Regardless of where you lived, or what your political stance, if you didn't support "open immigration" you were "morally repugnant and frankly stupid and counterproductive". And then the moderators defended him, and kept his post open.
Not only did they paint 50% of the US population as unwelcome on StackOverflow, they basically forced the rest of the globe to accept his politics or risk being removed from the platform. As surprising as this is to people in the US, but the rest of the world has a wide variety of political opinions that may not align with the now broadly exported Democrat/Republican duopoly.
Why not introduce aging into the answers? I think SO has a bigger problem, how to invalidate answers that are for obsolete versions of software? Maybe if the answers would slowly age (say lose one point per month), then the old guard wouldn't be so protective of them, and the problem would solve itself.
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? Im trying to find the causes for this change as part of my Master Thesis. Help me 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...
Any changes that SO makes will necessarily benefit anybody who isn't part of the "in-group", white or black or green. But identifying the in-group is hard. It's quite likely that there's a black lesbian coder on SO that is part of the in-group; but she'd be pretty unique. Anybody who's not part of the traditional SV class (white & asian males) is much more likely to not be in the in-group, so that becomes a reasonable proxy given sufficient sample size.
IOW, help all outsiders, measure effect on visible outsiders.
One would imagine that it's hostile to folks not indoctrinated in hacker culture, i.e. RTFM, and whatever subculture SO has developed.
Given the anonymity provided by the internet, unless someone goes out of their way to make their various statuses made known they really won't be. So I don't at all buy that this is an overt problem.
So the question becomes, is hacker culture or SO culture hostile to women and minorities inadvertently?
No, it’s actively hostile. I’ve seen questions closed, new people denigrated and people who answer questions in good faith actively told off by old hands.
1 screenshot of a comment upvoted to 5 points, that indicates insults a question, or the asker of a question specifically insulting their race or gender.
As of yet, I've seen no evidence of any widespread overt racist or sexist behaviour on StackOverflow.
Not OP (though I only somewhat disagree with the original statement), but a statistically significant result of a poll (where you would correlate people answers by their background) would convince me.
Well, the claim is that a minority of users experience hostility, so I’m not sure how you would define statistical significance. Also, a poll wouldn’t distinguish so-called virtue signaling.
>Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.
This was all addressed in the previous submission. People aren’t saying they’re made to feel unwelcome because of their race/gender/etc, it’s that people from underrepresented groups have reported those feelings in greater numbers.
I think one of the reasons for the hostility is that people don't give a f#*@ to write proper questions, they don't even bother to RTFM. Grammar issues, no error logs, no links or snippets of code... I think the over sensitivity trend also adds up to this "problem".
In another thread related to SO, many high ranked users said they feel demotivated, when other high ranked users comment their answer saying they shouldn't answer this question and so on. They never log in again or answer questions in fear of facing same situation again. You answered someone, some jerk didn't like it, so what? My comment got downvoted on HN, so what? Should I be afraid of commenting again, feel oppressed? No, do what you do, correct someone if you think they're making a mistake, be bold sometimes if needed. Post a link to some self help blog or "how to make friends" next time when some elitist or some hostile jerk dislikes your SO answers instead of feeling bad about toxicity. I think Bill Burr stand ups have some good highlights about the over sensitivity in society in general.
