May’s “The Loop” blog post was just posted, you can read it here. A popular response last month to our post about how we receive, prioritize and implement feedback was a question around how this framework gets utilized in the practical sense. We thought that Dark Mode was a great feature to dig down into as it was so widely requested and anticipated.
We hope you enjoy this month’s post, please leave any questions or comments you have in this thread and we will respond ASAP.
Since we’ve launched Dark Mode, our data team has been heads down on analyzing the effect to the network. Not only has it led to the most signups Stack Overflow has experienced in a month, we’ve also seen a rise in engagement around the network.
It seems odd that the analysis suggests Dark Mode led to a huge increase in sign-ups. I... think there's an issue of conflating correlation and causation here. The huge increase in sign-ups as well as engagement happened at the same time that a majority of the world was directed to work from home -- where now IT policies aren't as strict and more people can A) use StackExchange while working and B) have more fluid integration of free time and work time, possibly leading them to look up something for work and take a few minutes to answer questions or otherwise participate.
I doubt Dark Mode is leading to a huge increase in signups and engagement. It's much more likely that pandemic-induced change in work patterns is the driving factor. But either way, the data does not lead itself to the conclusion that Dark Mode had any impact because it isn't controlling for other, conflated changes.
I'd suggest not buying into that conclusion too deeply without a lot more work to separate other possible causes.
You mentioned paying off a lot of technical debt to implement Dark Mode on Stack Overflow. How much of this effort would be useful in expanding Dark Mode to the entire network? For example, would you need to re-implement it mostly from scratch on each individual site, or is there now a Dark Mode Module that can be installed, tested, and tweaked pretty much anywhere you want to with a much smaller amount of effort than was necessary to implement it the first time around for Stack Overflow?
Cross-post from “The Loop May 2020” contains inaccessible image with no transcription, which was closed as a duplicate of this question.
bug accessibility status-completed
In the latest blog post, The Loop, May 2020: Dark Mode, there's an image directly after the first line. It contains a chart and looks like it contains useful information, which is nice.
However, if you can't see images (or are using a screen reader or something), then... you can't access any of the information on the chart. This is what it looks like if I disable images:
This is a regression of sorts; in the Q2 Community Roadmap blog post, there was a very nice chart included that was not in image format (which has the additional benefit of being able to copy-paste, and of being dark when dark mode is enabled):
Could you please either at least add alt text for the image in the May 2020 Loop blog post, or, preferably, abandon the chart-in-images thing and just use the text charts?
I feel a bit torn here.
On the one hand, when some app/OS supports "dark mode", I typically give it a try, and very often (not always) stick with it. So, yes, having that choice is a very useful thing. And yes, I understand that it was a lot of effort, and that maybe other people were really waiting for it. So I get why you dedicate so much "blog space" talking about it.
But then: I think I never abandoned a tool because it didn't support a "dark mode". I pick my tools, and my online communities based on their core features, and the value they give to me.
Example: I recently stopped using quora, and sent 4000+ answers down the drain. Not because quora doesn't support dark mode, but because I got fed up with many subtle technical issues, and most importantly: because moderation there is absolutely intransparent and inconsistent. And because there is basically zero open communication between "the company" and "the community".
Meaning: I see different priorities, especially fors stackoverflow, like:
Thus personally, I would have wished for these things being addressed before "dark mode".
On the other hand: neat UIs attract users, and users ideally translate to revenue, which pays your salaries and the infrastructure that runs our content. So I accept this (imho: over)focusing on "dark mode" as real world necessity.
Beyond that: I very much appreciate that blog post. I like how you use that specific feature to show us how you collected different sorts of feedback.
That is the thing that really matters to me here: that you are transparent about that process!
Keep doing that, and we will be with you.
And yes, I agree with other users: I very much doubt that your new "dark mode" send so many new users to stackoverflow. I find it more likely that "corona" driving millions of people into "isolation" has something to do with that spike.
In April 2019, a user opened a GitHub issue for a dark theme on our repository for Stacks, our design system for Stack Overflow. It wasn’t the first time we’d heard the request. Having a design system like Stacks made this much more of an attainable feature. While there was still a lot of debt to be paid down, a large portion of Stack Overflow is implemented using Stacks. The issue got a lot of traction quickly and became the highest voted issue to date (well, the most thumbs up emoji) all of this brought this option front of mind for lots of people.
Okay, so far so good.
Dark Mode is the #1 requested feature in the history of our Meta Stack Overflow site. It’s a thread that has gotten revisited quite a few times over the years. The topic was first brought up nearly six years ago and is one of our top voted questions on Meta Stack Overflow.
Uh, okay now I sort of have a problem with this.
The problem I have is that this reinforces the idea that you don't listen to us on meta. On meta, the issue appears to be ignored for years. However, the minute the issue is raised on Github then you decide to take action.
Now, to be fair, the original meta post was tagged as status-declined in 2014--shortly after it was asked. It's not as if it was sitting out there totally ignored for years. You guys made clear your intentions to not add it in at the time.
Personally, I believe your intentions here were good. However, it looks bad. The issue of you guys not listening to meta is still a sore spot among users. This just feels like another example of you ignoring us on meta yet again and just doing your own thing.
There's nothing you can do about this particular situation now. However, I'd appreciate it if you were more careful not to do this in the future. And, to your credit, it is clear you have tried to change your old ways. I see Yakov Ellis and other CM team members addressing issues as they come up and tagging them appropriately. So I'm personally hopeful that you have already made this adjustment and changed your ways. In that case, I recon you could sum this up as keep up the good work (responding to feature requests and bug reports) and be careful not to appear as subverting meta again.
