6 ms·

But you don't need to identify yourself as either male or female on Stackoverflow so that shouldn't be much of an issue?

by Hansi 14y ago

michaelt 14y ago
I assume the thinking is they have bad experiences with non-anonymous Q&A and that puts them off Q&A as a whole. Humans generalise their experiences all the time; how to determine whether a generalisation is valid is can be confusing [1]. [1] http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407
_delirium 14y ago
That's an approach some women use successfully (including many of the techie women I know), but in aggregate it seems that either most women aren't trying it, or it doesn't work for them. One entirely speculative guess is that men and women might, on average, have different enough interaction patterns in asking/answer questions that an environment dominated by one gender feels like it, even if the participants' genders aren't disclosed. That doesn't even require any kind of hard biological differences; could be entirely a cultural effect. Thinking about my own online participation, lots of subtle cues go into whether a particular venue, even an anonymous one, feels like my kind of place.
easytiger 14y ago
yea for all i know sans personal comments you are all girls. time for news.ycombinator.com/gonewild methinks
- unimpressive 14y ago
  I know you were trying to be funny, but you weren't. (As a tip for the future: It helps if you make it 99.9% clear that your kidding. Making the joke less horrifyingly creepy would help too.)
  - sltkr 14y ago
    Even if it was a joke, that behaviour is obnoxious. Not to be that guy, but XKCD is very relevant here: http://xkcd.com/322/ http://xkcd.com/322/
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      That was the implication of "horrifyingly creepy.".
      - easytiger 14y ago
        Yea i've been here over 5 years. The largely American participation doesn't seem somewhat deficient in humour capacity
mnicole 14y ago
I waffled on this when I created my account, but ultimately I want it associated with me and my name, not just a random name that anyone could claim as their own. That said, I've thought about having an anon account simply because I don't want to ask a stupid question and have someone bring gender into it (because, unfortunately, this happens). So I'm in this cycle of where I just browse StackOverflow and use my account to favorite things instead of taking the risk. I did recently have someone in UXExchange comment on an old answer of mine (which had been upvoted a few times) to essentially tell me I was wrong about everything I said. The post was dated and no one else had replied to the thread in awhile. This same person had tweeted me around the same timeframe inviting me to join their chatroom. I hate assuming gender had anything to do with it, but it seemed odd that both of these would come out of nowhere, especially because telling someone they're wrong on a 2 year old post in this industry is like.. really?

But you don't need to identify yourself as either male or female on Stackoverflow so that shouldn't be much of an issue?

by Hansi 14y ago

But you don't need to identify yourself as either male or female on Stackoverflow so that shouldn't be much of an issue?

michaelt 14y ago

I assume the thinking is they have bad experiences with non-anonymous Q&A and that puts them off Q&A as a whole. Humans generalise their experiences all the time; how to determine whether a generalisation is valid is can be confusing [1]. [1] http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=407

_delirium 14y ago

That's an approach some women use successfully (including many of the techie women I know), but in aggregate it seems that either most women aren't trying it, or it doesn't work for them. One entirely speculative guess is that men and women might, on average, have different enough interaction patterns in asking/answer questions that an environment dominated by one gender feels like it, even if the participants' genders aren't disclosed. That doesn't even require any kind of hard biological differences; could be entirely a cultural effect. Thinking about my own online participation, lots of subtle cues go into whether a particular venue, even an anonymous one, feels like my kind of place.

easytiger 14y ago

yea for all i know sans personal comments you are all girls. time for news.ycombinator.com/gonewild methinks

unimpressive 14y ago
I know you were trying to be funny, but you weren't. (As a tip for the future: It helps if you make it 99.9% clear that your kidding. Making the joke less horrifyingly creepy would help too.)
- sltkr 14y ago
  Even if it was a joke, that behaviour is obnoxious. Not to be that guy, but XKCD is very relevant here: http://xkcd.com/322/ http://xkcd.com/322/
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    That was the implication of "horrifyingly creepy.".
    - easytiger 14y ago
      Yea i've been here over 5 years. The largely American participation doesn't seem somewhat deficient in humour capacity

mnicole 14y ago

I waffled on this when I created my account, but ultimately I want it associated with me and my name, not just a random name that anyone could claim as their own. That said, I've thought about having an anon account simply because I don't want to ask a stupid question and have someone bring gender into it (because, unfortunately, this happens). So I'm in this cycle of where I just browse StackOverflow and use my account to favorite things instead of taking the risk. I did recently have someone in UXExchange comment on an old answer of mine (which had been upvoted a few times) to essentially tell me I was wrong about everything I said. The post was dated and no one else had replied to the thread in awhile. This same person had tweeted me around the same timeframe inviting me to join their chatroom. I hate assuming gender had anything to do with it, but it seemed odd that both of these would come out of nowhere, especially because telling someone they're wrong on a 2 year old post in this industry is like.. really?