Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

stackoverflow.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 739 posts

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

#671

Post by ruirr »

lakechfoma wrote: post #136
fidels wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think what they mean is that when a minority goes to SO and they get a condescending response it's because of their race/ethnicity/gender. What they mean is that, since minorities might have insecurities about their ability to code because there are not that many people who look like them in the industry, when they receive a condescending response their insecurities aggravate. Therefore, SO can be consider mo…

Also I feel like SO discourages any kind of personality showing, which in turn makes the place feel like it is occupied by a legion of "Zuckerbots". Not exactly an inclusive place for people who are proud of their identity and that identity strongly differs from "young cis hetero white male".

...which apparently are 90% of the users by the latest stats. But do not let facts bother your fictions.

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

#672

Post by ruirr »

kabacha wrote: post #532

As a pretty big contributor to stackoverflow I feel that this is getting blown out of proportion. I'll usually go extra mile to help someone out but I like my time and the platform to be respected. I often feel that people either expect for their minds to be read or are just bad at explaining there problem. I don't think SO community has to carry the burden of teaching people how to request help - I think it's a skil…

As all the walks in life, you find everything and every culture. On one hand you also find people who simply want answers, however do not want to make the minimum investment in time writing something decent, and then you also find kids. I have had Indonesian kids going after my linked.in or fb profile and asking me for a connection. (Sorry, no kids in my fb, except if family)

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

#673

Post by ruirr »

waydowntogo wrote: post #274

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!

Have you considered using any point in time a spelling checker? With that atrocious grammar you won't get many people liking your posts.

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

#674

Post by marcAKAmarc »

ctdonath wrote: post #105
jakelazaroff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that Stack Overflow is lying about the response from people who belong to marginalized groups? From the article: > Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less welcome. We know because they tell us. It may not not stand out to you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Then perhaps the real data point is bias about biases: operating in a profoundly neutral forum, blind to practically any "group" indication, individual "they're thinking X of me because I'm Y" bias emerges. This is something being increasingly noticed in general, but SO's study provides an interesting control experiment precisely because there is so little indication of group categorization. I've spent years using St…

While I do think it is true that you can only find "hints" of group bias when examining individual stackoverflow users, stackoverflow in general is known to have:

1. overwhelmingly dominant gender of population (92.9% of SO population)

2. overwhelmingly dominant race and ethnicity categorization (74.2% of SO population)

3. overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation (93.2% of SO population).

(I left this ambiguous on purpose to ensure that my point is about the homogeneity of the population and not the specifically dominant demographic group. If you want more information, you can look for yourself for specifics about which way the numbers fall here - https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/).

My point is that the stackoverflow population in general is very homogeneous by certain categories.

Instead of looking for evidence of victimization, imagine how easy it would be for someone belonging to a StackOverflow minority category to get discouraged by StackOverflows fierce gatekeeping, especially with the knowledge that stack overflow is so demographically unlike this person. From the point of view of the marginalized, evidence of group categorization isn't needed beyond that fact that "StackOverflow is very very X, and I know that I'm Y." Any sort of gatekeeping from this point on can feel very discouraging, even if this isn't the intention of those who are gatekeeping.

[edit for format]

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

#675

Post by tedmiston »

jpindar wrote: post #466
mehrdadn wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to this, I'm sick of the moderators deleting comments and moving discussions to chats on a whim just because they're seeing too many comment. They don't seem to realize they're not helping anybody; they keep doing this as if it's Truth ordered by God. Like, StackExchange admins: If you're getting flags, there's offensive material, the comments are blatantly off-topic, etc., then OK, I get that; you can step i…

>discussion Ooooh, You used the d word! Closed because Stack overflow is not for discussion. What SO needs is a forum - not an ephemeral chat but a forum whose topics can be linked to the questions that people want to discuss.

> What SO needs is a forum - not an ephemeral chat but a forum whose topics can be linked to the questions that people want to discuss.

That's kind of what Meta is.

https://meta.stackoverflow.com

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

#676

Post by tedmiston »

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…

While I haven't experienced this personally, Meta exists to facilitate discussions like what you're describing.

https://meta.stackoverflow.com

It's also worth noting that those who can lock discussions can also edit questions without approval (and others can with approval), so it's worth pushing back on editing the question into being "answerable", admittedly a non-binary state.

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

#677

Post by wool_gather »

telltruth wrote: post #543

There is a time that arrives for many companies where they stop being from cool, fast, creative, whimsical to... well, just collection of business suits. So first consider the fact that this is written by Jay Hanlon, EVP of Culture and Experience. When you see titles like this for individuals working in full time position at about the highest level of executive staff, you know what I was talking about. To confirm my…

His account is named jaydles (last I knew, anyways).

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

#678

Post by tedmiston »

viraptor wrote: post #569
telltruth wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me present you other side of the story. I have been user of SO and significant level contributor for as long as it’s been there. Virtually every day there is onslaught of people asking questions that are trivially answerable by simple search or not well formed or not even legibly written. Everyday lot of people end up spending their time in answering these rathar than focusing on questions that are far more worth…

> Spammy question often ends up overwhelming limited screen space and good questions gets buried like a needle in the haystack. This is one of the issues with SO. I'd love to find a good question. I'd be happy to spend some time on it and learn something. But instead there are lots of questions about why the guessing game doesn't wait for input the second time, what's this syntax error, why doesn't this "if" work. Qu…

> I'd love to find a good question. I'd be happy to spend some time on it and learn something.

You can sort by most upvoted unanswered questions.

https://stackoverflow.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=votes

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

#679

Post by tedmiston »

JPGalt wrote: post #298
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 have had similar issues on this site. I have had 3 high rep users of the site close a question I asked having never answered a single question in the technology I was referencing. That said I have never felt that because I was not white I was treated differently, how would anyone even know that? I guess they could go look for a profile picture before they answer? If you have people doing that then there is a much b…

> I have had 3 high rep users of the site close a question I asked

I have some mod privileges on SO and have been a user for ~8 years.

The best way to not have your question locked or deleted, is to ensure you're following the best practices for asking a question and include a Minimum Complete Verifiable Example (MCVE).

https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask

If you feel you've done both and still don't get a good experience, it's worth speaking out on Meta for more specific advice.

Most people on SO just want to help — it's easier to help on a question that meets these standards.

> having never answered a single question in the technology I was referencing

Moderator privileges are more about the style of a question/answer than the specifics of a particular tech. The moderation queues are irrespective of the tech tagged in the question.

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

#680

Post by makapuf »

icc97 wrote: post #218
makapuf wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how would you know about reactions to genre, skin color or other group if they weren't mentioned in the first place? And in that case why mention them at all on SO of all sites ? Or maybe it was about Perl coders? Be kind with them please.

My guess is that although you don't know the race/gender of the person there's a chance that they'll use a different questioning style. More senior/regular users then frown upon this different style not necessarily because they're being racist/sexist just because they don't like the way the question was asked.

Well, in that case you might as well include non-native english speakers.
Post reply on HN