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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

#581

Post by perl4ever »

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…

When you are doing something at work, often you have to do something that seems absurd to a random person on the internet, simply because the easy, sensible way would rely on things and people that are not under your control. A lot of people come from a perspective where you should be able to administer everything in an organization yourself, and that doesn't happen in any place I've ever worked. The vast majority of my experience with 'real world' programming is working around institutional barriers and silos.

I find the attitude of "solve your problem by ignoring stated constraints" particularly irritating among database gurus, who should be more in tune with the business world than a lot of people.

When someone simply refuses to accept the constraints of a problem, it doesn't demonstrate intelligence, even if the problem as stated is insoluble; better to just ignore it. All they are really saying is "sucks to be you, glad I don't have to work there" which is boorish and unproductive.

None of that means that people don't sometimes go down a rabbit hole that they didn't need to. But know-it-alls generally need to step back and either disengage entirely or consider the constraints on a problem.

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

#582

Post by DanBC »

lopmotr wrote: post #16
jaghaj662 wrote: post #9

>Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. Women consider SO an elitist place? People of colour? What colour? Black? White? Marginalised groups? Which groups are those? Are people in SO hostile to Palestinians? Amputees? Such an accusation, where's the data to back it? I'm white and male and completely…

How does anyone even know what color or sex someone is on SO? Seems like those people are either imagining it or they're generally intimidated by programmers and their typical arrogant or blunt attitudes everywhere.

> How does anyone even know what color or sex someone is on SO?

SO allows profile images. Are you saying POC and women should never use photos of themselves?

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

#583

Post by nottorp »

jodrellblank wrote: post #490
jaghaj662 wrote: post #9

>Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. Women consider SO an elitist place? People of colour? What colour? Black? White? Marginalised groups? Which groups are those? Are people in SO hostile to Palestinians? Amputees? Such an accusation, where's the data to back it? I'm white and male and completely…

Why is it that so many complaints about SO includes insults about users with high scores? Very specifically calling out "they have a score higher than mine" as part of the description of the hostile behaviour. Isn't that a bit odd, wouldn't you expect them to only focus on the behaviour and the content, not the number next to the name? Too many people are there sitting in a throne of points, and medals and rubbish, c…

A throne of points implies you're spending a lot of time on SO, which begs the question: are you actually doing any useful work from which to draw the experience you're pretending to have when answering?

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

#584

Post by DanBC »

jodrellblank wrote: post #490
jaghaj662 wrote: post #9

>Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. Women consider SO an elitist place? People of colour? What colour? Black? White? Marginalised groups? Which groups are those? Are people in SO hostile to Palestinians? Amputees? Such an accusation, where's the data to back it? I'm white and male and completely…

Why is it that so many complaints about SO includes insults about users with high scores? Very specifically calling out "they have a score higher than mine" as part of the description of the hostile behaviour. Isn't that a bit odd, wouldn't you expect them to only focus on the behaviour and the content, not the number next to the name? Too many people are there sitting in a throne of points, and medals and rubbish, c…

People with points have forgotton what the restrictions are like for people without points, which sometimes causes them to say stupid stuff.

"Just participate until you get the points" is hard to do if your lack of points prevents you from participating.

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

#585

Post by sureaboutthis »

nottorp wrote: post #535
sureaboutthis wrote: post #425

I thoroughly disagree that SO is hostile to "everyone". I've been there for nearly nine years and find that the only people who complain about such things, as listed here, are those who never took "The Tour" and aren't aware of the rules for asking and answering questions as out lined in the Help Center. I rarely ask questions anymore but, when I did, they have never been downvoted or questioned because ... I follow…

The fact that SO isn't a forum any more is a problem because it has stopped encouraging learning. If you can't discuss the problem, all you'll get is canned answers for copy/paste monkeys. And then you'll wonder why you can't hire a competent programmer any more...

SO has NEVER been a forum. That's where most people are confused. It has NEVER been a platform for open discussion.

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

#586

Post by nanis »

jsmeaton wrote: post #383
nanis wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you please show the code referred to on line 49 and the surrounding code for context?” If you are paying me my hourly, I'll pretty please you to no end. Otherwise, I am not sure why I am expected to beg for people to give information that would help me help them.

Then move on and don't respond at all. Leave the begging to the users that want to help new users get better. There's a genuine complaint that responses to new users are often harsher than required. "I shouldn't have to beg for information" is not a valid response to that criticism. Answerers have no idea about the skill level of the people asking the questions. Their english might not be so good. This might be the f…

> Then move on and don't respond at all.

You misunderstand. If you are paying me, I have no problem letting you spend more of your money by not giving enough information to solve the problem. I will point out once, and if you express the desire that I spend more time validating you, I will gladly do that.

As it stands, you should keep in mind that you don't get to tell me what to do.

Telling someone "we can't figure out what's wrong on line 49 if you don't show us what's on line 49" is not condescending, rude, discriminatory, racist, sexist, etc etc at all. It is a factual statement that is aimed at pointing out exactly what the person who is seeking help needs to do to get said help.

Now, if I point something out like this, and I get a response like yours, I move on. Before moving on, however, I do vote to close the question because 1) there isn't enough information to diagnose the problem; and 2) the OP is unwilling to provide it.

If you think I did something wrong in my response to you, you can flag my response for moderator attention. If that is not resolved to your liking, you can post on Meta.

It is interesting to me that supposedly all these people who just want more niceness are the ones calling high-rep users and moderators assholes, insulting them indiscriminately etc.

As I mentioned before, you can always go on Meta, and suggest ways to improve https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask . If a first time user fails to follow the recommendations therein, it is incumbent upon the people who are trying to help to point it out so the mistake can be corrected. If people persist in not following advice, instead accusing people of all sorts of nasty things, they are unlikely to get the help they want.

Keep in mind that some of these people may be writing the software for your bank or may end up next to you in that open floor plan office of yours. Helping them learn how to most effectively find answers to their questions may help you save time and aggravation later on.

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

#587

Post by DanBC »

wvenable wrote: post #29
jaghaj662 wrote: post #9

>Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. Women consider SO an elitist place? People of colour? What colour? Black? White? Marginalised groups? Which groups are those? Are people in SO hostile to Palestinians? Amputees? Such an accusation, where's the data to back it? I'm white and male and completely…

I don't disagree with the article in general but I was surprised by the women and people of color comments -- how does anyone know someone's gender or race on SO? Of all the sites on the Internet, SO seems to be particularly well suited to the anonymity of posters -- even more so than HN because HN is more free form and conversational.

> how does anyone know someone's gender or race on SO?

SO allows people to use an avatar image. I think for some time they were using images from Gravatar. So people were putting images of themselves in posts; or they didn't realise their gravatar image would be used.

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

#588

Post by DanBC »

jaghaj662 wrote: post #9

>Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. Women consider SO an elitist place? People of colour? What colour? Black? White? Marginalised groups? Which groups are those? Are people in SO hostile to Palestinians? Amputees? Such an accusation, where's the data to back it? I'm white and male and completely…

> I'm white and male and completely normal and let me tell you: everybody in SO behaves like a stuck-up twat to me.

So, imagine that level of hostility that you face but with even more additional hostility because you're eg a woman.

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

#589

Post by edem »

learnstats2 wrote: post #518
edem wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why do "low quality" questions matter? I don't believe "low quality" is really a problem. 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 situation…

> Why do "low quality" questions matter?

As I have said it encourages additional low quality questions which is more work for the mods.

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

#590

Post by fapjacks »

dragonwriter wrote: post #463
fapjacks wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should preface this by saying this isn't directed at the parent I'm replying to. It's just the point where I couldn't read anymore without posting. What is offensive is Stack Overflow using this obsequious, cloying, patronizing language and false equivalence -- that women/PoC are broadly inexperienced ("newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups") -- to virtue signal for more clicks and…

> that women/PoC are broadly inexperienced ("newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups") The quote doesn't say women and PoC are broadly inexperienced, it says women, PoC, and the inexperienced are examples of marginalized groups on SO.

It lumps them together in the same breath, obviously hoping to draw an equivalence in the minds of readers in order to make their preposterous proposition less offensive. Wielding identity politics as a means of creating marketing buzz is flatly vile.
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