Timeline for answer to When is Stack Overflow going to stop demonizing the quality-concerned users who have made the site a success? by Bill the Lizard
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| Jun 15, 2021 at 5:01 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "In a footnote. That's the very definition of tangential." Pardon if I am thoroughly unconvinced. There are exactly two reasons to include a politically contentious claim in an essay, when it is not needed to support the main argument: because one believes it is morally virtuous to state the claim in question, or because one seeks policy changes related to the claim (or both). | |
| Jun 15, 2021 at 4:57 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | Re duplicates generally, they generally shouldn't be downvoted. Once closed, either they rephrase the question in a way that can help future viewers of the site (by increasing the chance that they hit upon a search term that works for them), or allow the duplicate-linkers to collect related duplicate (or near-duplicate) links in a new way - in which case increasing visibility is deserved; or they don't, in which case they should be deleted as adding zero value to the site. | |
| Jun 15, 2021 at 4:54 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "It's so weird that you view that comment as 'not helpful' and 'casting moral aspersions', but you refuse to see how the snark and condescension all over Stack Overflow is not helpful. It's almost like you have two standards." It's not weird in the slightest, nor is a double standard involved. Snark and condescension are concepts not related to unhelpfulness and preaching; and you were (rightly) called out for the latter, not the former. It's not your tone that causes the problem; it's your refusal to bear the burden of evidence, nor to recognize that it falls on you. | |
| Jun 15, 2021 at 4:47 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "Then I would ask people to give a more generous read of the text of the blog post, instead of assuming worst intentions." If the blog post intends to claim "women & POC were particularly likely to feel unwelcome" without claiming "women & POC felt that their demographics are particularly unwelcome" (i.e., there isn't anything about site conduct that actively turns "women & POC" away), then... either it is saying that "women & POC" have some special justification for feeling that way, or it isn't (which logically implies they're being irrational). Either way, I count that as bigotry. | |
| Jun 3, 2020 at 15:29 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jul 11, 2018 at 16:24 | comment | added | Holger | @BoltClock I never downvote duplicates and I don’t see any worth in allowing to vote on already closed questions in general. But I see why there are so many people doing it; it’s easy to jump on the bandwagon and vote like all others did, to get the badges Stackoverflow awards for voting n times. The solution would be simple, don’t allow to vote on closed questions, after all, when a question has been closed, the OP got the message (in case of non-duplicates) and doesn’t need more peer pressure and in case of duplicates there’s even less worth in allowing additional votes. | |
| May 15, 2018 at 12:00 | comment | added | AndrewL64 | @NicolBolas I hope you wouldn't mind if I share your comment on being apolitical in my facebook and in real-life conversations with proper credits to you of course. That comment is hard-hitting and speaks truth in a lot of other situations and places other than SO too. | |
| May 2, 2018 at 10:04 | comment | added | Lundin | "I'm having a hard time understanding the extreme pushback I'm seeing from the community against this blog post." I don't, because this is what, the 5th time in a year that SO says they are going to focus on the core Q&A (basically they've kept saying this since the Documentation project imploded). Lots of talk, then some practical experiments, but nothing that makes it to the main site. Time is ticking, users are leaving. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 17:45 | comment | added | Ben | Nonetheless these goals are incompatible, as evidenced by the failure to make it work here for the last four years, and in comp.lang.c as noted in the blog post. (I did consider adding the obvious exceptions required to make it a mathematically complete statement but you are clearly an intelligent chap and didn't need me to do that. Yet you chose to jump on it anyway.) | |
| May 1, 2018 at 17:40 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @Ben One last time, you can have two separate but compatible goals. I'd like to both work in finance and retire a millionaire. I can do both. I don't have to sacrifice one to serve the other. There, my existence proof shatters your reality. Because binary thinking doesn't work in the real world. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 17:38 | comment | added | Ben | Unfortunately, it does. No man can serve two masters. It would be nice to have our cake and eat it, but that's cloud cuckoo land. Once upon a time we knew this, but forgetting is very en vogue at the moment. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 17:35 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @Ben More binary thinking. Yes or no. Black or white. The real world doesn't work that way. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 17:33 | comment | added | Ben | No, no. Having more than one goal always means one or both must be sacrificed to some extent. Always. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 17:07 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @Ben 1. Much as some of us would like it to be, the real world isn't binary. There's a whole range of values between the two options you pointed out. 2. These two goals are totally compatible. You just have to be willing to accept that there's a middle ground. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 16:51 | comment | added | Ben | That's not what's going on here. This is a disagreement about what Stack Overflow should be. Is it a question-and-answer site for programmers to find high-quality answers to questions? Or is it a touchy-feely-fakey "community" where everyone can scratch each other's backs and feel "included"? These goals are not compatible. See top answers here: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/262791/#309018 and here: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/256003/#256051 | |
| May 1, 2018 at 16:42 | comment | added | Passer By | About 80% of the comments above can probably be settled with some "unwelcomeness" metric of some sort. We have none. We are randomly guessing | |
| May 1, 2018 at 15:25 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @Benjol In a footnote. That's the very definition of tangential. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 15:23 | comment | added | Yumecosmos | @Oleg People shouldn't have to give "evidence" that their own experience is valid. If you haven't felt unwelcome, lucky you, but you seem to be trying to speak on behalf of all marginalized people. | |
| May 1, 2018 at 6:22 | comment | added | Benjol | I think including a link to unconscious bias testing indicates that the "women and people of color" element is not tangential to the post. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 17:20 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @MarkAmery Jay did give an example in the blog post, and he asked for the community to start flagging things that they find rude, so it's up to us. Also, I talked about it here: meta.stackoverflow.com/q/365811/1288 | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 17:14 | comment | added | Mark Amery | @BilltheLizard "refuse to see how the snark and condescension all over Stack Overflow is not helpful" - again, neither Jay nor you has even tried to describe what would constitute a "condescending" comment that was previously considered acceptable but will now be deleted, nor point to any examples. You're putting words into my mouth - I haven't claimed anywhere that no problem with comment tone exists, and don't think so - but how am I supposed to form an opinion on whether some class of comments should be purged if the people demanding the purge can't tell me what those comments are? | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 17:06 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @MarkAmery It's so weird that you view that comment as "not helpful" and "casting moral aspersions", but you refuse to see how the snark and condescension all over Stack Overflow is not helpful. It's almost like you have two standards. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 17:03 | comment | added | Mark Amery | @BilltheLizard Not helpful. If there's evidence, show it, rather than just casting aspersions on the moral character of those who are skeptical of the claim. That's the same tactic that the blog post used, and is what incited the anger that the community has directed towards it. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 17:01 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @Oleg Then you're the one conveniently ignoring problems. (I didn't reproduce the entire blog, but I did quote some of the parts people seem to have issue with. Maybe you should give both a more careful read.) | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 16:51 | comment | added | Oleg | You conveniently left out the more problematic parts of the blog. I dispute that people in marginalized groups feel less welcome. So far I have seen zero evidence to support that claim. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 16:11 | comment | added | BoltClock Mod | @Mark Amery: I personally am conflicted on the whole downvoting duplicates thing. We treat duplicates as signposts, i.e. not a Bad Thing™, right? So I feel like in order for a duplicate question to function as one, and in order for the asker not to feel that their duplicate question isn't useful even as a signpost, it needs to not have a negative score. However, that does mean changing the meaning of votes on duplicate questions since research effort is one of the aspects of a question that votes are meant to reflect, and I can totally understand folks being uncomfortable with that idea. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 14:00 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @Stargateur: "They open the pandora's box, now we talk politics in SO, wonderful !" The problem with being "apolitical" is that some groups of people have to be political in order to exist and function. Their very real problems are lumped into a box people call "politics", frequently by people who want to then turn around and prevent talking about them by saying "that's political talk". Now, I'm not defending the blog post, but I don't think it's appropriate to attack it on the basis of "that's politics." Many people live politics, not because they want to, but because they have to. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:52 | comment | added | Mark Amery | @BilltheLizard As for the beginner ask page, it's an exercise in wrongheadedness, for reasons that I, TinyGiant, and others have been pointing out on Meta for months: it's a template that only debugging questions can be fitted into, and so sends a signal to new users that anyone who wants to ask another kind of question is in the wrong place and should go elsewhere. That's the opposite of being more "welcoming". But if we haven't been heeded when we've pointed that out before, I doubt we will be now; instead, we'll get the template that shoos away precisely the users we most want to keep. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:51 | comment | added | Stargateur | @BilltheLizard Yeah improve site is a good thing. "...SO wants.." Not directly in the blog but we talk about this issue since already 4 days, read this answer from one SO employee for example, meta.stackoverflow.com/a/366783/7076153. They clearly want we nurse newbie. I see this as "we want more user to get more and more money". And the real problem of this post it's insulting every SO contributor of being sexist, racist, homophobic, etc... This article is politic, US side of the world, this is clearly a wrong thing. They open the pandora's box, now we talk politics in SO, wonderful ! | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:47 | comment | added | Mark Amery | @BilltheLizard The blog post mentions "condescension and snark", but provides no examples of what it considers to be snarky or condescending; the first example given of an action that's now apparently unwelcome (or at least makes Jay "sad") is downvoting duplicates, and there's a vague expression of intent to begin purging "unkind" comments from the site (a category which, read plainly, seems like it would include any time anyone's ever pointed out an error in an answer). Is it really surprising that many commentators, me included, fear the worst? | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:41 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @Stargateur Nowhere in the blog post does it say that SO wants to allow more bad questions. In fact, one of the proposals says "Let’s make it easier for new users to succeed... We set them up for failure, and our power users have been asking us to help them for ages. We’re planning to test a new “beginner” ask page that breaks the question box into multiple fields – one for each of the key things answerers need to help..." | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:37 | comment | added | Stargateur | @BilltheLizard And that worrying me that you care of that, I'm not here to make people feel better (or worst), I'm here to produce a high quality content, and that will automatically make bad programmer and newbie feel unwelcome ! We exclude bad question from our system, this is SO goal, we don't want question about "why my code don't work" and co. And every years more newbie come and use SO as "debug my program thx", it's worst every day, and now SO want that we allow more that these already bad question ? This is what I truly fear, and this will make the end of SO faster. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:35 | comment | added | user9455968 | @BilltheLizard Good to know that you know how I feel. But let's all get back to work. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:34 | comment | added | user9455968 | @BilltheLizard What Jay writes about in the blog do not help me in judging what kind of changes are planned. They can be effective but chilling. Or they can be make SO a better place for everybody, including people voicing their concerns these days here on MSO. So far I have no idea what SO (the company) will do and if I will like it or not. Details, please! | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:33 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @LutzHorn We don't need the condescension and snark, though. It's not required. How do you feel when someone is condescending and snarky to you? We don't need to analyze the relationship any further. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:31 | comment | added | user9455968 | @BilltheLizard The are related because people might feel that SO is an intimidating, unwelcoming place if they get snarky condescending comments. We can argue if this feeling is justified. But this kind of comments do not necessarily have to trigger this kind of feeling. I want facts for this relationship and for the bad feelings people are said to have, not anecdotes. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:31 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @LutzHorn Jay lays that out in the next several paragraphs of the blog post. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:29 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @Stargateur The fact that you don't care, and seem proud (?) of that, is worrying to me. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:29 | comment | added | user9455968 | Regarding the last quoted paragraph I'd really like to know what SO (the company) has in mind. What kind of guidance and tools are planned? | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:28 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @LutzHorn Don't you think those two things are related? | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:26 | comment | added | Stargateur | "But he also asked us to face a few hard truths:" in fact there "truths" aren't hard for me, "Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.", I don't care, "And a lot of devs feel like Stack Overflow is an intimidating, unwelcoming place.", I don't care, "Too often, someone comes here to ask a question, only to be told that they did it wrong. They get snarky or condescending comments for not explaining what they’ve tried (that didn’t work)." ok this one bad, we must not be rude. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:26 | comment | added | user9455968 | I'd like to see facts especially about the first point. The second can easily be validated by looking through comments, but the first can not. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:25 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @MarkAmery Then I would ask people to give a more generous read of the text of the blog post, instead of assuming worst intentions. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:24 | comment | added | Bill the Lizard | @LutzHorn The facts are laid out. Do you dispute that "And a lot of devs feel like Stack Overflow is an intimidating, unwelcoming place"? Or that people get snarky condescending comments? | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:23 | comment | added | Mark Amery | "Nobody said you did [discriminate]" - that's unclear. Jay's blog post contains the semantically ambiguous claim that "women and people of color felt particularly unwelcome". That can be parsed as "women & POC were particularly likely to feel unwelcome" (I think this was intended) or as "women & POC felt that their demographics are particularly unwelcome" (i.e. women and non-whites collectively believe that the SO community collectively bears sexist and racist animus toward them and that we'd prefer white men only to participate). Looks to me like many folks read it the latter way. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:21 | comment | added | user9455968 | The facts being exactly which? All the questions here on MSO asking for more than ancedotes did not receive anything resembling facts so far. BTW, it would be nice for SO (the company) to join the discussion here. | |
| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:16 | history | edited | Bill the Lizard | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 30, 2018 at 13:10 | history | answered | Bill the Lizard | CC BY-SA 3.0 |