Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming. It’s Time for That to Change.

// , Maybe there could be a "FriendlinessOverflow" to complement the Q&A site?

Its symbol could be a muffin with rainbow icing.

I would love a site like that.

“There’s not a Hand in this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.”–Josiah Bounderby in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

But seriously, his quasi-Bounderbyisms aside, Jeff Atwood, the founder of the StackOverflow site, has a point.

StackOverflow brings the best to its readers as an aggressively curated Wiki masquerading as a Q&A site.

This means that some content will get rejected. Plenty of mine has been. And some people will, in turn, feel rejected.

And if you try a search query in other, less curated fora, I think you might agree that a lot of the value of StackOverflow is what is not on it.

My biggest pet peeve is when you have the same question that needs to be answered, but all you can find is snark. So it's not only affecting the original poster, it's affecting everyone who stumbles upon it.

I stopped posting on any of their sites about 4 years ago due the issues mentioned in the blog post. Their sites have become a cesspool of arrogant jerks and I think they'll have a very difficult time changing that.

I love the idea but... we'll need good luck for that to change

I have actively not asked questions of SO because of how rough it can be. Luckily most of the issues I have, so many others have already had.

I think in general the programming / it community has an issue regarding elitism and newcomer acceptance.

If I look back, RTFM was a really often reply on lots of forums regarding beginner questions.

The main thing to keep in mind is that they actually acknowledged it's an issue. I'm not really a contributor, but somehow I'm in the top 83% and I think that speaks for itself on how hard it is to bring new people in.

Interesting blog post and good initiative from Stack Overflow to make it more welcoming.

The biggest problem I have seen with it are people downvoting or closing questions from newbies who don't have any code yet because they don't know where to start. That is very unwelcoming.

I think part of the problem was Stack Overflow's own usage rules / guidelines that questions needed to be specific and have code etc, and many moderators where happy just to post those rules as a comment rather than helping the newbie start off on the right track, getting them to the point where they can have a go at writing some code and ask further questions for help with it if needed.

I noticed a few weeks ago when I was doing something on SO - I can't remember whether I was writing an answer or editing a question in the queue - and a side panel appeared saying a lot of helpful things about how to help new users without being condescending.

I remember thinking that was a good idea both as it stood and as a healthy reminder to people who might tend to be antagonistic.

I only saw it the once and don't think it appeared in relation to anything specific I was doing. The language it used was very similar to this linked post.

If someone asks a question that either makes no sense, isn't appropriate for the forum, or the person doesn't seem to have even tried at all, I see a few good options.

• Do and say nothing
• Edit the question, if you're sure you understand what is meant and how to make it clearer
• Leave a tactful comment that explains why you don't think the question is answerable. You don't have to be over-the-top nice, just don't be rude. IOW, don't say, "That makes no sense." Say, "It's not clear what you're trying to do."

The hard part is that you have to do something with questions that are hopeless. You don't want them showing up in search results. When you look at downvoting, the intent is actually good, because it comes from multiple people. It just feels awful.

Perhaps those questions should be tagged so that they appear in a different section, like "Questions Needing Clarification." It's functionally the same as closing the question, but it's nicer. It would feel like an open-ended offer of help to the one asking. We want to help - could you just make the question clearer? It's like putting a cat in one of those shelters where they never get killed, just cheaper.

Maybe instead of downvotes they could have pre-worded comments that users add and increment. It functions similarly to the downvote, but it's less discouraging and takes the place of derisive comments. Instead of, we hate you, -5, you're closed, it's "Our community wants to help you, but several members have determined that your question may not have a clear answer because..." And then it's left open for them to fix it.

Wrong forum? "That may be an excellent question, but this forum is for a particular type of question. Perhaps you could post it in XYZ forum, or change it to ask a more specific technical question."

You can say anything if you say it nicely.

This type of attitude and behavior isn't isolated to SO. I genuinely think it's an industry wide issue. In particular the OSS community is, in my opinion, much worse. I have a decade of experience programming but I barely consider contributing to open source projects because of how I "feel" when I read github issues. People are extremely curt and standoffish. Yes, you're right, yes you sound intelligent, but you're a bit of an asshole.