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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."

2 of 618 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How can you tell what a poster is? by 110010001000 · · Score: 1, Troll

    That isn't a counter question. He is asking HOW, and you are asking WHY. Clever SJW tatic though. So counter-question: Why WOULD you reveal your gender or other attributes online? Also, is "Deepak" a male or female name and what race would that be? My guess is that as a SJW you have containerized people based on their pseudonyms, but most normal people don't do that.

  2. Re:How exactly do they know that? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1, Troll

    There are plenty of people who understand reality quite a bit better than self-persecuting idiots such as yourself. You don't have to provide any identifying information to SO or its contributors to be a contributor.