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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

#681

Post by tedmiston »

gravyboat wrote: post #293
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 had a similar experience recently with a question I had answered years ago. A highly ranked user came in, complained in a comment about the fact I linked to documentation instead of copy pasting the docs into the answer then downvoted me causing a loss of 2 karma. I reported the comment because it was ridiculous this person is scanning questions which are years old to try and find things to nitpick. I'm not sure if…

The best practice in this case is to edit your answer to include the docs as well as the link, so the next user can find the answer in one place, preserved even when external links inevitably break, change, or disappear over time.

A good citizen would remove their downvote after you did that.

A better citizen would have just made the edit themselves to help everyone.

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

#682

Post by forapurpose »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #501
valtism wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Why would you say this with such conviction when you don't know anything about what the team is doing behind the scenes? They do yearly surveys that do include things like culture / minori…

There was no evidence shown, though. That almost certainly means it doesn't exist. Maybe they do know that most programmers fit a particular stereotype (white/asian man), but that isn't because other people find stackoverflow "unwelcoming".

> There was no evidence shown, though. That almost certainly means it doesn't exist.

OK, using that reasoning, what evidence do you have to support your statements? What evidence do you have that supports the reasoning quoted above?

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

#683

Post by forapurpose »

ben509 wrote: post #208
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…

> 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. I'd rather look at the merits. If I recognize a good idea, I'm going to signal that I'm on board with it, so virtue signaling in itself is, at worst, a bit gauche. The reason I'd avoid making these things about social justice is that it's very hard to…

After most of human history, humanity has achieved are astounding, world-changing successes in human rights (including democracy, liberty, etc.), civil rights, women's rights, etc.

I see the above as just an argument to do nothing, usually (I can't speak about the parent's motives) made by the enemies of justice, such as the white supremacists, to suit their agenda.

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

#684

Post by forapurpose »

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!

I hope you stick around HN, regardless of your command of English. High English proficiency isn't in the HN guidelines - most of the smart people in the world don't speak English at all! The one violating the guidelines is the other commenter who criticized you; please don't let them ruin things for the rest of us.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#685

Post by dang »

ruirr wrote: post #669
kadenshep wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always a trail or sign with these people.

There is also a trail to politically correct to the nauseous people like you probably. Fanatics at both extremes are not nice.

You can't attack someone like this on HN regardless of how strongly you disagree with them. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#686

Post by dang »

kevintb wrote: post #572
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…

It’s hard to take your claims seriously, when you proudly and publically publish meandering rants (linked to your HN account) about how gaming communities are in no way toxic, while completely denying Gamergate, its ties to white supremacists and a wealth of other examples [1]. [1] https://gamingreinvented.com/nintendoarticles/no-the-gaming-...

Pursuing someone's personal details or history and bringing them into HN threads as ammunition isn't allowed here, regardless of how wrong someone is. Whatever edge you gain in an argument is wiped out by the damage you do to the community by attacking someone this way. Please don't do it, and especially please don't do it in a bunch of different posts, as you did in this case.

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

#687

Post by jsmeaton »

Sacho wrote: post #558
jsmeaton wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as far as some of the treatment I've seen and read about on SO, this is downright courteous > so literally what the fuck did she want Help? Perhaps it was their first time writing a program, and they can't interpret error messages. This is exactly the kind of elitist behaviour people are discussing - and if you're unable to see how the answer might keep people away, then you have no business trying to help new user…

I think you're giving too much weight to the questioner's feelings, and none to the answerer's. Sure, the questioner might feel unwelcome when answers are curt and elitist. But also, the answerers might feel unwelcome when the questioners don't put in at least some effort in their question. Why do you privilege the questioners over the answerers? As a worst case scenario, how do you plan to supply unpaid volunteers w…

The answerer can choose not to engage and move on. That's where the difference is. The answerer is choosing to use language that is unwelcoming. The questioner does not know they are doing anything wrong.

I'm not suggesting the fix is to simply be nicer. There needs to be better incentives and tools to manage poor quality questions.

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

#688

Post by jsmeaton »

nanis wrote: post #586
jsmeaton wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

You've edited the quote, leaving out the bits that are condescending. Here it is again:

> "If the error says line 49, it tells you exactly where the problem lies. If you post 7 lines of code here, we clearly cannot tell you what the problem is in line 49."

The second sentence is where the snark starts to creep in. The tone is unnecessary, and the word "clearly" can easily make the asker feel bad. That's where the condescension comes from. It's totally not clear to the person asking, or they wouldn't be asking the question as they are.

> If you think I did something wrong in my response to you, you can flag my response for moderator attention.

I think more of this should be happening, and more tools available to manage unhelpful answerers. I don't know what these tools should look like, but I have some ideas.

> I mentioned before, you can always go on Meta

A lot of these users are new! They don't know about Meta. Their first interaction with the site boils down to "wow you're dumb, can't you read?", and then they're gone for good. Someone brings up on a HN post that SO is elitist and the original asker, who now has some experience under their belt, confirms "yep, it was a horrible toxic place".

> Helping them learn how to most effectively find answers to their questions may help you save time and aggravation later on.

I totally agree. Helping people diagnose their issues and teaching them how to write good questions is fantastic. It can be done with a better tone than what's currently happening.

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

#689

Post by your-nanny »

svick wrote: post #654
your-nanny wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two functions stack overflow serves: 1. Answering questions people ask, q&a 2. Answering the questions of people stopping by looking for answers. The output of the former needn't directly be the input consumed by the latter. Bad questions can be tolerated in the former but are intolerable in the latter (noise). Solution: A curated site of answers searchable by public drawn from the best of q and a from an i…

Except the great thing about SO is that if I have a super-obscure question, there is a good chance somebody already asked and answered it, so I can easily find the answer using Google. With your system, I would not be able to find the answer, because it wouldn't be in the curated list.

Costs and benefits. But curation can simply be in the form of a sufficient number of upvotes

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

#690

Post by slavik81 »

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…

StackOverflow tends to want to make questions valuable to more than just the asker, but it's really annoying to come to a question from Google and find that none of the answers actually address the question that was asked.
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