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.
As someone who has had both academic and career success (and failures), I know I am capable as a developer and able to contribute meaningfully to technical discussions.
As a person of color, however, I have also experienced harassment by police, suspicious looks from shop owners, and outright hostility from drunken young men.
So, whenever I encounter what appears to be irrational anger or inexplicable disrespect, I cannot help but wonder and worry that I'm being poorly treated because of my race, even when I suspect that's not the case. The person who treats me poorly need not necessarily be discriminating against me because of my race, but I can never know and, of course, unless someone is calling me racial epithets such poorly behaved people are unlikely to admit bias.
It's sort of like being bullied in elementary school, and then high school, and then college, and then as a working adult. You never outgrow the bullying. Indeed, the bullying seems to get worse as one matures and loses the youthful physical characteristics which people often read as non-threatening.
So regardless of intention (and sometimes because of it), feeling discriminated against can be partly the result of lifelong experience and is probably fairly characterized as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
EDIT: remove two instances of repeated "as"; add "often"; remove comma; change pronoun.
It's not just the appearance of the people who bullies you. Bullying forces you to become more closed, and changes you fundamentally while you learn to resist it. Unfortunately, resisting bullying needs one to unlearn "inherent (baseline) trust" when meeting with new people, and unlearn "implicit trust" which is reinforced with the duration of civilized communication and relationships, because bullying can come from the least expected person at most unsuspected time.
Also, continuous bullying warps one's perception about discussion. Any sign of escalation causes any bullying victim to just change the subject and feel bad about itself, because bullying starts with (generally intentional) disagreement, then this disagreement is used for a basis for physical or psychological bullying. Bullied people may not hate from themselves, but they cannot be content with themselves either. They always think that something is wrong with them, and feel powerless to correct it, because continued bullying is only possible when the victim is bullied regardless of his/her character, intention, behavior or capacity.
Prolonged bullying really leaves deep wounds like trust issues, complete lack of self confidence, fear of communication and feelings of inferiority. These wounds are very hard to heal, because as time passes and one grows up, society thinks that these issues are over and doesn't care. Also, people don't seek help since these features are considered part of the character and deemed fixed after a certain age, but they are not.
Good friends, and a really caring person can change everything if the person wants to heal. It's hard, but not impossible.
How do I know this? Because I'm bullied for 10 years straight.
Edit: Clarify sentences.
Though SO usernames are often pseudonymous, they are not always anonymous. For example, some SO profiles contain photographs of the user. Mine does.
Also, sometimes I search for information about users with whom I interact. I imagine others do the same.
We both agree "being targeted" is different than "feeling targeted". A third thing that is different than both of these is "being affected".
That is, even if someone from a marginalized group is not being targeted for being a member of a marginalized group, the negative effects of perceived hostility may be larger on people from marginalized groups than on people from dominant groups. Not always, but sometimes, and this is what SO seems to be taking to heart.
A few comments have suggested one solution is to improve the climate for everyone by welcoming new users with all their inexperience rather than discouraging them by enforcing standards of contribution achieved by elite longtime users. I wholeheartedly agree.
By encouraging newbies who don't yet know much, SO stands to grow its ranks and help newbies become experienced contributors. As a former educator, I know encouraging students in the directions they are doing well is much more pedagogically effective than tearing down students when they make mistakes.
Communities like SO would improve if they not only discouraged negativity but also encouraged non-elite participation. HN is one such community that does this well and the quality of the content here speaks for itself.
EDIT: reword first sentence; change "old-hands" to "experienced contributors"; add comma in second sentence.
Most of the time people are verbally hostile towards you nothing terrible ends up happening so you eventually learn to ignore minor hostility. However if you had the sort of bad experiences minorities have, you would learn to be wary of minor hostility, as it is often the precursor to major hostility or even physical harm.
You know how evolutionary psychologists often attribute human stupidity to adaptations that made sense in prehistoric times? Like your instincts tell you sugar is good for you because it used to be found mostly on fruit and nutritious berries, but nowadays the instinct leads you to eat junk food. In the modern world sugar has nothing to do with high food quality (just the opposite) but the instinct remains.
For minorities, their instinct to recoil at minor hostility is like that, except that instead of an ancient adaptation to deal with the life at the Savannah, it is the habit that helped you keep your sanity this very morning at the office when your asshole coworker yelled at you. In Stack Overflow nobody is going to yell at you or punch you or try to get you fired, but the instinct remains.
Some people are also more prone to sunburn than others, but we don't say the sun needs to be less bright. You are in control of your own feelings. Yes, StackOverflow should generally have better language and reworked rules around content, voting and moderation, but that has nothing to do with how susceptible you are to comments on the internet.
Also why is it that minorities always comes down to not being male or white when half the planet is female and most of the planet is not white? Do we not have any other dimensions? It's a rather meaningless definition when used in context of a globally accessible site with anonymous user accounts where the audience already has a major commonality (interest in software development) that is far more inclusive than any irrelevant physical trait.
It may not be your problem or your responsibility to prevent other people's sunburns (they can buy their own sunscreen, right?) but I hope you realize that ignoring their preferences is shitty behaviour that will give you(r website) a bad reputation.
And it's not like protecting your conference from sunlight will benefit only the albinos. Sunburn resistance is not the same as immunity, so everyone benefits at least a little. Same with SO, even people with thick skin will benefit at least a little from a less toxic environment.
That argument is not entirely solid. After all the toxic environment is also the same environment that provides those answers. So if those two were positively correlated then decreasing toxicity could also drive down the answer quality. A cartoony scenario would be a stack overflow where everyone is busy assuring everyone else that their questions are good, non-stupid questions and they should be praised for asking them and wasting a lot of time on those instead of answering questions.
Of course we're unlikely to be at a global optimum here, so things can certainly be improved. You should just be more careful about analyzing those tradeoffs.
Yes, obviously. Personal responsibility instead of blaming others. In your scenario, some might like to be outside so how are you including them? That's the fallacy with trying to make everyone happy; it's impossible.
Anyways, that also was weird stretch of the analogy as it's the same as saying SO shouldn't allow any communication because some people may feel sad.
This thread is about people feeling that a comment was based on something when the reality is that they don't know. And because they don't know, saying it as fact doesn't make it so, hence we should not suddenly say that they are targeted just because they feel that they are targeted, even if they have a propensity to feel targeted more than others. Your feelings are your concern.
Because that use of language about marginalized/disadvantaged/underrepresented groups arose specifically in the context of racial minorities in the US, at a time when Whites were both an overwhelming majority and socially dominant it of proportion to their numerical dominance; the language is sometimes extended to contexts where “minority” is not strictly to accurate (though note that the article here does not make that error, it refers to “women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups”, not “minorities”.)
EDIT:
Also,
> If you have less tolerance, how is that anyone else's problem?
That someone doing unconsented harm is not absolved of responsibility for that harm because the victim is unusually susceptible is the moral principle underlying the eggshell rule [0], which applies widely in civil and criminal law, so it's not exactly a novel principle.
This isn't about society, it's about a website with worldwide access using anonymous usernames. Nobody is inherently disadvantaged. The exact issue is harsh replies and actions that stem from the gamification dynamics and strict moderation. It has nothing to do with physical traits of the user on either side, especially when users are anonymous. Minorities and marginalized groups are nice to mention in the current PC climate but have little do with the actual topic.
Law is based on provable damages, which is why it's particularly focused on physical harm. Your feelings are not included in that. Experiencing an emotion is not damage. Also tort law means the defendant had a duty to act in a certain way and failed to do so, with the plaintiff proving the failure of that duty led to the harm. Intent also matters a great deal so unless you can now derive and prove intentions and duty behind StackOverflow comments, this example does not apply to this topic.
Yes, and I answered your question about where the pattern of using “minorities” as it was used there came from.
> This isn't about society, it's about a website with worldwide access using anonymous usernames.
How is that not part of society?
> Nobody is inherently disadvantaged.
The issue with disadvantaged, underrepresented, and/or marginalized groups has very little to do with inherent disadvantage, and the suggestion that it centrally is about that is fairly broadly offensive, since it implies that such groups are generally inherently inferior.
> The exact issue is harsh replies and actions that stem from the gamification dynamics and strict moderation.
Whether or not that’s true, it had nothing to do with the question you posed and I answered, so I don't see why it is being offered in response.
> Law is based on provable damages,
True.
> which is why it's particularly focused on physical harm.
This is far less true.
> Your feelings are not included in that.
Yes, they are included in the scope of legally cognizable harms. While the eggshell rules name references physical vulnerability, civil and criminal law address (and the eggshell rule applies to) emotional injuries, as well.
> Experiencing an emotion is not damage.
Torts like those of intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress demonstrate the falsitt of this generalization of the law, as does the “suffering” part of “pain and suffering” damages in other torts.
You're reaching here and if you are more affected than average by comments from other people (on SO or life in general) then perhaps you should work on that instead of claiming emotional suffering.
As I expressly stated, to demonstrate that two moral principals that contradict claims made upthread are well established in our society: (1) that the particular sensitivity of a victim to harm from a particular wrong doesn't mitigate the wrongdoers responsibility for the harm, and (2) that experiencing adverse emotional states is a harm.
And couldn't they find a better person in this tech company to deliver this message than a white dude VP?
Then they explain that this is really, actually happening because the marginalized groups "do feel less welcome... because they tell us" (emphasis mine). Do these marginalized groups know how everyone else feels? Have the marginalized-but-anonymous users invented a telepathy device with which to gauge their feelings against others?
Please demonstrate how any Stack Overflow user can know that they feel something more or less than any other user.
The quote doesn't say women and PoC are broadly inexperienced, it says women, PoC, and the inexperienced are examples of marginalized groups on SO.
Call me a radical, but people should have a modicum of social responsibility towards each other.
> Some people are also more prone to sunburn than others, but we don't say the sun needs to be less bright.
Luckily, we don't need to, having invented sunscreen.
> You are in control of your own feelings.
No you're not. Feelings are sneaky that way.
> Also why is it that minorities always comes down to not being male or white when half the planet is female and most of the planet is not white?
The blog post doesn't refer to anyone as "minority", but as "marginalized".
And yes, feelings are completely in your head. Things happen in the world and your mind reacts a certain way. Nobody else knows how you will react nor do they have any control of your consciousness.
If you could "handle your feelings" as easily as putting on sunscreen, literally every psychotherapist would be out of work.
> And yes, feelings are completely in your head.
Anything you will ever perceive is "in your head". You don't control a lot of it. "Positive thinking" doesn't cure depression or schizophrenia.
> Nobody else knows how you will react nor do they have any control of your consciousness.
Human reactions are actually fairly predictable. Being rude, arrogant or condescending is generally off-putting. Some amount of control can be exerted as well, for instance, it will almost certainly be impossible for you to not briefly picture a TINY PINK ELEPHANT after having read this sentence.
If your emotions are subconscious and you yourself aren't fully in control then how could you possible blame someone else for them? If it's that simple to be affected then you could just as easily affect yourself back to the state you want to be in, hence it is a circular argument without basis.
The world happens. You react. Equip and train yourself to react differently if you don't like the outcomes.
Predictability does not mean causation, especially when it is not accurate 100% of the time and therefore subjective. Sure, when you yell at someone, they might become upset. But another person might not care at all. So are you now causing both anger and apathy in these individuals with the same statement? Or is it that they react as individuals instead and it's really under none of your control?
My point, if that hasn't been clear by now, is that your emotions are not under your control. Your physical reactions may or may not be.
> If your emotions are subconscious and you yourself aren't fully in control then how could you possible blame someone else for them?
People stimulate each other's emotions with their behavior, some behavior can certainly be measured to to elicit certain emotions. If I follow your argument, clearly people are in control of their behavior and they are also responsible for it (agreed). So, under certain circumstances, it should be possible to "blame" them, though I'm not focusing on that.
Your "solution" boils down to: "If you're so sensitive and not in control of your emotions, just go away." That's fine, but not every community needs to have such "low" standards.
> The world happens. You react. Equip and train yourself to react differently if you don't like the outcomes.
An online community is not "the world", we get to design such environments. In "the world", there are tigers and lions, but you wouldn't argue to set them loose on main street just to make people stronger and more vigilant, would you?
> Predictability does not mean causation, especially when it is not accurate 100% of the time and therefore subjective.
That's a pretty weak argument though, in "the world" you always have to go by approximations, even in science we struggle to remove subjectivity completely.
> Sure, when you yell at someone, they might become upset. But another person might not care at all.
Let's say I had the desire to punch a random person in the face, there's certainly an off-chance that some masochist would love to have this happen to them. It's clearly a subjective reaction. Yet, it's not acceptable to go out punching people, don't you agree?
> So are you now causing both anger and apathy in these individuals with the same statement? Or is it that they react as individuals instead and it's really under none of your control?
I must appeal to your common sense. If some behavior of yours causes, for example "50% anger, 30% apathy, 19% annoyance and 1% joy" across a selection of subjects, then the chance that any of it is not negative is 1%. Yelling at people probably isn't so far off from that, DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN? Sure, I can't predict with 100% certainty what the reaction will be, but if something is 99% bad, it'll better have some strong upside for me to accept it in my community. Yelling at people doesn't have that upside, it's generally frowned upon, so it's reasonable to not allow it. Of course, most people generally understand and follow that without it having to be made a rule.
Yes, there are obviously certain patterns of behavior and you shouldn't punch people, however it is completely within their control what they feel and do about it. They can choose to hit back, or ignore you. Just because everyone reacts with anger to something does not mean you must. It only means that it's a common reaction, nothing more, and has nothing to do with control over that action itself. They choose to do something, you can choose differently, even if you're 1 in a million. What about that is confusing?
Either you believe you have the will to control your emotions and actions or you don't. And if think you don't and it's really that simple to affect your emotions without any mental control, then you must also accept that you can impart that same effect by just doing different actions and making yourself feel differently.
I read some arguments that being drive-by downvoted without comments somehow made people unwelcomed. And you add to that that this is practically a form of PTSD.
If I am supposed to model people at the other end of the screen as "my downvote might trigger PTSD" then, mildly put, I do not find that model to be very helpful. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems like some sort of game-theoretic trap.
Disclaimer: I don't see myself as a kind person and asking me to spend extra mental energy just to be nice is like asking for a pound of my flesh. Thus the above may be motivated reasoning to ignore people who complain about the lack of kindness.
If you can't be kind, then the preferred action from you is for you to save your energy for the days when you can be kind. That's better for everyone involved.
It's looking for offense where there is none. Frankly, I have never seen racist comments on stackoverflow. I have seen curt, and even rude answers; but not bigotry.
At the risk of sounding intolerant, if for example, a black programmer takes personal offense at a brusque technical answer on SO, he/she can get the fuck over it. We are not on SO to talk about their insecurities. We are on SO to find answers to programming problems. It's not the community responsibility to tiptoe around a users self-esteem issues.
Again, this isn't to say SO couldn't be a kinder place, but dear god, spare us the bleeding heart spiel for once.
People are encouraged to stay on-topic (nowadays known as: cyber-bullying) rather than spamming the site with irrelevant personal details.
That has absolutely nothing to do with race or gender, and I still think it's for more insulting to imply that people in specific demographics are more sensitive or insecure.
The idea is not that they're 'fundamentally' more sensitive or insecure; it's that they're _empirically_ more sensitive and insecure, due to the circumstances of reality.
They also run polls among their users, I believe. It's easier to ask about gender/race in a poll than about unspecified insecurities.
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.
If some with a pseudonym like mine was mocked for asking a dumb question, their minority status would have nothing to do with it.
As an Australian, I'm a global minority and it might shock you but don't identify with many US cultural groups who are the overwhelming majority online.
Consider this recent question: "Should I start edx cs50 course before any other JavaScript course, or in the middle, or after?"
This person _should_ get downvoted and told that this is not an appropriate question. Hopefully they come around after a while and learn what kinds of questions are helpful for the _community_ at large. Does it suck that they feel unwelcome? Yes. But that doesn't mean users should be forced to "be nice" just because of it.
> the point of SO being a canonical source for generalized questions relating to CS/programming.
The point of SO is NOT to be a "canonical source for generalized questions [and answers] relating to CS/Programming".
In fact, if you ask a "generalized question" it will be smacked down as "too broad". If you ask a CS question, it will be downvoted as off-topic.
SO is a place to ask certain kinds of very specific and answerable questions. Anything outside of that narrow band (hell, even most stuff that's perfect appropriate) gets smugly dismissed by petty assholes.
The petty assholes who spend hours of their time tediously cultivating one of the world's most useful resources? Those petty assholes?
Regarding your point about CS, I meant something like "within the broad range of questions related to practical computer science, specifically programming." Yes, I know there's another Exchange site for more theoretical Computer Science topics, where some questions might be more appropriate...
It doesn't cost anything to be nice and to try and make the community feel more welcoming.
Deleted comments are essentially invisible to regular users, and even for deleted answers you have to go and dig to see offensive content.
> 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.
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.
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/).
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]
If people choose to avoid a group, while that group in no way excludes them, why keep blaming the group?
So I'm not "blaming the group", but instead I'm trying to make the point that when the current SO system is paired with a homogeneous user base will, it probably naturally become more an more homogeneous for the reasons stated above, unless an outside force enters the system.
I would argue that this isn't about fault or blame or guilt, but instead about deciding whether or not to take action to make SO a more inclusive place, especially for those who may be predisposed to feel exclusion in the context of SO.
Perhaps that was a mistake; I'll reconsider next time around.
When you tell someone they're sick, or unwelcome, or subject to bias, and especially if you're a neutral source, they're liable to believe you. The mind is incredibly suggestible.
So how much of these feelings are because we keep telling people that racism and other issues are a problem? I understand the impulse to not dismiss the problem, but it seems like feeling like you're surrounded by racists has to be almost as bad as the real thing.
Everyone on HN is almost the same in my head.
I am not even sure adding a profile picture would change that.
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=pr...
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.
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".
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.
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?
>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.
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.
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?
> 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.