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I've read a couple comments where people have said they won't submit feedback to The Loop because they oppose the initiative. But boycotting The Loop won't help - it will just silence your voice. If you oppose the recent changes to the site, I suggest you submit honest feedback saying so. If you don't want to specify your demographics, select "Other".
They can take away our community but they can't take away our voices. Use yours.
How is it that they don't already know?
I would like to respond specifically to a (now deleted) comment below the question. It read:
I will wait and see. If it turns out that the loop is not just another weapon to attack the grossly oppressed minority of white, male curators, then I might participate.
Firstly, I am clearly aware that this comment will be widely seen as racist. I've gotten used to the idea that I now live in a world where everything about my culture is criticized as oppressive. I'm uncomfortable enough with that idea that I've stopped listening to and watching the news.
Stack Exchange was the one place I could go on the Internet where I could participate without having to be bombarded with my white privilege. Now that is gone.
Given this backdrop, how should I respond to a survey that says "Tell us what you like and dislike about Stack Overflow, but first, tell us your race and gender?"
I firmly believe that the (mostly) white guys who curate content on Stack Overflow (if that is, in fact, what the demographic is) have a duty and responsibility to see to it that it's a nice place to be, for everyone. And for years, we failed at that, as evidenced by the numerous posts on the Internet that call Stack Overflow an elitist club. That is the real problem with Stack Overflow's image, not pronouns.
It's partly the community's fault for being so snarky, and partly the corporation's fault for not finding better ways to on-board new people.
The Loop is a joke. Or, at least, it is obviously not a request for feedback. There's one broad, vague, multiple-choice thing about "how satisfied are you" with answers ranging from "extremely satisfied" to "extremely dissatisfied". This isn't real feedback, it's a Buzzfeed quiz. But fine, say that might give them an idea of how the people who bother to answer that feel. Of course, those who bother to answer are probably going to be the more active users anyway (cause why would you bother, otherwise?) and if SE doesn't know a large part of the active user base is Extremely Dissatisfied by now, I give up.
Then, there are two places for "feedback" in that mini-survey: two tiny text-boxes, one asking "what do you like about SO" and one asking "what do you not like". That's no place for any real level of feedback. They're obviously not asking for considered, well-structured feedback, they want some blurb.
Now, to be fair, Meta is a great place for considered, well-structured feedback, but of late it has instead been filled with vitriol and attacks. So this isn't good either and that's on us, not SE. But replacing this with two tiny text boxes with no support for formatting, no links, no real space to express yourself, that is a clear indication that the company doesn't actually want any feedback at all. I mean, seriously, look at this thing (sorry it's so faint, that's how it appears when you don't have a question focused):
That's the level of feedback you want? One vague answer and two boxes that seem to have been designed to make sure nobody actually writes anything long enough to be useful?
And, of course, the whole thing is focused entirely on SO, completely ignoring the rest of the network. The blog post even goes as far as equating "users" with "developers". When they talk about how they will ask for "feedback" from "the community", they say (emphasis mine):
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.
So what I got from the blog post + survey link is:
Now, I get that SO is what puts money on the table and is the largest site by a few orders of magnitude, so of course it will always be getting more attention. But really, you claim you're trying to fix the disconnect with the community and yet, you focus on developers only and give us that joke of a survey as a way of showing how our voice matters?
While I didn't boycott the survey, I did give feedback that was as useful as the survey allowed me to make it (so, useless), I do feel it was a waste of my time and there's no point in doing it at all. So yeah, don't boycott it, but don't think it is anything useful either.
You don’t “fix” a rigged game by playing it and hoping that your earnest participation will somehow positively affect the people who rigged it. All participation does is reward bad behavior.
How someone chooses to spend their time is none of my business. However, the idea that feeding a bad system is better than refusing to waste your time on it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It’s rarely a good idea to settle for something sub-standard, unless you aren’t interested in seeing it replaced by something better.
I empathize with those of us who are desperate for things to somehow not be the way they are right now. However, “better than nothing” is not healthy thinking when it comes to relationships. We deserve better than a half-assed, politicized survey that dumps our feedback into a black hole.
They absolutely can take away voices.
Numerous comments and answers have been deleted, and when they were deleted, they did a sneaky maneuver with it. Basically, some users broke the rules. Those users had criticism. Other users did not break the rules, but also had criticism. However, the second group was swept in with the first group when they tried to explain why they deleted all of it.
To the observant eye, this tactic was plainly evident. However, we couldn't even say that they employed that tactic in a response, because that, too, was deleted. They were allowed to lie to our faces about why our content was deleted, while we were to sit there and take it and leave with our tail between our legs, being told that we were part of the first group which was a minority, and only their portrayal was left behind, leaving an illusion.
Our legitimate criticisms of the latest developments were erased and we saw what it was like.
They have the code, SQL queries, and role based access. They can do what they want, however way they want it, and there's nothing you can do about it except boycott.
It's a black box. It's not only a black box, it can't even be analyzed programmatically very easily. The entire first half of the article about The Loop was about how we as a community are in the wrong, don't understand why we dislike abrupt changes, and how we need training and resources. Without a firm hand and just going along with their approach, we're tacitly endorsing their approach.
I view participation as a symbolic endorsement of the condescending article and I'd rather keep my dignity than submit to the black box so they can disregard it because I chose "Other".
If you oppose the recent changes to the site, I suggest you submit honest feedback saying so.
People have been doing that for years, so what's the point? SO is not participating in the metas anymore and creating this new feedback system explicitly because they don't want to hear the honest feedback that has been available here all the time.
If they would want to listen to feedback of the users that created the valuable content on their sites which attracts millions of visitors each month, they would have already done so.
As others have already said: Whether or not something will "help" is hard to say. In fact, it's not even clear what "helping" should mean here.
But broadly speaking, for the potential participants, there are several aspects that will affect the outcome of the survey:
Considering how the survey may be distorted along these lines, it is clear that whatever the outcome of the survey will be, it would be presumptuous to draw any conclusions from that. A proper statistical analysis is not possible with free-text fields, and any "opinion" that is gathered from that survey is completely worthless unless the participants are a true random sample of the overall population and there is a reason to assume that they answer truthfully.
(Whatever the "population" should be here: Regulars? Contributors? Registered users? Visitors? All programmers? As far as I can tell, this survey does not even remotely make any sense...)
Independent of whether the survey does make any sense or not, the next question is how SE will deal with the results. I honestly tried to come up with different ways of how they could handle the results. But even if it sounds cynical, I see only one, overarching relevant point here:
Whether the results support their narrative or not.
Depending on that, there are different options for the next steps.
Again, I'd really like to be able to have a different viewpoint here. But from what I have observed here in the past two years, one thing is clear: If the outcome of the survey result was that the minorities are highly satisfied and the majority was highly dissatisfied, then SE would have "achieved their goals", but they'd never admit it...
But boycotting The Loop won't help
That's not true. If a car drives in the absolutely wrong direction then not accelerating it is surely a good thing, isn't it. If they didn't listen to me here, they won't listen to me there either, even less so if there is no public scrutiny. Forget the thing as quickly as possible. It's better for everyone.
This looks a bit short for an answer but is all I can come up with regards to the situation. Sorry.
They can take away our community but they can't take away our voices. Use yours.
I have nothing to prove to you.
Or "them SE Inc.", in this case.
When some bully tells you: "those are the rules you follow from now on, yours do not matter any more", then not following that suggestion might be the only sane option. (but yes, I took the loop, and was rather disappointed)
