How does one join the new "working group"?

Question

In today's blog post Introducing “The Loop”: A Foundation in Listening, it is mentioned,

That’s why we’re creating a working group of users made up of people from all corners of the developer community — from folks new to programming, those who don’t participate in Stack Overflow but are passionate about programming, experienced Stack Overflow users, frequent contributors, and more. We’ll hand-select folks of diverse backgrounds who are excited to chat with us regularly about everything from new ideas to features, to how we communicate with the broader Stack Overflow community.

The summary further mentions that,

We’re compiling a small diverse group, including new users, power users, and moderators, to be a constant partner for feedback by Q1 2020.

What is the selection process for this "working group"? From the wording of the post (e.g. using terms like "hand-select", and mentioning that non-Stack Overflow users are expected to be recruited), it sounds like the process is likely to be somewhat opaque, but is there anything a "wannabe" member can do to express interest, market their qualifications, or achieve required prerequisites? That is, is there essentially nothing anyone can do but sit back and see if they are called, or is there anything a person who is interested in being part of this group can do to position themselves as a candidate?

• Are invitations expected to be sent out to people randomly selected out of big data databases?
• Will Stack Overflow be reaching out to specific organizations or programming personalities with requests for individual candidate referrals?
• Is this going to be an in-person recruitment thing, with Stack Overflow employees setting up booths at university campuses, job sites, conventions, etc. and trying to sign people up?
• Will recruitment happen more or less like a job listing, with resumes, interviews, white-board testing, background checks, etc.?
• Will being part of the working group actually be a staff position at the company?
• Is there a specific Stack Overflow site metric that will be considered of primary importance in qualifying for membership (e.g. main site reputation, helpful flag count, number of reviews performed, number of Meta posts, quality of Meta posts, not having been put in timed suspension too many times, etc.)?
• Is there essentially no hope of qualifying if one is not already famous?

Answer 1

I'll give you some tips - of the ha-ha-only-serious variety:

• Pretend to be concerned about gender and race issues. Use the words "diverse" and "inclusive" a lot. (Really, they're suckers for that.)
• Don't actually do anything useful about these issues, especially in real life. Alternatively, do something heavy-handed and self-aggrandizing.
• Have an active social-media presence and bring these issues up - but again, don't actually publicize activity that might actually change anything in the real world.
• Put a "my pronouns are etc. etc." in your profile.
• Do not be active on meta.stackexchange.com .
• Do not criticise SE Inc. policy.

I think that should get you past the front door. If you're not Caucasian(/White), or if you're Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Queer/etc - then you are a diversity-increaser, which really boosts your chances of making into that working group if you don't voice the wrong opinions.

Answer 2

My guess - an evil one.

Disclaimer: this is speculative and tongue-in-cheek. I've no idea what they will actually come up with, and very little interest at this point.

They could:

1. Have a blacklist of people who they definitely don't want to hear from (i.e. everybody who dared criticize or oppose any SE policy in the past few years) → filter those out
2. The rest is fair game, but with the following pre / post filters:
   • Pre-filter: the lower the reputation, the better. Users who are new to the network tend to dislike / misunderstand / not know or care about the rules that made the network (and especially, Stack Overflow) great. They are more malleable and will be less critical of whatever comes from SE management.
   • Post-filter #1: any user whose feedback does not align with whatever arbitrary set of decisions (i.e. pretty much anyone who displays any form of criticism other than some bland weaksauce potty-trained encouragement) → magically disappears from stats
   • Post-filter #2: diversity. Intended as an absolute value by most woke/politically correctness/identity politics advocates. So I would expect the final data to be "massaged" in order to have some artificial "parity", regardless of the actual stats from the working group's members. In hindsight, this might also apply as a pre-filter.

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As far as I can tell, there is no transparency, nor any willingness to display any, and no authoritative, impartial control planned for this.

Basically this feedback loop process will likely equate to whatever you find in big companies, whenever corporate HQ wants some fake encouragement from an imaginary "base", in order to reinforce/justify whatever current policies and new policies in the works.

SE is a private company, and they can afford to not be accountable on anything here at all. My feeling is that they will likely not be interested in making any of this transparent (otherwise, they would have done the hard work and talked to the actual community on meta).

Too cynical for you?

Just wait for the outcome.

Answer 3

Based on current behaviour I'm expecting them to recruit from the full range of people who toe the new company line slavishly.

Clearly from the continued lack of proper engagement with people in the community that is now happening here and happened previously on other sites and which drives people away without fail, SE is far more interested in new user churn than any real sense of community. If you're an old hand on any of the sites then it's over, ladies and gentlemen.

Answer 4

There will be no working group.

The suggestions & feedback moving forward will be a black box. Upcoming changes will be released with a thanks to the "working group" (sometimes referred to as "members of the community" or simply "the community").

Of course, no one will know what kind of feedback is given or by how many individuals.

Seriously though, IMO the working group does not matter if there is no way to see the specific feedback the "working group" has given. How will anyone know their apparent feedback is being used?

Answer 5

• Is this going to be an in-person recruitment thing, with Stack Overflow employees setting up booths at university campuses, job sites, conventions, etc. and trying to sign people up?

• Will being part of the working group actually be a staff position at the company?

No to these two points. While I don't work for the company, it's my educated guess that they're not going to give up the whole community which provides feedback for free in favour of a small group of paid positions.

Ask yourself, why would they spend money if they can get what they want for free?

Answer 6

My guess is that they have a list of different backgrounds they want people from, e.g. something like:

• Users who are new programmers and use SO avidly
• Users who are new programmers, but don't use SO
• Users who are experienced programmers and use SO avidly
• Users who are experienced programmers and don't use SO
• People who hate SO in its current form (with subgroups by reasons)
• People who love SO in its current form
• (Meta regulars)
• (People who hate meta)

The goal seems to be to create a group of people they can run suggestions past that can pre-inform them of the reaction they'll get and provide feedback ahead of time, to avoid bubble-thinking and make more equitable decisions.

That is my most charitable interpretation I can come up with, and I'm not yet ready to assume they're making all this fuss to select yes-people who only further confirmation bias.

Answer 7

We’ll share regular updates about what we learn through our research, as well as create a new working group of users that we’ll lean on for regular feedback. This working group will be made up of a diverse group of folks excited to see Stack Overflow grow.

This is a doomed attempt to form a type of club. Those who are not a part of it will most certainly feel unwelcome or exposed should they want to join and are not selected.

Seriously, how are you legitimately going to justify the appointment of one person over another? If you are going to create of group of power users, which my gut feeling says that is what might happen, they should be elected.

If it is going to be a combination of members and CM/SE employees this would be fine by me so long as the members are elected. I made this same point regarding the moderation of the TL 2.

Answer 8

From the blog post linked in OP (Emphasis added):

Overall, both anonymous and registered users are highly satisfied with Stack Overflow and tell us that their favorite things about our community include finding solutions to their problems, vast access to information, and the knowledgeable people who participate. 

Hand-selecting the group allows this outcome. If just any Tom, Dick or Harry were allowed to join, I guess the stats would tell another story, since it just might be that vocal contrarians would be the first in line to join.