlier:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/254205/opt-in-mento...

And StackOverflow even did an experiment with a different implementation last year:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/365720/feature-requ...

But while there definitely seems to be a movement afoot to tackle the issue, I can see why you're ready to give up. Look at the comments to my question and you'll find this (with a couple upvotes):

@klenwell 'users who downvote without comment or explanation other new users who have given some obvious attention to the composition of their question' I hear these things often. I don't see them when using SO, nor have I seen any evidence that such a set of users exists, and I have asked for such evidence, many, many times. None has ever been forthcoming. I have concluded that such users do not actually exist.

This after I provided a detailed personal account of this dynamic in action. I mean I guess I could start collecting timestamped screenshots or request the server logs from the Stack Overflow sysadmins. For now, I guess I'll just join the chorus of the disaffected here.

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