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> > especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. > But this isn't true. No one knows anything about a user on Stack Over
by icc97 9y ago
> > especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.
> But this isn't true. No one knows anything about a user on Stack Overflow unless they explicitly announce it,
They don't say it out in the open, they contact the SO admins directly or through surveys.
- rossdavidh 9y agoI think the point was that the people being mean don't know the gender, color, etc. of who they're being mean to.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoLook at it from the other side. The person who is getting mean comments tells someone at SO about it (maybe via a survey). Then the SO admins notice that in the surveys women are overrepresented in the population of "people who complain about hostility". Perhaps minorities already get enough abuse and hostility every day on meatspace, so they are less tolerant of even minor hostility over the Internet. Since they have a limited amount of fucks to give, so to speak, they are more likely to leave the site for good after an unpleasant interaction. Think of minorities as the canary in the coal mine. They are more sensitive, so they start leaving the moment the environment starts to become toxic. Left unchecked, the toxicity will grow and push away everyone else too, so you can't just ignore them for being "snowflakes" or whatever.
- leereeves 9y agoOr: Our culture encourages women and minorities to speak up. White men are expected to endure abuse in silence. Consider how much attention complaints from women and minorities receive, and how little attention (and how much hostility) complaints from white men receive (unless those men are individually powerful, of course). People tend to repeat actions that are effective, so women and minorities learn to speak up, white men learn to keep their complaints to themselves. Edit: I'd like to thank those who downvoted this comment for providing a live demonstration of the phenomenon.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoRight. So let's not do that. Instead of waiting for minorities to speak up, you should complain right away when an online environment turns toxic. Since we were not aware until today that minorities received more hostility on SO, that means users really don't know other users' gender and ethnicity, so it's not like anyone will call you a sissy girl for speaking up.
- leereeves 9y agoWe have been complaining about hostility on SO for years. It's debatable whether women and minorities actually do receive more hostility on SO, they're more likely to speak up, or SO's management is simply more responsive to their complaints.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoIt's also debatable whether we are living in a simulation or we are actually brains in a jar, or maybe only you are real and I'm a conversational AI. But it's pointless to debate things that don't and can't change what we choose to do. Notice that all three of your proposed hypothesis can't change the fact that SO isn't very welcoming and they want to change that.
- leereeves 9y agoAwareness of this phenomenon can change what we choose to do. Rather than ignoring or mocking complaints from white men, we could choose to listen.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoI think I get it. They could have chosen to act faster, before being forced to act by the politics of inclusivity. I personally don't mind though. In my city many positive quality of life changes were made only after some disabled people complained. I benefit from those changes too, so I don't mind the delay as long as it eventually gets done.
- makapuf 9y agoBut how would you know about reactions to genre, skin color or other group if they weren't mentioned in the first place? And in that case why mention them at all on SO of all sites ? Or maybe it was about Perl coders? Be kind with them please.
- icc97 9y agoMy guess is that although you don't know the race/gender of the person there's a chance that they'll use a different questioning style. More senior/regular users then frown upon this different style not necessarily because they're being racist/sexist just because they don't like the way the question was asked.
- makapuf 9y agoWell, in that case you might as well include non-native english speakers.
- pellucidar 9y agoI'm guessing the point here is that the named groups feel particularly unwelcome at SO; this can be the case without any opportunity for or evidence of discrimination. The blog post wasn't all that clear about how they got the data, but they seem to have data to that effect. It might mean that the expectations of the named groups are different from those of the average white male programmer, or it may only mean that everyone is put off by SO equally but SO is no longer willing to alienate everyone if it also means alienating the named groups.