> Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place
True. There's definitely an elitist undertone at Stack Overflow, and the voting system has a huge effect on that...
> 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, and generally my perception seems to be a disdain towards newer members in general, not ones from any particular group.
Trying to make this about minorities feels like a desperate attempt to fit in with the 'social justice' sphere, and to virtue signal to people on sites like Twitter.
Still, the rest of the article seems fairly sane, and I guess this point stands out above all:
> Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness
Because at the end of the day, we need to kill the 'brilliant jerk' archtype already. No, most intelligent people are not Dr House or Rick from Rick and Morty, and we shouldn't make the assumption that a community has to tolerate that sort of behaviour in order for it to be good. Moderate the community well, stop tolerating jerks because they're 'smart' and fix your voting systems, and Stack Overflow can easily become a great community to be part of again.
True. There's definitely an elitist undertone at Stack Overflow, and the voting system has a huge effect on that...
> 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, and generally my perception seems to be a disdain towards newer members in general, not ones from any particular group.
Trying to make this about minorities feels like a desperate attempt to fit in with the 'social justice' sphere, and to virtue signal to people on sites like Twitter.
Still, the rest of the article seems fairly sane, and I guess this point stands out above all:
> Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness
Because at the end of the day, we need to kill the 'brilliant jerk' archtype already. No, most intelligent people are not Dr House or Rick from Rick and Morty, and we shouldn't make the assumption that a community has to tolerate that sort of behaviour in order for it to be good. Moderate the community well, stop tolerating jerks because they're 'smart' and fix your voting systems, and Stack Overflow can easily become a great community to be part of again.