StackOverflow veterans: "this is an elitist meritocracy, so play by the rules to earn reputation and practice the same gatekeeping behavior that we have established for years." Then they wonder why mostly white male US academic guys keep engaging in their community.

Yes, it's "stackoverflow again".

Another one of those sites you can't really avoid as a dev, too good to ignore, to bad not to get upset about. Maybe also a mirror of antisocial patterns still prevalent in society and especially in the developer industry.

sorry, but based on the unqualified people in the developer realm, i seriously think this community needs MORE gatekeeping to keep people out who couldn't find their own ass if you tell them to sit on their hands.

@tosensei StackOverflow could definitely need both a different kind of gatekeeping and a review of some of their silly rules and counterproductive enticements, like newbies can write answers but not comments, or those "just a test" questions in the review queues supposed to train the reviewers get the exact same mindset like everyone that came before them.

Despite trying to gatekeep, the site is still full of useless noise, bad advice and outdated code snippets, while at the same time many relevant questions and good solution approaches get lost before anyone finds the time to make them fit the expectations so that they don't get downvoted and deleted.

Trying to participate in the review queues is such a bad experience for so many different reasons all at once.

personally, i think those are two of the most important methods - and the only thing in the review queues i find to be a bad experience is simply how _much_ of the stuff ot be reviewed is garbage.

(personally, i'd make "taking the tour" and "searching for duplicates before posting" mandatory for newbies, not just recommended.)

"Then they wonder why mostly white male US academic guys keep engaging in their community."

If the gatekeeping is done by academy people I see that as a plus. That's the people you want help from, not just any noob who think he can code because he owns a mac.

Anyway, StackOverflow is just *one* place. In the name of informational diversity, I don't see a problem with having a gatekeeping place next to all the non-gatekeeped places that are on the internet. Feel free to ask for coding advice on r/programming, but your mileage may vary...

You're free to ask your programming hints from people who don't have the skills for SO, but are lesbian black women. Let's see how far it will get you.

I'm free to ask anyone, but not on StackOverflow where you are sure to mark my question as off-topic or recommend deletion for any other far-fetched reason.

@fraktalisman You're experiencing gatekeeping from the other side.

Bad for you, good for SO, and even better for the vast majority who use SO as intended, via search engines, and don't have to waste their time with hits on your low quality questions.

They do such a good job at the gates, they sure know better than me how all the obscure React and jQuery bullshit posts have more academic value than my contribution would have had.

But nevermind. Have fun with your fellow alumni!

@fraktalisman who would have thought a site specifically from programming would be full of people who think like robots 😉

> Maybe also a mirror of antisocial patterns still prevalent in [...] the developer industry.

Well, the tech industry was built by antisocial nerds for antisocial nerds, so I'm not sure why you say it like it's a bad thing. And all in all things worked pretty well until the normals arrived and shit the place up with their mindless socializing.

Honestly I like the gatekeeping. It may have the downside of sometimes being cruel to honestly curious beginners who simply don't know how to independently research and experiment yet, but...

That downside is FAR outweighed by the tremendous upside of beating down questions like "helo sirs I got core dump on homework assignment plaese fix [no context given, no code given either]"