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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

#731

Post by chimprich »

notatoad wrote: post #84
lainga wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation as Wikipedia: Absolute power corrupts absolutely - but so does a small, petty amount.

I think it's significant though that both wikipedia and stack overflow, despite being ruled by petty assholes weilding the smallest amount of power in seemingly the stupidest way possible, have become two of the most valuable references in existence. Do toxic communities produce better content?

Wikipedia and SO are two of the most valuable references in existence because they're the only examples in their niche due to the network effect. I think the toxicity or otherwise of their community environment is independent of that, and it would only change if the experience was sufficiently bad to drive most people to a vastly smaller competitor.

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

#732

Post by bmpafa »

bad_user wrote: post #471
warty wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your kind of answer is precisely why I find SO useless. When a user asks a question on X, it would be better to first assume that he knows what he’s freaking doing. E.g. yes there might be valid reasons for inserting 500 MB as a string, and myself as another user desperately searching for an answer to it, I get pretty annoyed when I see answers for a Y instead. SO contributors should answer the freaking question firs…

> When a user asks a question on X, it would be better to first assume that he knows what he’s freaking doing.

Yikes. SO is where I learned to program, and if this were the norm, I wouldn't have made it.

If I ask a question the premise of which suggests I'm _way_ off, I wanna know. I have to imagine this scenario is far more common than the one you outline, wherein the poster has arbitrary constraints on his/her problem that need to be respected.

Let the voting system decide which answers are useful for posterity & which aren't. But to the answerers who take the time to help askers tackle the spirit of a question--not just its text--I say: thanks.

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

#733

Post by oe7Ahwur »

Mithaldu wrote: post #515
oe7Ahwur wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not like this line of reasoning because it basically advocates walking on eggshells around everyone since it is not possible to model the potential fragility of mind of billions of humans. I read some arguments that being drive-by downvoted without comments somehow made people unwelcomed. And you add to that that this is practically a form of PTSD. If I am supposed to model people at the other end of the screen…

> I don't see myself as a kind person and asking me to spend extra mental energy If you can't be kind, then the preferred action from you is for you to save your energy for the days when you can be kind. That's better for everyone involved.

That sounds like you're saying I shouldn't contribute to SO.

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

#734

Post by smsm42 »

tqi wrote: post #91

"...serves a valuable purpose by keeping signal high, but also suggests that we just might be Zuckerbots who aren’t even trying very hard to pass as actual humans" A snarky dig at someone in a post about how SO wants to be less mean and snarky is an interesting editorial choice.

It's a frustratingly common thing. People think that talking about tolerance and inclusion and being more welcoming gives them personal permission to be rude, mean, intolerant and unwelcoming - maybe because they thought they already earned enough "credits" so they can afford this behavior? Or that they are "on the right side" of whatever, so it's OK to do what they just were publicly decrying doing - to the people "on the wrong side"? Scott Alexander wrote an excellent blog post about it: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

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

#735

Post by wool_gather »

marcAKAmarc wrote: post #674
ctdonath wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For whatever it's worth, I'm a member of an out group on at least one of these and left the corresponding questions blank because I found them asinine in the context of that survey.

Perhaps that was a mistake; I'll reconsider next time around.

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

#736

Post by Antonella247 »

Hey everyone! Ive read a lot about users complaining about the cultural change in Stack Overflow. Maybe you're even also annoyed by that change? Help me find the causes for this change as part of my Master Thesis by sharing your opinion on this matter. Lets work to together on this to keep the unique community spirit of SO alive!:) I would appreciate your help! https://erasmusuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9YvdQ...

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

#737

Post by jamesb93 »

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…

They also outright get rid of questions that people provide good and helpful answers to. I once asked a question about a specific ML technique in regards to implementing in a specific c++ API. Higher ups said that the question was far too broad and against the guidelines, despite receiving at least 5 good answers to my questions before they got to it. They effectively shut up good conversation for the sake of a rule book they probably didn't write.

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

#739

Post by marcAKAmarc »

ctdonath wrote: post #726
marcAKAmarc wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What "gatekeeping"? The whole fascinating point is that there isn't any "gatekeeping" on SO. The demographics may be remarkably skewed, yes ... not for any categorical exclusion, but for self-selected choice to not engage. If people choose to avoid a group, while that group in no way excludes them, why keep blaming the group?

By "gatekeeping", I'm referring to the efforts made to exclude certain content. By this definition (which I probably should have defined earlier), I would say that SO is founded on gatekeeping and that gatekeeping even makes SO the great resource that it is. After all, the quality of content on SO would surely go down if low quality content wasn't downvoted.

So I'm not "blaming the group", but instead I'm trying to make the point that when the current SO system is paired with a homogeneous user base will, it probably naturally become more an more homogeneous for the reasons stated above, unless an outside force enters the system.

I would argue that this isn't about fault or blame or guilt, but instead about deciding whether or not to take action to make SO a more inclusive place, especially for those who may be predisposed to feel exclusion in the context of SO.

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