It was hard to accept some of the (valid) criticism, especially the idea that women and people of color felt particularly unwelcome. There’s a weird paradox with bias. Those of us who have privilege, but care deeply about reducing bias should be uniquely positioned to help, but we struggle the hardest to recognize that we are (unintentionally) biased ourselves.² As it happens, making people feel left out is a deep personal fear of mine. (There is probably a seriously repressed playground kickball thing in my past somewhere.) Ironically, that made it harder for me to accept the possibility that something I work on could make outsiders feel unwanted. So I focused on what we were proud of: We _are one of the only large sites where it’s practically impossible to find a single slur – our community takes them down in minutes. _We _don’t tolerate our female users being called “sweetie” or getting hit on. But _we _weren’t listening. Many people, especially those in marginalized groups _do _feel less welcome. _We know because they tell us.

Source: Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming. It’s Time for That to Change. – Stack Overflow Blog