Stack Overflow has too many men! [closed]

Question

When I take a look at the Stack Overflow user list I see a certain trend.

• Jon
• Marc
• Greg
• Alex
• Andrew
• Jonathan
• Tomalak
• Brian
• Ólafur
• Juliet

I think you see where I'm going with this. There simply aren't enough spider-men or bat-men or other variations of more-than-men. No, Stack Overflow seems to be populated solely by normal, plain, boring, weak, unlasery men. Just thinking about it makes me yawn.

If Stack Overflow were a movie, it would be one of those really weird experimental films that French people watch as a rite of passage to adulthood or something. I mean, it's one of those movies that has a scene in it where two people are arguing about C#, but all you can see is their shadows over a bowl of fruit on a table. And the fruit is out of focus. And the table has a finish to it that is rather unphotogenic in a way you can't quite put your finger on.

You know what I'm talking about. It's a movie about plain people doing plain things. Not even the type of men who would get into a knife fight over whether using jQuery on a ten-line HTML page is overkill (if you want to fight about this, talk to me after the movie – I'll be by the ticket booth).

I would like to see Atwood's Angels take steps to attract superheroic (and possibly supervillainous) users to the Stack Overflow trilogy. If we had these kinds of users, think of the good we could do in this world! Suddenly, XML-Parser-Man swings in and uses his XPath ray to eliminate nested regular expressions. Then camelCaseMan teleports in to format the question's content to make it readable. This would probably work better with comic-like onomatopoeic words like "kaboom!" and "kanye!".

Some simple changes could be made to the existing content to bring in supermen. I have prepared some examples to get us started. I'm counting on you, the Meta superherobase (instead of userbase – get it?) to do your part!

From the FAQ, instead of something like this,

Treat others with the same respect you'd want them to treat you. We're all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.

Write something like this,

Treat others like the freedom-loving citizens they are. Evildoers the world over are trying to work together and learn how to crush liberty and justice. Be tolerant of the tiny men who are struggling because they are aspiring to fight the good fight in their own way. You may even learn something from them. Make sure to taunt your nemeses wittily.

That is so much better. Suddenly the camera is facing the men arguing about C# instead of the table, and oh my god they have knives! I can hear the popcorn popping now! But wait, there's more. Why write something like this,

How do I ask questions here?

When you could spice it up?

How do I thwart evil using only Stack Overflow, a butter knife and a piece of cheese?

Much better. MacGyver's mullet itself could not have phrased it better. The C# arguers' knives have morphed into light sabers. Darth Skeet is trying to win Marc Skywalker over to the dark side! What happens next?!

I have been doing my part by calling Jeff the fearless leader of the Atwood's Angels (which has a nice ring to it) who do everything in their power to fight giant bugs and install new features in spite of a rowdy, blind and raging userbase. See, when you put things that way it doesn't sound so French!

Answer 1

Well, I'll leave the gravatar switching to balpha, but I've made a greasemonkey script for the reveal the names of peoples secret identities at least...

Some examples:

• Jeff Atwood => Jeff the Unicorn
• Jon Skeet => Super Skeet
• TheTXI => TheTXI the Pony Destroyer

Teh codez:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           SO Heroes
// @namespace      http://shog9.com/greasemonkey/scripts
// @description    Heroify SO usernames - By Alconja, simplified for Chrome by Shog9
// @include        http://stackoverflow.com/*
// @include        http://serverfault.com/*
// @include        http://superuser.com/*
// @include        http://meta.stackoverflow.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

var script = document.createElement("script");
script.type = "text/javascript";
script.innerHTML = "(" + heroify.toString() + ")()";
document.body.appendChild(script);

function heroify() {
  var prefixes = ["Super ", "Mega ", "Ultra ", "Bat-", "Spider-", "Pony-", "Sir ", "Astro-", "Darth ", "Doctor ", "Ninja ", "Professor ", "Captain ", "Dark ", "Night ", "The "];
  var suffixes = [" the Evil", " the Unicorn", " the Brave", " the Ultimate", " X", "zilla", "-bot!", " Skywalker", " Norris", " Skeet", " the Benevolent", " Overflow", " the Pony Destroyer"];
  var $links = $("div.user-details a, a.comment-user, #hlinks a:eq(1), div.started a:nth-child(2)");
  $links.each(function() {
    var uid = parseInt($(this).attr("href").replace(/\/users\/(\d+)\/.*/, "$1"));
    if ( !uid )
      return;
    var name = $(this).text();

    var spc = name.indexOf(" ");
    if (spc >= 0) {
      if (spc % 3 == 0) {
        name = name.replace(/[^ ]+ (.*)/, "$1");
      } else if (spc % 2 == 0) {
        name = name.replace(/(.*) [^ ]+/, "$1");
      }
    }

    if (name.length % 2 == 0) {
      name = name + suffixes[uid % suffixes.length];
    } else {
      name = prefixes[uid % prefixes.length] + name;
    }
    $(this).text(name);
  });
}

Answer 2

Each community is allowed only one super-hero.

• New York has Spider-Man

• Metropolis has Superman

• Stack Overflow has Jon Skeet

For the rest, we are all ordinary man.

Answer 3

I fail to see the problem. We have a fairly good mix of superhumans, but they often don't reveal themselves on SO. Some out themselves on meta, a very few of which I can safely name without putting myself in danger:

• balpha - consisting only of beta and alpha particles is stopped easily by paper. Posts by finding very old computer equipment with glass exposed ICs and flipping bits.
• Urdnot the Krogan has a posse - obvious.
• Shog9 - As Lovecraft documented during his descent into madness, Shog9 is the 9^TH shoggoth to gain sentience, setting himself apart from the other shoggoths, who were at first jealous, but no longer now that they see he wastes his talents on bits and bytes.
• Miyagi Coder - Karate kid number 0x10. By this time Mr. Miyagi was transmuted into code, and placed in vidja games around the country. Teaching karate similar to DDR machines, one person found himself excelling, and like the last starfighter Miyagi Coder was born from a vidja game.
• mmyers - One day a Fred Meyer and a Meijers opened across the street from - No, this isn't a joke, it's an origin story! Stop laughing! Alright, nevermind, now you guys will never know his powers or weakness, and thus will never defeat him. Your loss I guess.
• Chacha102 - Chachi in disguise, cousin of The Fonz.
• Ether - I'd tell you about her, but I'm feeling oddly .. sleepy and... ... numb? .... May..be..... later......

Answer 4

Something more is needed. Exciting back-stories! Someone needs to die in a freak closing accident (caused by race conditions on the server (caused in turn by Dalgas' scheme to siphon off extra milliseconds for use in his secret Dooms Day Device)), only to be reborn with altered DNA as a Crazed Defender of All that is Stacked and Overflowing.

Answer 5

I used to be a normal human woman, but wrote one too many bad pieces of code, and was cursed to live out my life as a tabby cat by the Egyptian cat-god Bast.

Answer 6

I think you see where I'm going with this. There simply aren't enough spider-men or bat-men or other variations of more-than-men. No, Stack Overflow seems to be populated solely by normal, plain, boring, weak, unlasery men. Just thinking about it makes me yawn.

I was bitten by a radioactive deer, TheTAXI was bitten by a radioactive Pony turned Unicorn by balpha the bad, Alex is a vampire. We just don't want to get much attention.

If Stack Overflow were a movie, it would be one of those really weird experimental films that French people watch as a rite of passage to adulthood or something. I mean, it's one of those movies that has a scene in it where two people are arguing about C#, but all you can see is their shadows over a bowl of fruit on a table. And the fruit is out of focus. And the table has a finish to it that is rather unphotogenic in a way you can't quite put your finger on.

Hey! I like those movies! Also, it's a great analogy, but you missed that it's one of those movies where the present is shown in black and white and the past in color.

Much better. MacGyver's mullet itself could not have phrased it better. The C# arguers' knives have morphed into light sabers. Darth Skeet is trying to win Marc Skywalker over to the dark side! What happens next?!

McGyver uses regexes, he is one of the bad guys. Wait, what!? Skeet is Marc's father!?

Answer 7

I'm not just a man, I have multiple personalities

_{but they are all Abraham Lincoln}

Answer 8

Just doing my part!

Answer 9

You don't want me to reveal my secret identity.

I'm pretty sure my secret identity is one of those annoying, minor villains that never get the good plots, the rivers of fire or the piranhas with laser beams, but do show up over and over again to cause plot twists.

But I'm not positive, 'cause he keeps me in the dark.

Answer 10

Perhaps what the asker is really getting at is a need for a StackExchange based site for dating... for geeks? GeekMatch.com?

Answer 11

All I have to say is :

• http://5z8.info/56-DEPLOY-TROJAN-287.mw9----_l9i3_foodporn
• http://5z8.info/dogfights_k8b2_launchexe