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From the linked article: > Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and other

From the linked article: > Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups Breaking that down... "...people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place..." This is obvious just by looking at the discussions that happen here, or, even by observing the SO-related memes that bubble up to the top of Reddit programming subs. I have commented on it myself. "...especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups." lol what? Like most programmers, I use SO practically every day. I don't post much because that's usually a waste of time, but I land on SO from searching for errors all the time. I cannot recall ever, even once, seeing someone's race, sex, or orientation being mocked or even mentioned. As far as I can tell most users don't have full names or photos on their profiles. So it isn't even possible to know such things unless it was volunteered, and that never happens when asking questions about APIs and whatnot. So what in the heck are they even talking about? I'm glad the issue is getting attention, but justifying like this strikes me as pointless virtue signaling. Perhaps they are trying to stem criticism from their power users who like SO the way it is.

sremani 9y ago
It is standard silicon valley virtue signaling, by now we should get used to them. In the entire blog, I still did not find what they have actually done to make it welcoming, other than shoving a CoC (pun-intended).
vikiomega9 9y ago
Just to paraphrase, you're asking for more data right?
kadenshep 9y ago
It's almost like this was directly addressed in the article: >especially the idea that women and people of color felt particularly unwelcome. There’s a weird paradox with bias. Those of us who have privilege, but care deeply about reducing bias should be uniquely positioned to help, but we struggle the hardest to recognize that we are (unintentionally) biased ourselves And this line in your post: >pointless virtue signaling. Really nice recycled talking point. It also strikes at the heart of the above quote.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  Bias is real, and privilege is real. I don't argue otherwise. Let's be honest here. If you are able to post on SO at all, you are in the global top 10% of privilege. If you scale it down to a company, it's like the President vs a VP. I choose not to spend my energy splitting those hairs.
  - kadenshep 9y ago
    You are spending your energy attempting to ignore people's view points. You called SO reacting to complaints and feedback "pointless virtue signaling" You are now attempting to say you personally wouldn't bother with what SO is doing (as if anyone asked) because other people are unfortunate enough to not have access to the same resources we do? Do I really need to illustrate how nonsensical that is? What's your angle?
fidels 9y ago
I don't think what they mean is that when a minority goes to SO and they get a condescending response it's because of their race/ethnicity/gender. What they mean is that, since minorities might have insecurities about their ability to code because there are not that many people who look like them in the industry, when they receive a condescending response their insecurities aggravate. Therefore, SO can be consider more hostile for minorities.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I like your explanation--I hadn't thought of it and it's less cynical/more charitable than the obvious alternative (virtue signaling). But wouldn't the same be true of anyone with heightened insecurities? Why highlight minorities?
  - retbull 9y ago
    Because the community doesn't identify with them? Specific insecurities isn't something that can be addressed at a platform level but general ones like "am I a member of the group of programmers because I am black/female/gay/trans" can be better targeted. So they probably won't help everyone by doing this but they can help a large group of unserved people.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      We don't need to stop at group-level insecurities, we can just be kinder and more welcoming to everyone, thereby addressing _all_ insecurities. This has the added bonus of dodging the entirely unnecessary, divisive, and toxic political fights about which groups are the most victimized.
  - saint_fiasco 9y ago
    They probably have more data on minorities than on insecurities. Some ad networks can tell your gender and ethnicity with reasonable accuracy (especially in the aggregate). Stack Overflow might be affiliated to one of those, or use data mining algorithms similar to what they use. They also run polls among their users, I believe. It's easier to ask about gender/race in a poll than about unspecified insecurities.
jowiar 9y ago
> I don't post much because that's usually a waste of time That's the particular problem that they're trying to figure out, with a broader version of "waste of time". Either "asking a question is met with hostility", or "posting a response is met with hostility".
- amelius 9y ago
  I sometimes like to contribute, but there are these hurdles, like you first have to build karma. So basically I just let it be.
jakelazaroff 9y ago
Are you saying that Stack Overflow is lying about the response from people who belong to marginalized groups? From the article: > Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less welcome. We know because they tell us. It may not not stand out to you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  If that's true, I'd be really interested in knowing why. It's pretty hard to fix a problem if you don't even know what's causing it in the first place. (Especially since we've pretty much ruled out the possibility of racial or sexual discrimination.)
  - treis 9y ago
    People can experience the same thing and have different reactions to it. Someone that already feels inadequate or like they don't belong as a programmer are likely to have a more negative reaction to SO's nonsense.
- ctdonath 9y ago
  Then perhaps the real data point is bias about biases: operating in a profoundly neutral forum, blind to practically any "group" indication, individual "they're thinking X of me because I'm Y" bias emerges. This is something being increasingly noticed in general, but SO's study provides an interesting control experiment precisely because there is so little indication of group categorization. I've spent years using StackOverflow. I've never seen any expressions of bigotry. One might get a hint of "group" based on linguistic style, but never have I seen bigoted comments based thereon. If someone feels unwelcome, it's either because they just feel that way without cause, or because of the content/tone of their comments - not their "group" - elicits such response.
  - marcAKAmarc 9y ago
    While I do think it is true that you can only find "hints" of group bias when examining individual stackoverflow users, stackoverflow in general is known to have: 1. overwhelmingly dominant gender of population (92.9% of SO population) 2. overwhelmingly dominant race and ethnicity categorization (74.2% of SO population) 3. overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation (93.2% of SO population). (I left this ambiguous on purpose to ensure that my point is about the homogeneity of the population and not the specifically dominant demographic group. If you want more information, you can look for yourself for specifics about which way the numbers fall here - https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/ https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/). My point is that the stackoverflow population in general is very homogeneous by certain categories. Instead of looking for evidence of victimization, imagine how easy it would be for someone belonging to a StackOverflow minority category to get discouraged by StackOverflows fierce gatekeeping, especially with the knowledge that stack overflow is so demographically unlike this person. From the point of view of the marginalized, evidence of group categorization isn't needed beyond that fact that "StackOverflow is very very X, and I know that I'm Y." Any sort of gatekeeping from this point on can feel very discouraging, even if this isn't the intention of those who are gatekeeping. [edit for format]
ajross 9y ago
> I cannot recall ever, even once, seeing someone's race, sex, or orientation being mocked or even mentioned. If all you're doing is googling for mature, well-curated answers, then you're not seeing this. Go post a "dumb question" and see how you're treated. And the contention isn't that people are being deliberately mocked, it's that they don't feel welcome, which is a different thing. So... how might a woman (or whoever) not feel welcome? Maybe because the forum she's on sees people regularly doing stuff like saying discrimination is "not even possible", or mocking those talking about it for "pointless virtue signaling"? I mean, seriously: go back and read the very post you just typed: does that seem "welcoming" to you? It's not.
- legostormtroopr 9y ago
  A “dumb question” is mocked because it’s dumb. No one knows who you are online, for example nothing about my username gives away my sex, race, religion or sexual orientation. If some with a pseudonym like mine was mocked for asking a dumb question, their minority status would have nothing to do with it.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    The manner in which it's mocked may disproportionately impact some groups. If (for example) minorities have higher levels of imposter syndrome, that sort of "you're an idiot" mockery might knock disproportionate numbers of minorities out of the field early on.
  - marcAKAmarc 9y ago
    I think you are right that minority status rarely has to do with the mocking, but I also think this might be beside the point. I think really the concern is that people who might already feel like outsiders are easily discouraged and made to feel even more like an outsider. And as it turns out, it isn't even hard to identify as an outsider on stackoverflow, even if you are a great coder! I just checked out the stack overflow public survey for 2018 [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018] - 92% of users are male, and 74.2% is white or European decent. Seems significantly homogeneous.
commandlinefan 9y ago
Yeah, I can't see how you could be hostile to programmers but somehow _more_ hostile to programmers of a certain race without actually calling out somebody by race.
fabian2k 9y ago
Any blatant case of racism or sexism is likely to be deleted, the tools for community moderation of seriously offensive content are pretty effective. That is not necessarily fast enough for the target of the abuse to never see it, but it does make it very unlikely that regular users stumble upon this. Deleted comments are essentially invisible to regular users, and even for deleted answers you have to go and dig to see offensive content.
gthtjtkt 9y ago
> justifying like this strikes me as pointless virtue signaling. Agree 100%. This part is especially troubling: > Feelings have no “technically correct.” They’re just what the feeler is telling you. When someone tells you how they feel, you can pack up your magnifying glass and clue kit, cuz that’s the answer. If I say "The sky is blue" and you say "That's offensive to people who aren't blue", you're just wrong. End of story. It's sad that this is even worth saying, but that's what our micro-aggression and victimhood-obsessed society has come to. People are practically competing to see who can be the most offended.
- chronomex 9y ago
  That's not what they said though. They said "if you want to know if someone feels welcome, and you ask them, and they say they don't feel welcome, then you're done researching whether or not they feel welcome".
  - dfundako 9y ago
    You are right. What it seems like a lot of people in these comments are saying is that the question perhaps should not stop at "Do you feel welcome?" because that only explores feelings of one side, which is highly subjective. If you invite someone into your house, they come in with muddy shoes and make a mess even though you had a sign at the door asking them to please wipe their feet, they might feel unwelcome when you ask them to go back, read the sign, and take off their shoes. The invitee might be offended, but the homeowner is justified and their feelings and the entire situation need to be considered. It is not "End of Discussion" once someone is offended.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  "If I say "The sky is blue" and you say "That's offensive to people who aren't blue", you're just wrong. End of story." That's not even close to the situation at hand. "People are practically competing to see who can be the most offended." Aren't you, just now, being offended that people are, not even really being offended at things, but really at trying to listen to people saying that they don't feel welcome, and trying to address that? Why is trying to make a more welcoming and open community such a sin?
0x4f3759df 9y ago
Cultural Marxism is the process of categorizing the world into oppressor vs oppressed. This is just another application of the process.
johnchristopher 9y ago
Slightly off-topic but I can't help picturing people on HN as anything different from what I look like. No black people, no women, no teenagers, no seniors, etc. Everyone on HN is almost the same in my head. I am not even sure adding a profile picture would change that.
scardine 9y ago
People feel intimidated on SO, specially if they have low self-stem. This is a real problem but not because veterans there are bad people - after all they are helping strangers on the Internet for free. I'm one of them[1]. Moderators there tend to be borderline autistic people obsessed with some subjects. Yes, we sound like jerks and some people there can be really infuriating but it is not personal: we are just obcessive people with very low social skills. These OCD traits are both our weakeness and our superpower, why we do such a great work maintaining top quality questions and answers while sometimes sounding needlessly rude. Being on the spectrum is not an excuse to be a jerk but many people will take "you are being pedantic" as a cumpliment because their brain is wired differently. Most of them will be more careful if you tell them they are hurting people even if they can't understand why. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/users/444036/paulo-scardine?tab=profile https://stackoverflow.com/users/444036/paulo-scardine?tab=pr...
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  > we do such a great work maintaining top quality questions You don't. Straight-up. You may think you do, but SO utterly fails at this. In almost all cases where i end up on SO in my research the accepted answer is trash, and the one below it is the real one.
  - Sacho 9y ago
    The accepted answer is decided by the person asking the question - I'm not sure SO moderators are allowed to change an accepted answer(at the very least, they're heavily disincentivized to do so). I think your example is a case for more moderation, not less.
    - Mithaldu 9y ago
      I'm not saying less moderation is needed, but that the moderation itself being done is low quality.
MrEldritch 9y ago
I think there's a pretty plausible answer here - StackOverflow is hostile to everyone, and that means people who already feel insecure or burdened by impostor syndrome or like they have to struggle to be recognized - even if they're not technically being treated any worse - end up experiencing that hostility and intimidating attitude even more.
- pellucidar 9y ago
  It's not only insecurity; people with less patience for hostility will react to the hostility by leaving--not by hanging around, and certainly not by trying to earn hostility karma.

sremani 9y ago

It is standard silicon valley virtue signaling, by now we should get used to them. In the entire blog, I still did not find what they have actually done to make it welcoming, other than shoving a CoC (pun-intended).

vikiomega9 9y ago

Just to paraphrase, you're asking for more data right?

kadenshep 9y ago

It's almost like this was directly addressed in the article: >especially the idea that women and people of color felt particularly unwelcome. There’s a weird paradox with bias. Those of us who have privilege, but care deeply about reducing bias should be uniquely positioned to help, but we struggle the hardest to recognize that we are (unintentionally) biased ourselves And this line in your post: >pointless virtue signaling. Really nice recycled talking point. It also strikes at the heart of the above quote.

metalliqaz 9y ago
Bias is real, and privilege is real. I don't argue otherwise. Let's be honest here. If you are able to post on SO at all, you are in the global top 10% of privilege. If you scale it down to a company, it's like the President vs a VP. I choose not to spend my energy splitting those hairs.
- kadenshep 9y ago
  You are spending your energy attempting to ignore people's view points. You called SO reacting to complaints and feedback "pointless virtue signaling" You are now attempting to say you personally wouldn't bother with what SO is doing (as if anyone asked) because other people are unfortunate enough to not have access to the same resources we do? Do I really need to illustrate how nonsensical that is? What's your angle?

fidels 9y ago

I don't think what they mean is that when a minority goes to SO and they get a condescending response it's because of their race/ethnicity/gender. What they mean is that, since minorities might have insecurities about their ability to code because there are not that many people who look like them in the industry, when they receive a condescending response their insecurities aggravate. Therefore, SO can be consider more hostile for minorities.

weberc2 9y ago
I like your explanation--I hadn't thought of it and it's less cynical/more charitable than the obvious alternative (virtue signaling). But wouldn't the same be true of anyone with heightened insecurities? Why highlight minorities?
- retbull 9y ago
  Because the community doesn't identify with them? Specific insecurities isn't something that can be addressed at a platform level but general ones like "am I a member of the group of programmers because I am black/female/gay/trans" can be better targeted. So they probably won't help everyone by doing this but they can help a large group of unserved people.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    We don't need to stop at group-level insecurities, we can just be kinder and more welcoming to everyone, thereby addressing _all_ insecurities. This has the added bonus of dodging the entirely unnecessary, divisive, and toxic political fights about which groups are the most victimized.
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  They probably have more data on minorities than on insecurities. Some ad networks can tell your gender and ethnicity with reasonable accuracy (especially in the aggregate). Stack Overflow might be affiliated to one of those, or use data mining algorithms similar to what they use. They also run polls among their users, I believe. It's easier to ask about gender/race in a poll than about unspecified insecurities.

jowiar 9y ago

> I don't post much because that's usually a waste of time That's the particular problem that they're trying to figure out, with a broader version of "waste of time". Either "asking a question is met with hostility", or "posting a response is met with hostility".

amelius 9y ago
I sometimes like to contribute, but there are these hurdles, like you first have to build karma. So basically I just let it be.

jakelazaroff 9y ago

Are you saying that Stack Overflow is lying about the response from people who belong to marginalized groups? From the article: > Many people, especially those in marginalized groups do feel less welcome. We know because they tell us. It may not not stand out to you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Ajedi32 9y ago
If that's true, I'd be really interested in knowing why. It's pretty hard to fix a problem if you don't even know what's causing it in the first place. (Especially since we've pretty much ruled out the possibility of racial or sexual discrimination.)
- treis 9y ago
  People can experience the same thing and have different reactions to it. Someone that already feels inadequate or like they don't belong as a programmer are likely to have a more negative reaction to SO's nonsense.
ctdonath 9y ago
Then perhaps the real data point is bias about biases: operating in a profoundly neutral forum, blind to practically any "group" indication, individual "they're thinking X of me because I'm Y" bias emerges. This is something being increasingly noticed in general, but SO's study provides an interesting control experiment precisely because there is so little indication of group categorization. I've spent years using StackOverflow. I've never seen any expressions of bigotry. One might get a hint of "group" based on linguistic style, but never have I seen bigoted comments based thereon. If someone feels unwelcome, it's either because they just feel that way without cause, or because of the content/tone of their comments - not their "group" - elicits such response.
- marcAKAmarc 9y ago
  While I do think it is true that you can only find "hints" of group bias when examining individual stackoverflow users, stackoverflow in general is known to have: 1. overwhelmingly dominant gender of population (92.9% of SO population) 2. overwhelmingly dominant race and ethnicity categorization (74.2% of SO population) 3. overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation (93.2% of SO population). (I left this ambiguous on purpose to ensure that my point is about the homogeneity of the population and not the specifically dominant demographic group. If you want more information, you can look for yourself for specifics about which way the numbers fall here - https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/ https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/). My point is that the stackoverflow population in general is very homogeneous by certain categories. Instead of looking for evidence of victimization, imagine how easy it would be for someone belonging to a StackOverflow minority category to get discouraged by StackOverflows fierce gatekeeping, especially with the knowledge that stack overflow is so demographically unlike this person. From the point of view of the marginalized, evidence of group categorization isn't needed beyond that fact that "StackOverflow is very very X, and I know that I'm Y." Any sort of gatekeeping from this point on can feel very discouraging, even if this isn't the intention of those who are gatekeeping. [edit for format]

ajross 9y ago

> I cannot recall ever, even once, seeing someone's race, sex, or orientation being mocked or even mentioned. If all you're doing is googling for mature, well-curated answers, then you're not seeing this. Go post a "dumb question" and see how you're treated. And the contention isn't that people are being deliberately mocked, it's that they don't feel welcome, which is a different thing. So... how might a woman (or whoever) not feel welcome? Maybe because the forum she's on sees people regularly doing stuff like saying discrimination is "not even possible", or mocking those talking about it for "pointless virtue signaling"? I mean, seriously: go back and read the very post you just typed: does that seem "welcoming" to you? It's not.

legostormtroopr 9y ago
A “dumb question” is mocked because it’s dumb. No one knows who you are online, for example nothing about my username gives away my sex, race, religion or sexual orientation. If some with a pseudonym like mine was mocked for asking a dumb question, their minority status would have nothing to do with it.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  The manner in which it's mocked may disproportionately impact some groups. If (for example) minorities have higher levels of imposter syndrome, that sort of "you're an idiot" mockery might knock disproportionate numbers of minorities out of the field early on.
- marcAKAmarc 9y ago
  I think you are right that minority status rarely has to do with the mocking, but I also think this might be beside the point. I think really the concern is that people who might already feel like outsiders are easily discouraged and made to feel even more like an outsider. And as it turns out, it isn't even hard to identify as an outsider on stackoverflow, even if you are a great coder! I just checked out the stack overflow public survey for 2018 [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018] - 92% of users are male, and 74.2% is white or European decent. Seems significantly homogeneous.

commandlinefan 9y ago

Yeah, I can't see how you could be hostile to programmers but somehow _more_ hostile to programmers of a certain race without actually calling out somebody by race.

fabian2k 9y ago

Any blatant case of racism or sexism is likely to be deleted, the tools for community moderation of seriously offensive content are pretty effective. That is not necessarily fast enough for the target of the abuse to never see it, but it does make it very unlikely that regular users stumble upon this. Deleted comments are essentially invisible to regular users, and even for deleted answers you have to go and dig to see offensive content.

gthtjtkt 9y ago

> justifying like this strikes me as pointless virtue signaling. Agree 100%. This part is especially troubling: > Feelings have no “technically correct.” They’re just what the feeler is telling you. When someone tells you how they feel, you can pack up your magnifying glass and clue kit, cuz that’s the answer. If I say "The sky is blue" and you say "That's offensive to people who aren't blue", you're just wrong. End of story. It's sad that this is even worth saying, but that's what our micro-aggression and victimhood-obsessed society has come to. People are practically competing to see who can be the most offended.

chronomex 9y ago
That's not what they said though. They said "if you want to know if someone feels welcome, and you ask them, and they say they don't feel welcome, then you're done researching whether or not they feel welcome".
- dfundako 9y ago
  You are right. What it seems like a lot of people in these comments are saying is that the question perhaps should not stop at "Do you feel welcome?" because that only explores feelings of one side, which is highly subjective. If you invite someone into your house, they come in with muddy shoes and make a mess even though you had a sign at the door asking them to please wipe their feet, they might feel unwelcome when you ask them to go back, read the sign, and take off their shoes. The invitee might be offended, but the homeowner is justified and their feelings and the entire situation need to be considered. It is not "End of Discussion" once someone is offended.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
"If I say "The sky is blue" and you say "That's offensive to people who aren't blue", you're just wrong. End of story." That's not even close to the situation at hand. "People are practically competing to see who can be the most offended." Aren't you, just now, being offended that people are, not even really being offended at things, but really at trying to listen to people saying that they don't feel welcome, and trying to address that? Why is trying to make a more welcoming and open community such a sin?

0x4f3759df 9y ago

Cultural Marxism is the process of categorizing the world into oppressor vs oppressed. This is just another application of the process.

johnchristopher 9y ago

Slightly off-topic but I can't help picturing people on HN as anything different from what I look like. No black people, no women, no teenagers, no seniors, etc. Everyone on HN is almost the same in my head. I am not even sure adding a profile picture would change that.

scardine 9y ago

People feel intimidated on SO, specially if they have low self-stem. This is a real problem but not because veterans there are bad people - after all they are helping strangers on the Internet for free. I'm one of them[1]. Moderators there tend to be borderline autistic people obsessed with some subjects. Yes, we sound like jerks and some people there can be really infuriating but it is not personal: we are just obcessive people with very low social skills. These OCD traits are both our weakeness and our superpower, why we do such a great work maintaining top quality questions and answers while sometimes sounding needlessly rude. Being on the spectrum is not an excuse to be a jerk but many people will take "you are being pedantic" as a cumpliment because their brain is wired differently. Most of them will be more careful if you tell them they are hurting people even if they can't understand why. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/users/444036/paulo-scardine?tab=profile https://stackoverflow.com/users/444036/paulo-scardine?tab=pr...

Mithaldu 9y ago
> we do such a great work maintaining top quality questions You don't. Straight-up. You may think you do, but SO utterly fails at this. In almost all cases where i end up on SO in my research the accepted answer is trash, and the one below it is the real one.
- Sacho 9y ago
  The accepted answer is decided by the person asking the question - I'm not sure SO moderators are allowed to change an accepted answer(at the very least, they're heavily disincentivized to do so). I think your example is a case for more moderation, not less.
  - Mithaldu 9y ago
    I'm not saying less moderation is needed, but that the moderation itself being done is low quality.

MrEldritch 9y ago

I think there's a pretty plausible answer here - StackOverflow is hostile to everyone, and that means people who already feel insecure or burdened by impostor syndrome or like they have to struggle to be recognized - even if they're not technically being treated any worse - end up experiencing that hostility and intimidating attitude even more.

pellucidar 9y ago
It's not only insecurity; people with less patience for hostility will react to the hostility by leaving--not by hanging around, and certainly not by trying to earn hostility karma.