386
I'm on board with the idea of reminding people to be considerate to those who are new to the site, but I think there's a piece missing. The new UI element encourages established users to help the new user understand site norms, but I don't see where the system tries to help the new users understand it.
Yes, there's the Help Center, but we already know that ...
370
This really isn't adding new information. Mostly because showing rep provides this information already. When you see someone with very little rep, the odds of them being within a few days old are very high. People checking their profile or user card already know if the user is fairly new or fairly experienced. The exceptions are...rare, and I don't see ...
182
There are a few different reasons that people perceive Stack Overflow - and, to a lesser extent, the other Stack Exchange sites - as toxic. Let's get into a few of them.
The most major reason, in my opinion, is this one:
Barrier to participation and learning curve
There is a really steep learning curve for the site. Stack Overflow is, objectively, really ...
174
Noob alert! Remember to put on your kid gloves! Seriously?
I don't like this at all. Yes, some people are new to the site. Yes, we should know that they may not understand all the rules. But no, we should not stick a big noob warning on their profile tag for everyone to see. Not only does it feel slightly passive aggressive, it automatically puts people ...
answered Aug 17 '18 at 22:32
forest distrusts StackExchange
7,5443 gold badges17 silver badges42 bronze badges
122
Ouch. Whatever made you think this is a good idea?
Well, ok, I can see how it would be appealing. But have you considered the potential downsides from labeling new users with a target marked “NOOB”?
There's a small but vocal minority of Stack Overflow users (I think it's mostly SO, or maybe it's just that 0.00001% of any other site is approximately 0) who ...
answered Aug 17 '18 at 20:09
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
105k25 gold badges206 silver badges453 bronze badges
100
Okay - why does it matter if the user is a new contributor or new to a technology when they're asking a question?
I feel like this particular aspect is being ignored; it should not matter in the slightest if a person is new to a technology or new to a community. This feels like it's moving the lion's share of the onus of participation etiquette from the ...
90
In the eyes of the newbies:
Downvotes are considered toxic.
Closure of a question is considered super toxic.
Any comment trying to explain any of the above is considered toxic.
The Welcome Wagon started in attempt to solve this, but judging by that blog post and other actions of SE, it utterly failed.
answered Jan 23 '20 at 11:59
Shadow Wizard Is Vaccinated V3
155k28 gold badges369 silver badges746 bronze badges
83
As of May 26th 2014, we are showing a warning to folks who are about to post a question or an answer when they already have a track record of ... suboptimal
questions:
or answers:
The specific criteria for these aren't public largely for the same reasons the quality block criteria aren't public, but let's just say that folks who are nearing hitting a block ...
80
Will new users also see this mini-banner on their own posts?
I could imagine someone being slightly perturbed by seeing a "welcome to the site" type comment when they've been around for 6 days or so. They might think "how do they know I'm new? have they been stalking my profile to check the dates of all my posts?!" (This was one of the reasons cited on at ...
79
Good job! This is awesome. There's a lot of useful observations here, but here are a few I'd highlight specifically:
The default copy in the hero is kinda goofy. It has that, "No charge - EVER. Enter your credit card below!" vibe. This actually got fixed on SO:
Normally, weird copy getting updated would get pushed to all sites, assuming it makes sense, but ...
75
I agree with you that this is terrible on the trilogy sites, but it works very well on smaller sites that have a strong community core.
Whatever your decision on this queue, can you keep it in place for smaller ones? It allows us to welcome new community members, and gives us a steer to edit, where for an established user we may just chastise them :-)
70
Good UI design does not overwhelm users with redundant information.
Repeating that new user status three times on a single page is a tad redundant.
None of the regular contributors are completely illiterate, once is probably enough.
Good UI design does not overwhelm users with redundant information.
You have a nice and shiny new code of conduct, you don't ...
69
This feature is rude and unwelcoming.
You're not singling out behaviors that need to change. You're dropping a blanket accusation of poor behavior on everyone. The very idea that everyone needs this warning is implicitly accusatory.
Even worse, this change violates one of SO's core tenets: that it's the content that matters, not who writes it. The newness ...
67
Smaller sites live and die by reputation. Reputation is gained by having people vote for you. In order to vote, people need 15 rep themselves.
For most new people, to get 15 rep, that means getting 3 question up-votes.
Sites where there are a lot of drive-by people (ask a question, then move on), those askers will never be able to upvote answers on their ...
65
but in many ways, the post was an above-average StackOverflow post.
That's kinda sad.
Not to dump on this question - I'm sure the asker was trying his best - but as it stood when it was closed, this was not a good question.
Let's start with the title:
Can someone figure this thing out for me?
That is a title that does not describe the problem. It's ...
61
I think that some of these, particularly the notification in the answer box, is too intrusive. The tag on the user's infobox is livable. The tag on the comment box is odd, but maybe acceptable. But the tag on the answer box is too much.
While one could argue that the tone of comments may need to vary from user to user, the tone of answers does not. When ...
56
I understand your reasoning for doing this, but do not like the implementation. I also wonder if you have considered the side effects. After some time to reflect, I do not think this is a good idea in the present state.
First off, the warning banner is kind of insulting.
User278094 is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
With ...
52
I don't see why this should be downvoted, provided the OP performed an actual experiment and in good faith.
That is, he just participated as he normally would have participated on Stack Overflow -- civilly, of course -- but as a new user instead of a 60k+ rep user.
Also note that he asked first...
Permission from the Stack Exchange team to run my ...
49
Yes, we do need more pictures,
as the raw data in the question is not so easy to see clearly.
Below are some views comparing percentages of the Came back
vs. Never came back.
Initial thoughts...
Nothing, Deleted
When no activity occurs, does this indicate a poor question or an
obscure question? Is the question good enough to leave open,
but too niche ...
49
Nobody reads the mumbo-jumbo when signing up for a community. Nobody reads the pinned FAQ topics on top of a forum. Nobody reads the tour. Nobody previews their question before posting it. Nobody lurks for a while to get the mores of a community before posting something by themselves. And nobody seems to remember that Stack Overflow was meant to build a ...
49
There's a lot to applaud here, and a lot to comment on. But I'll limit my feedback to one of each...
So, first and foremost: good! Glad to see y'all tackling this. It's a thorny problem, and one that has been with these sites since the very beginning. All too often, it has been discussed as though the solutions are both simple and obvious... Of course, they ...
48
For those that don't want to see this notification / banner, add the following rule to your adblocker:
##.new-contributor-indicator
Or using a userstyles plugin:
.new-contributor-indicator{
display:none;
}
Or a userscript:
$('<style type="text/css">.new-contributor-indicator {display: none;}</style>')
.appendTo($('head'));
This ...
47
This suggestion is coming up with increasing frequency in various forms; one of my colleagues expressed amazement this morning that we don't already do this - he'd spent the morning cleaning up after an abusive comment-author, only to find this person had kept right on leaving abusive comments the whole while.
Journeyman and Catija have suggested a couple ...
47
The problem here isn't that the site doesn't treat all people equally... It's that all people aren't equal.
I can - and do - spin up a new user whenever I need one, posting answers and gaining reputation without significant hardship. But, I've been here for a decade; I've seen the creation of just about every feature, every rule, every social convention... ...
47
I'll jump in here.
But it cannot be denied that these kinds of things foster a fundamental division. It encourages people to think about things in terms of "new users vs. established users". And it is precisely this sort of mentality, this kind of division, that we are often accused of having.
Can we talk about that for a second? I'd like to ...
44
It's critical to scrutinize first posts. They're by far the most likely source of spam, and the most likely to have other problems.
You say
Allow flagging, commenting, comment voting, etc... But don't count those as a review action
But I actually do think those should count as a review action. The point of the review is to give new posts more eyeballs, ...
44
Those two statements seem to be generalized to the point of meaning nothing at all.
Sure. But that is the thing when one tries to compile resp. reduce a large number of "single sentence2 answers into "meaningful" messages. But honestly, we all know that this "issue" of toxicity and the underlying conflicts have existed since, like, ever?!
For me, the ...
42
This feature is now live on all meta sites except the international sites (waiting on translations) and Meta Stack Overflow (to ensure that this doesn't cause a lot of undue disruptions on other sites first).
Update: This is now enabled on all sites, including Meta Stack Overflow and international site metas.
40
Three Two suggested improvements:
For the experienced users: change "be sure to check out our Code of Conduct" to "remember to follow our Code of Conduct" or similar. "Check out" sounds like "hey, we have this thing you might not have seen and you should take a look", but we expect experienced users to have already done that. A reminder is gentler and ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible