Please support Stack Overflow moderators strike against AI content policy

[Dalija Prasnikar 1341]

1 minute ago, David Heffernan said:

"I'm sure". How are you sure? 

Well, I am pretty sure that women are less interested in coding in general. I have seen that both in my math-tech oriented high school and in math university. There were enough women there (even more in the university - about 40-50 %) and they were good in math (usually even better than men), but I was the only one in my generation (even several generations) that liked coding. Others all went into different directions. 

 

In high school everyone would come to me to help them with coding problems as I knew the most, almost my math and informatics teachers were women (only one man and he was the least competent one). So definitely there was no environmental pressure that would keep us away and I have never heard that girls or women cannot do math or code or anything like that. 

[Lars Fosdal 1732]

14 minutes ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

the wrong place to push equality

Yet, women are fighter pilots, front line soldiers, astronauts, mountain climbers, race car drivers, plumbers, electricians, engineers, and what not.

IMO, equality is about more than comparing physical traits. It is about mentality, attitude and equal opportunities.

I think it is good for any industry to have a balanced work force, hence we need to find out why there are less female programmers, and not bury our heads in the sand, like SO did with their yearly polls.

[Dalija Prasnikar 1341]

7 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Yet, women are fighter pilots, front line soldiers, astronauts, mountain climbers, race car drivers, plumbers, electricians, engineers, and what not.

I have no problem with women plumbers, electricians, engineers, even astronauts (depending on a mission). But I would definitely draw the line with fighter pilots, or fire fighters and similar. The physical failure in critical moment can cost lives and not just theirs. We have to be real.

7 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

IMO, equality is about more than comparing physical traits. It is about mentality, attitude and equal opportunities.

I think it is good for any industry to have a balanced work force, hence we need to find out why there are less female programmers, and not bury our heads in the sand, like SO did with their yearly polls.

There are plenty of jobs where physical fitness is required, but it is not absolutely critical. There are some jobs where it is. And again it is not that women couldn't do it, or that women shouldn't do it if there are no better fit men for the job, but I see equality being pushed in places where there is no place for it and where it could be dangerous because exceptional circumstances are part of the job and where physical strength is vital.

[Sherlock 632]

I'm pretty sure any Army employing women as fighter pilots has put them through the same tests and training as men, it would be recklessly stupid otherwise. That said, I am still convinced that the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. As can be seen in sports - athletics specifically. But our line of work is not really physically challenging, is it? Lets just concentrate on that.

[Fr0sT.Brutal 897]

48 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

"I'm sure". How are you sure? 

I talked with them. Well, you never could be 100% sure there wasn't any discrimination unless someone confident tells you that directly. But none of my colleagues ever mentioned she faced any kind of offense.

34 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Yet, women are fighter pilots, front line soldiers, astronauts, mountain climbers, race car drivers, plumbers, electricians, engineers, and what not.

IMO, equality is about more than comparing physical traits. It is about mentality, attitude and equal opportunities.

I think it is good for any industry to have a balanced work force, hence we need to find out why there are less female programmers, and not bury our heads in the sand, like SO did with their yearly polls.

And what's the percentage?

Balance is nice (oh how I wanted we had more girls at university! :)) but it must never be the only goal. Diversity before professional skills is awful tendency. Hire workers just because they belong to minorities even if their hands grow out of their butts? Madness.

Why there are less female programmers ? They're just not interested.

[David Heffernan 2300]

52 minutes ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

Well, I am pretty sure that women are less interested in coding in general. I have seen that both in my math-tech oriented high school and in math university. There were enough women there (even more in the university - about 40-50 %) and they were good in math (usually even better than men), but I was the only one in my generation (even several generations) that liked coding. Others all went into different directions. 

How did you determine that this difference was due to gender and not some other reason? Personal anecdotes prove little.

 

5 minutes ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

I talked with them. Well, you never could be 100% sure there wasn't any discrimination unless someone confident tells you that directly. But none of my colleagues ever mentioned she faced any kind of offense.

The fact that your co-workers didn't experience discrimination doesn't mean that others didn't. I mean, by definition, if any did then they wouldn't be your co-workers.

 

I find it so wearing that people like us with our professional work colleagues and life styles think that discrimination doesn't exist because we don't see it in our lives. 

[Dalija Prasnikar 1341]

8 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

How did you determine that this difference was due to gender and not some other reason? Personal anecdotes prove little.

Because, even after initial selection in elementary school (where boys girls ration was 50:50) I was the only girl that went into tech oriented school, others went into social sciences or biology/chemistry/medicine. And then in high school there were more boys than girls from the beginning, where some classes were all boys and the rest were again 50:50. And from those 50:50 split classes (I think there was around 80 girls total), I was the only girl that pursued programming. And again, it was not that other girls couldn't code at all, but they were just not interested. I was the only one that spent nights behind the computer. 

 

Of course, there could be other factors, but I am pretty sure that in general women are just less attracted to coding than men. Again, I am not saying that they cannot do it, just that they are less attracted to such jobs. And again, I grew up in society that didn't have any obstacles for girls and women when choosing careers during education. I don't know if something changed in the meantime, but I doubt as my kids never reported that girls are having different treatment (and I asked them).

[David Heffernan 2300]

1 minute ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

Because, even after initial selection in elementary school (where boys girls ration was 50:50) I was the only girl that went into tech oriented school, others went into social sciences or biology/chemistry/medicine. And then in high school there were more boys than girls from the beginning, where some classes were all boys and the rest were again 50:50. And from those 50:50 split classes (I think there was around 80 girls total), I was the only girl that pursued programming. And again, it was not that other girls couldn't code at all, but they were just not interested. I was the only one that spent nights behind the computer. 

 

Of course, there could be other factors, but I am pretty sure that in general women are just less attracted to coding than men. Again, I am not saying that they cannot do it, just that they are less attracted to such jobs. And again, I grew up in society that didn't have any obstacles for girls and women when choosing careers during education. I don't know if something changed in the meantime, but I doubt as my kids never reported that girls are having different treatment (and I asked them).

This is classic correlation / causation territory

[Dalija Prasnikar 1341]

25 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

This is classic correlation / causation territory

Maybe. But do you have proof that this is so. Do you have any proof that women like programming as much as men? If there are no gender differences then there should be way more women programmers than they are now. The percentage is just way to low that discrimination could be the only reason.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Dalija Prasnikar

[Fr0sT.Brutal 897]

2 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

I find it so wearing that people like us with our professional work colleagues and life styles think that discrimination doesn't exist because we don't see it in our lives.

Well, I find it so tiring that people think that discrimination exists literally everywhere even if nobody sees it.

2 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

The fact that your co-workers didn't experience discrimination doesn't mean that others didn't. I mean, by definition, if any did then they wouldn't be your co-workers.

Well, we actually have female coders so the chances of gender discrimination are quite low with obvious evidence. And we have much more women in fin/doc/secretary depts.

[David Heffernan 2300]

1 hour ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

But do you have proof that this is so

No but I never claimed that. 

 

1 hour ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

The percentage is just way to low that discrimination could be the only reason.

Maybe. But it could well be a factor. It doesn't need to be the only reason for it to be a problem. 

[David Heffernan 2300]

51 minutes ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

Well, I find it so tiring that people think that discrimination exists literally everywhere even if nobody sees it.

People do see it. If you think society has eliminated discrimination you are deluding yourself. People with privilege find it harder to see discrimination because they don't experience it. 

 

51 minutes ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

Well, we actually have female coders so the chances of gender discrimination are quite low with obvious evidence. And we have much more women in fin/doc/secretary depts.

I really don't know what to say about this. You think that the slanting towards women in lower paid jobs indicates a great success for equality. 

Edited June 20, 2023 by David Heffernan

[Lars Fosdal 1732]

I participated in an IT event this winter, where gender discrimination was one of many sub-topics, and there was many real-life examples by women who had experienced it.

Gender discrimination still is a real issue - particularly for the young women starting their careers.

[Brandon Staggs 185]

9 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

https://www.wired.com/story/stack-overflow-gender-problem/ and there is this... 
Can the moderation be a factor when women, minorities and non-native english speakers are put off by SO?

 

I can't imagine a valid reason to ask someone their gender or race on Stack Overflow. Oh, I'm sure people who like to stir up strife would love to have those data points from which to prove anything they like, but there is no good reason to ask me my gender or race while I use SO or respond to their surveys, period.

[Brandon Staggs 185]

On 6/16/2023 at 12:29 PM, Attila Kovacs said:

Why are you so obsessively interested in what others are doing? Why don't you go where you feel good? 😄

I'm sorry, I am not getting the meaning of your comment. To clarify, my statement was sarcasm. I am not literally in a state of anticipation about the results of AI training off its own questionable output. 

[Fr0sT.Brutal 897]

19 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

If you think society has eliminated discrimination you are deluding yourself

Citing you

19 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

No but I never claimed that.

the same for this:

19 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

You think that the slanting towards women in lower paid jobs indicates a great success for equality. 

Asserting something an interlocutor hadn't said is dark pattern. Several steps from labeling any arguing people "whatever-ist".

[Sherlock 632]

It's a shame this thread slipped into a gender debate unnoticed. Sorry about that.

BTT:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/390106/moderation-strike-update-data-dumps-choosing-representatives-gpt-data-and-wh

[Dalija Prasnikar 1341]

Additional update: 

 

The company is starting a new site covering AI prompt design https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/390463/starting-the-prompt-design-site-a-new-home-in-our-stack-exchange-neighborhood and Stack Overflow CEO will have a keynote at WeAreDevelopers World Congress, along with workshops presenting "bright" future of Stack Exchange Network and GenAI https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stack-overflow_we-are-one-month-away-from-wearedevelopers-activity-7079488260372058113-eOPJ/

 

Currently negotiation is progressing rather slowly when it comes to AI moderation policy and reading between the lines it is quite possible that it will be dragged on until the conference. What will happen after that is hard to predict. 

[Rollo62 502]

4 hours ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

ACurrently negotiation is progressing rather slowly when it comes to AI moderation policy ...

Maybe they only want to wait until the EU directive related to AI is final, to copy-and-paste it.

Probably the EU proposal might be faster, since the EU commission was getting hyper-accelerated in bureaucracy a lot over the past 1-2 years

[Dalija Prasnikar 1341]

Negotiations with Stack Exchange have been completed and strike has effectively ended. You can read more at https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/391847/moderation-strike-results-of-negotiations 

 

There is also expected update to the strike letter. Even though there was a conclusion to the strike, there are different levels of satisfaction with what has been achieved and everyone is free to continue the participation or not as they wish. This is just the end of organized process . Also some things are still being worked on (establishing AI detection heuristics for moderation in particular) and there are newly announced features coming to Stack Overflow like Overflow AI https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/07/27/announcing-overflowai/ so there is still plenty of room for things to go awry.

 

I wish to thank everyone who participated in the strike. Every signature meant a lot.