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The story so far:
Stack Overflow, a site where professional and enuthiast programmers ask and answer programming questions, entered into culture war with an infamous blog post announcing that "Stack Overflow Isn't Very Welcoming. It's Time for That to Change.", in which they come out of the gate accusing their own userbase of problems, saying "Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups."
This is largely in response to a blog post based on several tweets: https://medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-stack-overflow-c46414a34a52
People didn't like that, and did what they could in opposition to this new direction. See here:
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366665/does-stack-exchange-really-want-to-conflate-newbies-with-women-people-of-color
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366858/when-is-stack-overflow-going-to-stop-demonizing-the-quality-concerned-users-who
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366645/please-ask-if-there-is-a-problem-before-telling-us-there-is-a-problem
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366692/how-do-you-know-stack-overflow-feels-unwelcoming
Users felt demonized, their contributions belittled, their efforts squandered. They felt insulted to be called racists and sexists based on tweets and blog posts.
So what did Stack Overflow learn from this?
Well, fast forward to now: Someone tweeted this:
"When people seem confused about why Stack Overflow might not be the most welcoming/comfortable place for people to find answers to programming questions, show them this:"
The original tweet was deleted, so all we have now is an image of it. If you can't tell, these are questions that appear in the lower-right hand corner, as part of "Hot Network Questions", which feature the "hottest" questions from other Q&A sites. The two questions here with the blue icon are from "Interpersonal Skills", where people ask how to handle interpersonal conflict.
Then, within the hour, a Stack Overflow dev jumps on the opportunity, pushed a change in order to completely remove Interpersonal Skills' eligibility from appearing in the sidebar.
Users had been talking for YEARS about the HNQ, and all those comments by actual veteran users were ignored for years. But then one nobody on Twitter complains to the wind and then bam, within the hour, changes are made.
That is a ridiculous slap in the face to the users. They weren't happy about it. They still aren't.
Staff member Tim Post created a discussion post on the subject. It currently sits at -15 (edit: now at -79), while posts that call him out on completely missing the point are at 298 (edit: 334).
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/316934/revisiting-the-hot-network-questions-feature-what-are-our-shared-goals-for-ha
So what will Stack Overflow learn from this? Probably nothing.
What should WE learn from this?
1. Consult your community before making decisions.
Nobody likes feeling blindsided by a change that effects them. Communities do, however, like feeling involved in their community, and that means they need to be involved in the decision making process. If communities are on-board with the decision, if they feel like it's also their decision too, your community will be happy.
2. Listen to your community, not twitter.
Unless you own twitter, your users are not twitter's users. Twitter does not pay your bills, your users do. Listen to them first, and do what they want. If you listen to twitter or hitpieces on Medium, your users will be upset that they were ignored.
3. Don't make the same mistake twice.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Users have only so much that they can forgive, and once that tolerance is used up, they will be gone, and they will be gone forever. Without your users, you are nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if users end up quitting the site (in larger numbers) after this. People are certainly upset, and they're only upset because they care. To dismiss this would be absurd.
So that's this week's "Companies mistreat their users" story. See you next time something awful happens, which shouldn't be too long...
Stack Overflow, a site where professional and enuthiast programmers ask and answer programming questions, entered into culture war with an infamous blog post announcing that "Stack Overflow Isn't Very Welcoming. It's Time for That to Change.", in which they come out of the gate accusing their own userbase of problems, saying "Too many people experience Stack Overflow¹ as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups."
This is largely in response to a blog post based on several tweets: https://medium.com/@Aprilw/suffering-on-stack-overflow-c46414a34a52
People didn't like that, and did what they could in opposition to this new direction. See here:
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366665/does-stack-exchange-really-want-to-conflate-newbies-with-women-people-of-color
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366858/when-is-stack-overflow-going-to-stop-demonizing-the-quality-concerned-users-who
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366645/please-ask-if-there-is-a-problem-before-telling-us-there-is-a-problem
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366692/how-do-you-know-stack-overflow-feels-unwelcoming
Users felt demonized, their contributions belittled, their efforts squandered. They felt insulted to be called racists and sexists based on tweets and blog posts.
So what did Stack Overflow learn from this?
Well, fast forward to now: Someone tweeted this:
"When people seem confused about why Stack Overflow might not be the most welcoming/comfortable place for people to find answers to programming questions, show them this:"
The original tweet was deleted, so all we have now is an image of it. If you can't tell, these are questions that appear in the lower-right hand corner, as part of "Hot Network Questions", which feature the "hottest" questions from other Q&A sites. The two questions here with the blue icon are from "Interpersonal Skills", where people ask how to handle interpersonal conflict.
Then, within the hour, a Stack Overflow dev jumps on the opportunity, pushed a change in order to completely remove Interpersonal Skills' eligibility from appearing in the sidebar.
Users had been talking for YEARS about the HNQ, and all those comments by actual veteran users were ignored for years. But then one nobody on Twitter complains to the wind and then bam, within the hour, changes are made.
That is a ridiculous slap in the face to the users. They weren't happy about it. They still aren't.
Staff member Tim Post created a discussion post on the subject. It currently sits at -15 (edit: now at -79), while posts that call him out on completely missing the point are at 298 (edit: 334).
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/316934/revisiting-the-hot-network-questions-feature-what-are-our-shared-goals-for-ha
So what will Stack Overflow learn from this? Probably nothing.
What should WE learn from this?
1. Consult your community before making decisions.
Nobody likes feeling blindsided by a change that effects them. Communities do, however, like feeling involved in their community, and that means they need to be involved in the decision making process. If communities are on-board with the decision, if they feel like it's also their decision too, your community will be happy.
2. Listen to your community, not twitter.
Unless you own twitter, your users are not twitter's users. Twitter does not pay your bills, your users do. Listen to them first, and do what they want. If you listen to twitter or hitpieces on Medium, your users will be upset that they were ignored.
3. Don't make the same mistake twice.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Users have only so much that they can forgive, and once that tolerance is used up, they will be gone, and they will be gone forever. Without your users, you are nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if users end up quitting the site (in larger numbers) after this. People are certainly upset, and they're only upset because they care. To dismiss this would be absurd.
So that's this week's "Companies mistreat their users" story. See you next time something awful happens, which shouldn't be too long...