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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

#11

Post by chris_wot »

mieseratte wrote: post #7
funkythings wrote: post #4

"Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups" Any evidence for that? Or is it just a "It's 2018, we have to virtue signal"? I'm so sick of stuff like this. Judge people by their character, not skin color or oppression status.

One would imagine that it's hostile to folks not indoctrinated in hacker culture, i.e. RTFM, and whatever subculture SO has developed. Given the anonymity provided by the internet, unless someone goes out of their way to make their various statuses made known they really won't be. So I don't at all buy that this is an overt problem. So the question becomes, is hacker culture or SO culture hostile to women and minorit…

No, it’s actively hostile. I’ve seen questions closed, new people denigrated and people who answer questions in good faith actively told off by old hands.

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

#12

Post by js8 »

baddox wrote: post #8
funkythings wrote: post #4

"Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups" Any evidence for that? Or is it just a "It's 2018, we have to virtue signal"? I'm so sick of stuff like this. Judge people by their character, not skin color or oppression status.

What might evidence look like that would convince you?

Not OP (though I only somewhat disagree with the original statement), but a statistically significant result of a poll (where you would correlate people answers by their background) would convince me.

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

#13

Post by jsmeaton »

NullPrefix wrote: post #10
GrumpyNl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does it say that people are judged by skin or color. Looks like you trying to stir something up that isn't there.

First bullet point in the first paragraph. >Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.

This was all addressed in the previous submission. People aren’t saying they’re made to feel unwelcome because of their race/gender/etc, it’s that people from underrepresented groups have reported those feelings in greater numbers.

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

#14

Post by js8 »

Why not introduce aging into the answers? I think SO has a bigger problem, how to invalidate answers that are for obsolete versions of software? Maybe if the answers would slowly age (say lose one point per month), then the old guard wouldn't be so protective of them, and the problem would solve itself.

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

#15

Post by js8 »

chris_wot wrote: post #11
mieseratte wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would imagine that it's hostile to folks not indoctrinated in hacker culture, i.e. RTFM, and whatever subculture SO has developed. Given the anonymity provided by the internet, unless someone goes out of their way to make their various statuses made known they really won't be. So I don't at all buy that this is an overt problem. So the question becomes, is hacker culture or SO culture hostile to women and minorit…

No, it’s actively hostile. I’ve seen questions closed, new people denigrated and people who answer questions in good faith actively told off by old hands.

I think his question is if SO community is hostile to people from different backgrounds, or simply to newcomers.

I think it's hostile to newcomers, and they are treated the same regardless of race or ethnicity or gender.

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

#16

Post by bryanlarsen »

funkythings wrote: post #4

"Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups" Any evidence for that? Or is it just a "It's 2018, we have to virtue signal"? I'm so sick of stuff like this. Judge people by their character, not skin color or oppression status.

Any changes that SO makes will necessarily benefit anybody who isn't part of the "in-group", white or black or green. But identifying the in-group is hard. It's quite likely that there's a black lesbian coder on SO that is part of the in-group; but she'd be pretty unique. Anybody who's not part of the traditional SV class (white & asian males) is much more likely to not be in the in-group, so that becomes a reasonable proxy given sufficient sample size.

IOW, help all outsiders, measure effect on visible outsiders.

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

#17

Post by bobinux »

I think one of the reasons for the hostility is that people don't give a f#*@ to write proper questions, they don't even bother to RTFM. Grammar issues, no error logs, no links or snippets of code... I think the over sensitivity trend also adds up to this "problem".

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

#18

Post by legostormtroopr »

baddox wrote: post #8
funkythings wrote: post #4

"Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups" Any evidence for that? Or is it just a "It's 2018, we have to virtue signal"? I'm so sick of stuff like this. Judge people by their character, not skin color or oppression status.

What might evidence look like that would convince you?

1 screenshot of a comment upvoted to 5 points, that indicates insults a question, or the asker of a question specifically insulting their race or gender.

As of yet, I've seen no evidence of any widespread overt racist or sexist behaviour on StackOverflow.

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

#19

Post by DavidDuke88 »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #9

If StackOverflow isn't welcoming the owners should look squarely in the mirror before blaming anyone else. In 2017, Joel made very clear that the only views permissible on StackOverflow were his - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-take... Regardless of where you lived, or what your political stance, if you didn't support "open immigration" you were "morally repugnant and frankly stupid and count…

Joel is right though, Trump is racist and what he is doing is evil

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

#20

Post by oriol18 »

funkythings wrote: post #4

"Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups" Any evidence for that? Or is it just a "It's 2018, we have to virtue signal"? I'm so sick of stuff like this. Judge people by their character, not skin color or oppression status.

If you don't want to be chased by the mob, you have to be part of it.
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