511–520 of 739 posts
I think SO is mostly for "noobs", people that are asking how to add two numbers or use jQuery plugin. For me, it would be more useful if answers describe alternatives, big O and more context. Most answers just suggest copying few lines of code. Even for juniors, it is not good and just slows down growth.
Motivating example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5664741/watching-variabl.... My first time trying to develop an android app in Eclipse, I had no idea a GUI-based app like Android could print to console, and assumed console and gui are mutually exclusive. I was trying to debug a large existing codebase in a very rudimentary way. In this question you'll see an answer that didn't really help me at +94 and the answer that did help me at -1.
Five years later, sure, that -1 answer is self evident. But at the time, that was the key to get me started on altering the codebase to my particular ends.
It's like a recommendation algo on Netflix: don't tell me what the most sophisticated film critic thought was the best movie if all I do is watch Pixar films; tell me what the best film was according to other Pixar movie enthusiasts was.
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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…
I’m in the same boat. 10k rep on SO and softeng.se, and I barely participate anymore. For me the most frustrating part is that the rules forbid vague questions with opinionated answers, but that at this point in my career most of the things I find interesting are all like that so there’s almost nothing I want to get answers to that I can ask. Software architecture questions are very difficult to ask without triggerin…
"What document backend to use with Drupal?" is a question whose answers are in constant flux. It is a bad match for and Authoritative Language Compendium. But it's also the kinds of thing people wonder about, it's a relevant tech question, and the dialog around something like that is easily as valuable as the accepted answer since everyone is skinning a different cat.
So instead of "overly broad, no discussion for you" I'd rather see those questions get routed to "conversation-SO" instead of "reference-SO"...
> 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…
???? There are names and profile pictures.
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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…
I do not like this line of reasoning because it basically advocates walking on eggshells around everyone since it is not possible to model the potential fragility of mind of billions of humans. I read some arguments that being drive-by downvoted without comments somehow made people unwelcomed. And you add to that that this is practically a form of PTSD. If I am supposed to model people at the other end of the screen…
If you can't be kind, then the preferred action from you is for you to save your energy for the days when you can be kind. That's better for everyone involved.
> 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…
> But this isn't true... You completely missed this point. To quote the article: > Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less welcome. We know because they tell us. Hanlon doesn't claim to know why the marginalized groups feel unwelcome. He doesn't even claim that the root cause is a bias of action -- conscious or subconscious -- on the part of SO's users or staff. What he said was these groups…
But not marginalized groups also tell them. Now the question is who tells more? I think marginalized, because they read all these blogs and tweets about being opressed, shift their selective focus to minor injustices, and feel empowered to complain. The SJWs are the complainers, they are the warriors, that's why you hear from them more than from anybody else. They have the momentum of complaining, so they are more likely to continue to complain. I'm certain most of them are addicted to complaining and will never stop, no matter what. Also, minorities have higher social status within those ranks, and therefore more likely to be SJW.
So it's not necessarily Stack Overflow's fault at all.
From 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…
People feel intimidated on SO, specially if they have low self-stem. This is a real problem but not because veterans there are bad people - after all they are helping strangers on the Internet for free. I'm one of them[1]. Moderators there tend to be borderline autistic people obsessed with some subjects. Yes, we sound like jerks and some people there can be really infuriating but it is not personal: we are just obce…
You don't. Straight-up. You may think you do, but SO utterly fails at this.
In almost all cases where i end up on SO in my research the accepted answer is trash, and the one below it is the real one.
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 can comment on this from the "other side" since I have discussed this on meta. The problem is that answering questions which are borderline low quality/too specific, etc or need imorovement before it can be answered are usually frowned upon because it encourages the asker to ask more low quality questions. The abuse you got is not OK though. If I comment at all on such questions it is always polite. What I think is…
Stack Exchange could have dealt with this by developing a mechanism for identifying and promoting general and well-written questions to search engines, and so on.
People sometimes have specific or incompletely formulated questions, and people sometimes enjoy figuring out answers to those questions.
By stamping on these situations, Stack Exchange quickly removed almost all of its potential contributor base.
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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?
I don't think that's the right way to think about it.
Rather, I would say that tightly-moderated communities of experts tend to produce better reference material ("wikis"). But this type of structure is "toxic" to discussions ("forums") and novices.
The SO founders and key contributors built a wiki. The site's incentive structure pointed in this direction so everyone was complicit in this outcome.
Now, site management seems to be saying that they want a "help-everyone" forum. They are -- like all big orgs with something to lose -- soliciting ideas, forming interdisciplinary committees, and giving "Given how ingrained the current culture is, I believe that meaningful change would entail significant risk.