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Stack Overflow Admits It Hasn't Been Welcoming To 'Newer Coders, Women, People of Color, and Others'; Outlines How It Plans To Change That (stackoverflow.blog)
Paul Fernhout writes: Jay Hanlon, executive vice president of culture and experience at Stack Overflow, penned a column on the company's blog last week in which he admitted the "painful truth" that "too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups." Hanlon, added, "our employees and community have cared about this for a long time, but we've struggled to talk about it publicly or to sufficiently prioritize it in recent years. And results matter more than intentions." The post adds: "Now, that's not because most Stack Overflow contributors are hostile jerks. The majority of them are generous and kind. Sure, a few are... just generous, I guess? But our active users regularly express their frustration that we haven't done more to make outsiders feel more welcome. The real problem isn't the community -- it's us:
We trained users to tell other users what they're doing wrong, but we didn't provide new folks with the necessary guidance to do it right. We failed to give our regular users decent tools to review content and easily find what they're looking for. We sent mixed messages over the years about whether we're a site for "experts" or for anyone who codes."
We trained users to tell other users what they're doing wrong, but we didn't provide new folks with the necessary guidance to do it right. We failed to give our regular users decent tools to review content and easily find what they're looking for. We sent mixed messages over the years about whether we're a site for "experts" or for anyone who codes."
I agree that most of the stuff I read on Stack Overflow is pretty high quality. Although it does tend towards the curt. That in itself is no bad thing: when I want an answer, I just want an answer - what buttons to press, I don't want to be lectured on principles, alternatives, the respondent's preferred alternative or what is in vogue that month.
But there are many people who reply, who seem to be mostly concerned with displaying their own talents for creating complexity out of simplicity, (imagined) superiority and opinions-as-fact. Few of them actually contribute anything worthwhile, but they do create a toxic environment that I can see, would deter people less thick-skinned from coming back.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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