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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

#521

Post by mulvya »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #447
zaphirplane wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If there are people who need an answer, and people happy to provide that answer ... what is the downside ...?

Turnover/churn. If a Q/A site allowed basic questions then the site would be flooded with them since the population of novices greatly exceeds sophomores or experts. Moderation would need to keep up with silo-ing these Qs into the 'novice area' you propose. Experts would need to sift more to get to the interesting, challenging or novel Qs if moderation can't keep up, which might affect the retention of these users, thus diminishing the resource pool available on the site.

To me it's clear that tact and grace is called for, and is currently mostly missing, when directing askers of basic Qs to existing answers, whether on- or off-site but there is such a thing as tragedy of the commons. Some stewardship and curation is required to maintain an acceptable SNR.

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

#522

Post by mathw »

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…

I'm really happy about this announcement. As a fairly high-ranked user myself (7.8k at the moment) I try to use the tools the site lets me access to counteract some of the nonsense directed at new and enthusiastic people and the unreasonable suppression of certain questions and answers, but there's only so much you can do when you don't have hours every day to go through the close votes and edit queues.

Heard so much from so many colleagues over the years about how SO is inaccessible and unwelcoming, and started to realise why. I'm glad SO themselves have been on the same journey, because they're far better placed to do something about it!

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

#523

Post by tallanvor »

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…

> 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 to be a disdain towards newer members in general, not ones from any particular group.

I understand what you're saying, and while you're correct, it doesn't change the fact about how people feel in a community.

There are really two groups here: newer coders, and marginalized groups within our profession.

Newer coders are less confident, and when you see the types of responses you see on SO, you're less likely to want to participate - nobody likes being told that they're stupid or not working hard enough, as an example.

For marginalized groups - primarily women, people who aren't white, and the LGBT communities, they already have to deal with sexism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination in their daily lives. When you have to worry about hostility in general, trying to participate in a community that does have a reputation to being hostile is even more difficult and frustrating. The fact that you don't know who an SO user is unless they volunteer the information simply doesn't matter.

> 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.

This isn't about trying to make it only about minorities, and the post doesn't give that impression. It is, however, about making sure that everyone feels welcome, and that has to include thinking about and understanding WHY minorities aren't feeling welcome, even if there isn't explicit discrimination against them on the site.

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

#525

Post by coinerone »

And He said: "There can only be ONE Question and ONE Answer in this World of Code!" - Stackoverflow Answer LVL 5000+

BTW: I have registered at least 3 Accounts to ask silly programming Questions when i was beginner and Stackoverflow managed to kick me in the motivations everytime i was stuck at something.

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

#526

Post by Scea91 »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #447
zaphirplane wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They get the answer by being linked to the question they duplicated.

The only problem is if the question is not exact duplicate, but that doesn't happen very often with such easy questions.

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

#527

Post by ItsMe000001 »

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…

With all due respect, but this kind of report is pretty useless to the rest of us without any context. A link to the question and a copy of your deleted answer at least. It's not like every single complaint is valid - plenty of people complain whose treatment seems entirely justified. There are plenty of useless answers that SO has to deal with.

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

#528

Post by tradedash »

>We trained users to tell other users what they’re doing wrong, but we didn’t provide new folks with the necessary guidance to do it right.

What makes you believe that YOU know how it should be done? I am not saying that people shouldn't be nice but over and over and over we see these tech companies embark on social justice missions to set guidelines that end up backfiring because they underestimate the complexity of the range of possible human behavior.

At best, rules generally dont get enforced equally and at worst they become a disaster that affects the inner workings of what made the site worth visiting in the first place.

And this right here tells me what to expect will happen in the future

> the nice thing about problems that relate to how people feel is that finding the truth is easy. Feelings have no “technically correct.”

I love stack overflow and would hate to see it devolve into something that deviates from what it truly is about: code.

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

#529

Post by nottorp »

I stopped even attempting to answer questions on SO (most of the time i wasn't succeeding because it seems to be full of full time reputation builders that copy/paste examples as soon as a question is asked) when I noticed that "teach the man how to fish" answers are discouraged, called "too generic" and other crap. Only ready to copy/paste answers that just give the man a fish seem to be encouraged.

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

#530

Post by CobrastanJorji »

paulriddle wrote: post #516
javadocmd wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> We know because they tell us. 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…

The only information we have from the blog post is that Stack Overflow has survey results telling them that marginalized groups feel particularly unwelcome, unless you have some other source of info I didn't notice.

From that single datum, you've concluded that this is because marginalized groups must over-complain, and in fact, you claim to have achieved perfect certainly that most members of marginalized groups have an addiction to complaining and will never stop, and therefore the only sensible course is to completely disregard any survey results saying that marginalized groups feel particularly bad about anything.

That's a pretty strong conclusion from hearing about a brief allusion to the results of a survey you didn't see. Your argument says a lot about you and very little otherwise.

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