The idea of a community-driven and self-moderated website is fantastic… but that involves, well, people. And as we know people sometimes can be complicated.
Intentionally or not, we all make mistakes. Besides our mistakes, we are all in different stages of life, education, maturity, etc, and we all have different morals, ethics, baggage, etc, creating an infinite array of possible mindsets. That is a good thing, I suppose, unless an unprepared person end-up somehow raising to a leadership position over you.
Suppose that you own a restaurant and that you have spent all of your money and energy trying to make it successful. How careful would you be while choosing a general manager? But what if the role of a general manager needed to be granted to whoever left the biggest amount of good ideas on the feedback-box in front of the store? Well, things could go two ways: One, you end up with a good leader; or two, you end up with a bad leader. But given how important your business is to you, I suppose that you don’t want to take that chance.
Bringing it back to StackOverflow, this platform is extremely important to the IT community and, therefore, to the whole world. However, the fundamental principle behind the score-system is that “more points” is equal to best moderators… which is a false premise.
As a frequent user of the platform for over ten years, I have seen a rise of unqualified people to the higher ranks. But not necessarily unqualified in terms of technical expertise, but mostly in terms of leadership. The scoring algorithm – as far as I know – focuses completely on technical expertise, which is perfectly understandable. After all, how could we assess anything else? I am giving some ideas below, but I am not quite sure. Yet, the fact stands that pure technical-knowledge is not enough to make a good leader. Being a good moderator takes more than memorizing the manual of a given technology.
Could StackOverflow adjust people’s score based on other criteria, such as:
(a) GitHub repos, with its amount of stars, followers, forks, and commits?
(b) LinkedIn profile, years in the field, recommendations, course, etc?
(c) Posts on Medium and other outlets?
We all know that gamification is a great way to increase participation. However, in that case, it might be fair (and a good idea) to have users lose big chunks of points when making big mistakes. For example, by closing a question prematurely or by presenting troll behavior, users should lose more points than when answering a question wrong. This risk of gain and loss is fundamental for real gamification and would make moderators think carefully before acting. But that is just an idea and would require much deeper scrutiny.
StackOverflow is a great tool, very helpful indeed. I really enjoy seeing its evolution throughout the years. The phenomenon that I have identified doesn’t take anything from its incredible value. It really is a precious tool for the IT community. However, it is hurting. In fact, that is the reason why I am taking the time to write this post… to raise awareness about the problem and hopefully bring this issue to StackOverflow’s attention.
StackOverflow is becoming a little bit like Twitter and Facebook… where people is losing the professional perspective and letting their id-and-super-ego to run freely. Even writing this post is making me anxious, as I already can see the “truth-police” seeking to crucify me for expressing my personal observations on my own website.
StackOverflow is sick. And while I don’t care about Twitter and Facebook, I do care about StackOverflow. The beautiful initial idea behind the platform is now harmed by the natural progression of things. Where humans are involved, things will naturally tend to these kinds of issues. We can now assume that this is just how things are… or we can search for solutions.
Many code-smart people (yet bad thinkers and bad leaders) have raised to power within StackOverflow. That is my professional assessment. And those people, like all bad leaders, they are quick to pass judgment on other people’s ideas, have difficulty to see different points of view, suffocate discussions, cut-short new investigations, and are ultimately discouraging people from participating.
Do I have data to support this? No. But since I noticed this phenomenon I have been asking related questions to many programmers that I know. For working as a programmer for many decades, and for being now a Computer Science Professor of a major University, I do have a good range of contacts in the area. And so far, one hundred percent of the IT specialists that I’ve talked to have confirmed: People are progressively getting afraid to participate on Stack Overflow because they fear the reaction that high-rank moderators might have. Nobody wants to be publicly shamed.
People are progressively getting afraid to participate on Stack Overflow because they fear the reaction that high-rank moderators might have. Nobody wants to be publicly shamed.
Honestly, even though a high score on StackOverflow has some weight, that is not as significant as some people might think. Some of the best programmers that I know are shy and rather not immortalize their words on the web. I also know amazing programmers that are just too busy and only participate in it sporadically, not enough to accumulate a high score. So, while I understand why they can’t be made moderators, I know for sure that the things they say should be taken more seriously. But how can we achieve that?
By logic, we can also assume that the opposite is also true. Some people have a lot of free time (you can infer what that means) and might only use the platform as a way to make a name for themselves – and I am not arguing if that is good or bad. The point is that it is fair to infer that – like in politics – many of those who rise to the top are not necessarily the best ones for the office.
We need to be clear about the fact that a high-score doesn’t make a person an authority in the subject necessarily. And even if it did, it certainly doesn’t make that person qualified to lead/moderate a forum, necessarily. A great score might imply that the person’s answer is probably a technically sound answer, but doesn’t necessarily imply that they are good advisors/leaders to steer the conversation.
As an educator, I always treat every question with the utmost respect… because I know that everybody is watching, and depending on how I deal with those questions, the whole class can feel encouraged/discouraged from participating. Also, I can’t count the number of times a student has asked me a question that most people would classify as “stupid”, but because I took it seriously and gave it the proper attention, I was able to find a unique reasoning behind it and, therefore, an opportunity for innovation or for deepening my own understanding of the topic. So whether the question comes from a confused beginner or from a low-score expert in the field, they should all be treated with the proper care, both because of the psychological effects the answers might cause and for the possible innovation that might be hidden behind the words.
Participating in StackOverflow is not the only way of getting back to the community or prove your know-how. But I suppose that StackOverflow’s algorithm only takes internal participation into account. In the early 2000s, when I also considered creating some self-managed websites, I also envisioned the algorithm in the same way. But I never considered how it could potentially alienate great contributors… and cause for bad leaders to rise to the top. Nonetheless, nowadays we do count with a much richer ecosystem that can help us circumvent the problem.
Summarizing: Many “moderators” nowadays are too quick to close a post, to say that the question was already asked somewhere else, to say that it is off-topic, and so on and so forth. I know that this work is important to keep Stack Overflow clean and relevant. But more and more I see moderators lacking the maturity, elegance, flexibility, professionalism, and cordiality that we would expect from them. They act presumptuous, not giving a chance to people and their ideas. Their words can sometimes be perceived as arrogance. They know a lot about the related technology, but they don’t display the traits of a leader, causing an environment that doesn’t favor communication and kill potential new ideas.
Maybe you are thinking: “I never saw that happening”. That is a very interesting point. Certain technologies, for one reason or another, have end-up with a great community and a respectful culture. This would be a great subject for another post: How do different technologies end-up with different types of communities and internal culture? I might write about that soon. For now, enough to say that the sickness that I am describing in this post doesn’t necessarily happen on all channels (topics) within StackOverflow.
If you are fortunate enough to be part of a great sub-community within Stack Overflow, this post will probably sound unreasonable to you. But trust me when I say that there are some topics within the platform where trolls reign freely. They are so fierce on their assertions and their way of thinking… that I rather not even mention the names of those communities… to avoid backslash. I am sincerely tired of trolls who cowardly hide behind screens as an excuse to be aggressive. Also, I am not interested in starting abrasive/unfruitful debates online.
So, all said and done, how can we fix this? I have some ideas, as you saw before… but only the StackOverflow team, with their real and in-depth understanding of the platform’s ins-and-outs, it’s score-system, and the past obstacles, will be able to really come with a real solution. My goal at this time is to simply bring awareness about this digital-disease and show how it is harming one of the programmers’ best friend: StackOverflow.
I don’t expect that only ethically and morally up-standard people will participate in StackOverflow. Also, I am not so soft that I can’t face opposition and hard words. That is not the point. It is about the whole community and how things are beyond the healthy threshold of ideological discussions. Plus, depending on how many points the person has, they can quickly close a topic, before any real dialog takes place, and maybe even be rewarded for that? I am not sure. So not only is the environment becoming more hostile, but also cutting off possible great discussions. The need for moderators is legitimate, but the way the work is conducted needs checks and balances and we need ways to filter out those who severely lack the necessary soft skills.
The need for moderators is legitimate, but the way the work is conducted needs checks and balances and we need ways to filter out those who severely lack the necessary soft skills.
The IT world grows through the continuous pursuit of “doing things differently”. New ways of seeing things lead to innovation and disruption. Confusing questions might lead to the discovery of better ways of doing things. A fresh and unorthodox mindset could be the spark to the next best thing. But some moderators, who put themselves as the truth-police, might be just discouraging enough to quench the fire of progress.
A person who memorized the syntax of a computer language is not necessarily the best person to say if a question has a deeper/hidden value in it. During my 20+ years of computer programming, I noticed that code-focused people are frequently not great on identifying potential, seeing beyond the code, understanding underlying problems, and being respectful/courteous with others. And when they rise to power, they tend to rule the only way they know: with 1s and 0s.
Fabio Nolasco