Re:Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That ...
by the8472 on Thursday April 26, 2018 @06:35PM
(#16936578)
> 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.
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.