Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change • Hacker News Board

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

#641

Post by wiseleo » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

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…

I am an active contributor to Quora, which employs similar mechanics but has much higher adherence to being nice. When I see a silly question, I write a direct answer to that silly question and then write an answer to the question that may have been implied by it. I've written answers on data destruction for drug dealers whose phones are due to be seized, for example.

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

#642

Post by shagie » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #640

Lionsion wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "What document backend to use with Drupal?" is a question whose answers are in constant flux. It is a bad match for and Authoritative Language Compendium. But it's also the kinds of thing people wonder about, it's a relevant tech question, and the dialog around something like that is easily as valuable as the accepted answer since everyone is skinning a different cat. IIRC, they did something like that. It was call…

I loved the early programmers.se. Then the mod hammer came down and broke it.

People weren't interested in maintaining the early programmers.se site. It was a "what to browse when there's nothing else to do." As the crud started piling up the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question.

It takes a lot of work to maintain a free for all site by the community. It takes less work by the community to maintain a heavily moderated site.

The culture of a site is a reflection of how much work people are willing to put into keeping it that way.

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

#643

Post by wool_gather » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #474

I like the idea of a Beginner box. Github is doing the same with issue templates. I would suggest going one step further - give a “question quality” score made up by some algorithm that SO controls. could be machine learned, could just be a bunch of rules like a Linkedin Profile score. Gamify asking great questions, not just answering.

> give a “question quality” score made up by some algorithm that SO controls

This exists, and in some cases the evaluation results in some JIT help for the poster. In other cases, it puts the post into a "Help and Improvement" queue where more experienced users are waiting to suggest (or directly make) improvements.

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

#644

Post by KAdot » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

coryfklein wrote: post #623

jakear wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. While I do think “newer coders” may very likely feel unwelcome, as an extension of the elitism issue, there’s no mechanism by which “people of color”, “women”, or “minorities” can even be identified... I fear people are subconsciously correlating these groups with “less able coders”. Obviously this correlation serves only to damage.

> there’s no mechanism by which ... “women” ... can even be identified _No_ mechanism? Seriously? How about when the user is named "Jane Smith"? Or, heaven forbid, they actually use a PROFILE PICTURE with their ACTUAL FACE. Oh god the horror! I, as a white male with a caucasian sounding name have the privilege of being able to use my actual name on the internet. Women that want to be taken seriously don't even have t…

What is a "caucasian sounding name"? Do Zurab, Zahar, Zivadin, Zora or Artem sound like caucasian male names to you?

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

#645

Post by nojvek » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

To add a comment you need points, to get points you need to answer questions. Answering questions is a really really challenging thing to do because for all sorts of things you'd get kicked out. Not only that, but I went into negative because someone didn't like my answer about Typescript.

That was it, I just use stackoverflow when google shows me a result. I won't contribute to it, because its ridiculously difficult unless you make it your mission to get over the hostility from elite users.

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

#646

Post by wiseleo » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

I answered more than 7000 questions on Quora with a heavily enforced Be Nice Be Respectful policy. My monthly pageview count is hovering around 200,000 and I have a lot of followers in addition to the Top Writer title. These questions often started vague and incoherent because the asker did not know the vernacular for that problem domain. It is very frustrating to be unable to express the question in a way an expert can understand. As an expert, I wrote an initial answer and asked the poster to clarify the question. Once we clarified the question, I would re-write the question and incorporate some of the comments into my answer. Other experts can then answer the improved question without spending mental energy on parsing its meaning.

Quora has a feature to comment on questions and not just answers, but it has been well-hidden on the mobile device despite my many pleas to make it more visible so we can improve the question before writing an answer.

Have you ever tried to describe an automotive noise in sufficient detail with enough precision so a mechanic can diagnose the problem? They can communicate with each other easily, but most people don't have that knowledge. That's how it is for non-expert programmers attempting to ask a question on SO. So, they ask it on Quora instead. :)

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

#647

Post by Lionsion » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

shagie wrote: post #642

Joeri wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved the early programmers.se. Then the mod hammer came down and broke it.

People weren't interested in maintaining the early programmers.se site. It was a "what to browse when there's nothing else to do." As the crud started piling up the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question. It takes a lot of work to maintain a free for all site by the community. It takes less work by the com…

> As the crud started piling up

You'll have to be more specific about what that "crud" is, as SO's culture seems to have a tendency to reclassify the baby as dirt and throw him out with the bathwater.

> the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question.

Seems like there should have been more options on the table than "abandon" or "remake in SO's image." SO has a better population to answer subjective questions than most of the alternatives it tries to push people towards. They really should have been more flexible.

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

#648

Post by shagie » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

Lionsion wrote: post #647

shagie wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People weren't interested in maintaining the early programmers.se site. It was a "what to browse when there's nothing else to do." As the crud started piling up the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question. It takes a lot of work to maintain a free for all site by the community. It takes less work by the com…

> As the crud started piling up You'll have to be more specific about what that "crud" is, as SO's culture seems to have a tendency to reclassify the baby as dirt and throw him out with the bathwater. > the options were either abandon it completely (that was threatened) or clean it up along with the associated rules of what makes a good subjective question. Seems like there should have been more options on the table…

There's some remnants of this era on the meta site. For example, consider the argument for https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... asking "who would be the most efficacious patron saint of programmers". It was a the era of "what should I name my cat?" ( https://i.stack.imgur.com/HEZ2Z.png ) and Perks for new programmers ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1069... ), Do you fart in your cube? ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4954... ), what is your favorite cartoon?

The enforcement notice was with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... (which also lists a lot of the water cooler days of PSE links).

The history is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415 . Also give https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/17/merging-season/ a read. Note the:

> There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:

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

#649

Post by svick » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

javadocmd wrote: post #493

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…

> But this isn't true... You completely missed this point. To quote the article: > Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less welcome. We know because they tell us. Hanlon doesn't claim to know why the marginalized groups feel unwelcome. He doesn't even claim that the root cause is a bias of action -- conscious or subconscious -- on the part of SO's users or staff. What he said was these groups…

> What he said was these groups report at a higher than average rate the feeling of being unwelcome. That is a simple fact

Is it a fact? I'd like to see the evidence behind that claim, so I asked for that: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/366692/41071.

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

#650

Post by svick » Fri, Apr 27, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

dgreensp wrote: post #479

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…

100% this. To say that the author of the post — whose job includes knowing whether women and minorities feel particularly unwelcome or not, based on actual data and talking to them — must have invented this point is rather outlandish. Based on what? An online community can’t possibly be less welcoming to women, for example... because it has screen names? Because people don’t express open disdain for women like they d…

> To say that the author of the post — whose job includes knowing whether women and minorities feel particularly unwelcome or not, based on actual data and talking to them — must have invented this point is rather outlandish. Based on what?

Based on the fact that he did not share a bit of that data or any other kind of evidence. That's especially jarring on the Stack Overflow Blog, which is full of posts that are nothing but data.

It does not necessarily mean that there is no data, but it does make me suspicious.