Stack Overflow Is Full Of Elitist Jerks?

Stack overflow posted on their blog yesterday, “Stack Overflow isn’t very welcoming. It’s time for that to change.”

At first glance, it seems weird that gender and race are mentioned in the blog. Through all of the stack overflow content I have seen I have never had any indication of the gender or race of a poster. I don’t think that race or gender has anything to do with the problem.

Many people, including me, use Stack Overflow quite a bit. I think there are many types of people that use stack overflow. Some are the type that find it through Google search results, some are the type that post questions, some are the type that helpfully answer questions, and apparently some are the type that would rather answer questions by pointing you to lmgtfy.

After reading this Reddit thread where I first stumbled upon this blog post, I have come to the conclusion that maybe the way Stack Overflow regulates its content is part of the problem. A lot of people were complaining about getting immediate down votes with no explanation when posting questions that they were sure were not duplicates. I also hear of many gaming the system to boost their account rating since some employers may use an applicant’s Stack Overflow account their hiring process.

And many see this as Stack Overflow in a nutshell. (Contains profanity)