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."

Comments

Made up solution searching for a made up problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the internet. Turn off the computer, turn 360 degrees, and walk away.

How exactly do they know that?

[SensitiveMale]

"too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups."

New coders maybe, but are there people creating handle like "chick coder", "black overflow", "wheelchair windows", and other such names that tell everyone that they are a woman, person of color, or in some marginalized group?

This just sounds like more pc bullshit. It reminds me of the NY Times headline for the apocalypse "World ends tomorrow. Women, children, & minorities hit hardest."

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[Anonymous Coward]

The crux of the matter is that new users have a hard time fitting in. "marginalized groups" is irrelevant, unless what they're saying is that those people need extra hand holding in which case that's a racist/misogynist statement. We're all human beings with the same capacity to learn and contribute. Stop drawing boxes around groups of people FFS. I swear it's all PC bullshit to keep us occupied and divided while the politicians manipulate us like marionettes.

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[UltimateDuster]

Exactly. Miss Mash has picked up from the mainstream media that you create controversy to get people's panties in a wad, and that gets more views/clicks.

This entire non-story is just a big troll for that reason. On Stack Overflow, nobody knows your gender. And if you're a new poster, sorry, you're a noob just like on ANY OTHER FORUM, and you will be treated that way until you have proven yourself. I have been doing embeded systems for decades, and there is no way for me to go onto the Raspberry Pi forums and post some of the projects that I have worked on for the $5 Pi Zero. Stuff that no one else has put there. So it works against them every now and then, but they have to do something to keep the overall quality good. Imagine every one of the Raspberry Forums being overrun by people asking how to install Internet Explorer over and over.

People on Stack Overflow are usually fair, and the really cheeky responses do tend to get downvoted. For instance, a question having a statement like "I know I'm not supposed to be doing X the Y way, but I have to do it the Y way because of some legacy software that the vendor forces us to use" might be met with one guy saying "Why would you want to do it Y way? That's a terrible way to do it" and would be rightfully downvoted.

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[HornWumpus]

'Newer coders' on SO should be asking questions...after verifying that the question has not already been asked and answered.

Even when already asked and answered, in my experience, the question will be more or less politely referenced to the correct thread, often with terse instructions to 'search first next time'.

Where the abuse starts?
When a reference to thread isn't 'good enough', the user obviously wants his homework done and compilable.
When someone posts an incorrect answer, then gets defensive and abusive when corrected and voted down.

But also note: I don't have an account. It's just a resource, typically it's the place to go (via your favorite search engine) when you suspect a doc is wrong or API is broken.

I have noted a bunch of non-technical _bullshit_ in the recent active threads list. There are people using it as a chat room, some are clearly SJW air thieves, looking for fights. They find them, no surprise.

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

New coders maybe

And by new coders I cannot tell if they mean "new coders" or "people asking for homework answers"

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[Darinbob]

Too often the "correct" thread is full of incorrect answers. Saying "asked and answered" is being hostile, especially when the question is not exactly the same and is seeking detail or clarification or is questioning the answers. Sometimes it feels like the substitute teacher saying "we already had a vote that two plus two equals five, so stop asking about it!"

Ie, I often see things like "How do I do in C?" and they are pointed forcefully at a C# answer. Or "how can I do without using Boost libraries", only to be given answers about how to use Boost.

Because stack overflow is a social media site where people earn points by answering and can be voted up and down, it's a competition to get in the most answers or comments, right or wrong.

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[gbjbaanb]

A lot of that is, I think, Indian devs turning up to game the points system - posting answers that are either exact duplicates of an answer previously given, or some direct cut and paste from a blog referenced by another answer.

I can only assume its to get more reputation for ego purposes.

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[AmiMoJo]

It's for recruiting purposes. I've seen more than one person boast about their great rep on SO, as evidence that they are teaching other people. I'm always tempted to point out that at least 75% of the answers on SO are awful, but get lots of votes anyway.

Re:How exactly do they know that?

[AmiMoJo]

If you suspect you won't get a good response if your gender is known, don't make it known.

I dislike this argument because it reminds me of telling women to wear a burka to avoid unwanted attention.

How?

[110010001000]

How do you know what race or gender anyone is on StackOverflow? Do you have to submit a DNA test? How do they know their demographics? Are they spying on their users somehow?

Welcome to the Internet

[zugmeister]

It's like that for everyone. You don't get to be special from behind your keyboard.
Flip this on its head. Do you think (just as an example) a white male coder asking a question is coddled and treated with respect?
Maybe the culture of elitism / hostility should change, but let's not try to look at this as some SJW cause...

I am sorry but this has to be asked

[Dusanyu]

Stack Overflow is a Q&A website how can you know the identity of the person on the other side to be rude based on the above mentioned criteria? Seems to me like its more of a Jerk problem than a "rude to women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups." But I guess using these terms is whats new hip and trendy right now to make the teens smile. like back in the 90's everything was "extreme"

What?

[ArchieBunker]

How am I supposed to determine a person's race and gender from their stackoverflow posts? In that context why does any of it matter?

Re:What?

[110010001000]

Interesting. How do you answer a female programmatically experienced white male native English speaker differently than a male one? This SJW stuff is fascinating.

Re:What?

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's not racist to discern that someone is most likely not a native speaker of English, and to be able to make inferences based on the clues provided.

Yes, Indians tend to make the same, very recognisable sorts of mistakes. (They are loving to be using some progressive tenses for one thing.) Just like many Swedes use the singular form of the verb even for plural subjects because Swedish has only a single present indicative form for all persons and numbers. Just like Russians often don't use "the" correctly--Russian has no definite article. Just like English speakers when speaking Spanish often forget that, in that language, adjectives have to match the gender and number of the nouns they modify. Just like it took me ages to get used to putting the definite article at the *end* of the word in Swedish, and I still forget it sometimes in rapid conversation.

I can provide many additional examples, but there really shouldn't be any need.

they coded that restriction in and made it a req.

[acroyear]

when you can't even answer a question or append a comment without already having a "reputation", yet you can't get a reputation without having answered questions, then the site is blatantly restricting it to those who know how to game the system for reputation points rather than actual knowledge on a particular topic.

I'll still use it, but I've given up trying to figure out what the hell it takes to get them to let me comment on something.

I have a honest question

[Opportunist]

How do you know someone is black, a woman or in any other "marginalized group" on the internet UNLESS of course the person says so?

Which doesn't even tell you whether the person actually is in one such group, only that they claim to be. Because... hell, how would you determine that?

Re:Wrong emphasis

[DontBeAMoran]

'To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.' — Douglas Adams

I don't get it

[RobinH]

I've used StackOverflow since it was created. It's definitely hostile to people who don't do any amount of effort before posting a question (maybe that's newcomers?) You can't be a contributor on that site for long without getting frustrated at seeing people post homework questions again-and-again. It's even fairly hostile to people who do their own research before posting - if you can't figure something out and you post your question you'll definitely get a "you're doing it wrong" answer, and you'll often get an, "if you'd architected your software completely differently you'd never even have a problem like this" kind of answer.

However, I've never seen racist or sexist content there. Ever. Where did that data come from?

Re:I don't get it

[Opportunist]

Could someone hand that guy a mod point or two? He's spot on.

This is basically what's going on here, and with similar sites where people can ask questions and get them answered. It works that way everywhere. People ask questions, other people who know the answers answer. This goes for a while, sometimes months, sometimes even a year or so. And then the people answering start to crack because it's always the same questions, and on top of it you get people who get angry with you when you try to help them because you don't answer their question in a way they understand or, my personal favorite, because your answer isn't what they wanted to get.

That kinda burns you out.

And yes, that means that you'll eventually get to hear "Dude, we answered that a million times before, care to find the field up there labeled search? Effin' use it!"

A lot of fluff. 2 changes proposed.

[HeckRuler]

executive vice president of culture and experience at Stack Overflow

uh huh. Man that sounds like a bullshit title. Well, as a primarily crowdsourcing site, that's actually right up Stack Overflow's alley. But... they made a position for this? They literally hired a guy to say these words. What else do you think he was going to say? You know how business people talk a lot about "best practices", ie, doing what everyone else does? "reaching out" is the current established best practice.

[SO is a] hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders

Yeah, I'd have to agree in part. It comes from being down in the trenches on the front line of customer service. And that's what it is, don't bullshit yourself. You're working a help-desk, for free, for magical internet points. And you're damn right I covet those magical points. I lie awake at night scheming how to get more. Respect and acknowledgement of my peers is right up there on Maslow's heirarchy of needs. Anyway, dealing with clueless idiots who don't even know how to ask a question about what they don't know is a pain in the ass and the typical stance is going to be "too broad, closed", and when they do ask a decent question about why they're fucking it up, it's going to be "don't do it that way, do it this way" and they're not going to like it. It's hard being ignorant. You have to work at fixing that. But there really should be a constant reminder to the contributors of SO that... you know... go easy on the idiots. You were an idiot when you started too.

women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups

Full stop. WHAT? How exactly does that happen when the grand sum of identiy on SO is a username? Sweet jesus, no one even KNOWS if you're a woman, person of color, from a marginalized group, or a fucking DOG. Unless you tell them. In which case you've made an effort to play the race card, marginalized card, dog card. And that's a dick move. Because it shouldn't fucking MATTER.

. . . Wait, through this entire thing he never comments on just exactly HOW this would be happening. Just "they report it as such". ....damn dude, if anything that's a rough sociology lesson that... certain groups complain more than others.

"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?

Bingo. He nailed that one. You know how people get PAID to work help-desk and put up with people's bullshit? You're not doing that here. You are depended upon people's generosity. You just kinda have to hope they're not assholes. Because you're not paying them to not be assholes. You want to enforce kindness? Fuck you, pay me.

where it’s practically impossible to find a single slur – our community takes them down in minutes. We don’t tolerate our female users being called “sweetie” or getting hit on. But we weren’t listening. Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less welcome. We know because they tell us.

hmmm, he's repeated that a lot. Remember that, just because they tell you something doesn't mean it always reflects reality. There are people out there that will ALWAYS comment that they feel marginalized because they have a victum complex. Not many. But anything as big as SO will attract the long-tail of crazy. At this scale you have to look at percentages as a sociological construct. Assuming the rate of batshit insane in society is 3%, if less than 3% of the user-base are complaining about something, hey, you're beating the curve, congrats.

Users aren’t “too lazy” to search; searching takes less work than posting. (No solution suggested, he's just stating it makes him sad)

Haha, wut? Dude, no, you don't get it. Some people SUCK at readi