This isn't an extensive issue, but the most recent Data Science Time! got me going, as the kids say.

I can appreciate the use of emojis in condensed communication forms like tweets and text messages, where they can convey a lot of information in little space, but in longer form texts, like a blog, or a Stack Overflow meta Q&A I fail to see their merit.

Barring cases where emojis are the actual subject of the text, I see their use as at best a gimmicky flourish, but frequently I find them to detract from the text in one or more ways.

  • They're ambiguous, both because they can have jargonistic primary or secondary meanings, and because they render differently depending on character set, assuming they even render at all.

  • They add visual clutter and distracts the eye when reading, being often quite large and colorful and placed within the text body.

  • They can be interpreted as condescending, informal, or jokey, depending on context and the reader, more so than the authors intent.

Gimmicky flourishes, while groan-inducing for some, can be a matter of personal style for others, so I don't want to discourage the use of emojis outright, but rather encourage a carefully considered use.

  • 5
    There is also this: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172143/…
    – franiis
    Jun 19 '19 at 12:30
  • 6
    I can understand this being posted about regular posts. And emojis are very often removed from posts without any further thought. But the "Data Science Time" are company announcements, more akin to blog posts than regular questions. They are only published here to engage with the meta crowd, as appreciative as it is, and to be able to use the answer/comment facilities for further feedback. I think that applying regular rules to these posts does not help anyone.
    – yivi
    Jun 19 '19 at 12:38
  • 14
    Does it need to be there? If no, remove/don't include it. If yes, include it. This falls into the category of "noise" and we remove "noise".
    – Script47
    Jun 19 '19 at 12:38
  • 155
    Hello 👋 and welcome 🤗 to Stack Overflow! 🙏🙏 Please remember 🙏🙏 to reward 🏆 the hard work 💪 of our community 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 and upvote 🔼 helpful answers. Thank you 🤩
    – user247702
    Jun 19 '19 at 12:38
  • 8
    @franiis: Related, but personally I'm much more OK with simple smileys. As they're made up of more or less regular characters they're at the very least less visually distracting. You can also be pretty sure that they will render the same for everyone. Again, this is for SO meta, on main they're in the same category as thanks and please.
    – AkselA
    Jun 19 '19 at 12:41
  • 14
    @Stijn: Whoah, thanks! 🙏Thoughts and prayers to you too🙏
    – AkselA
    Jun 19 '19 at 12:47
  • 3
    I'm conditioned to expect emojis now by years of daily aggressive exposure, it makes an article like the data science one more palatable.
    – Gimby
    Jun 19 '19 at 13:39
  • 31
    They add no value. Burninate them all. Jun 19 '19 at 13:46
  • 11
    I had completely blanked them, and didn't notice them at all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    – Pureferret
    Jun 19 '19 at 14:54
  • 49
    IMHO it just made the post look childish/unprofessional... not sure what the point was. TBH, I don't even get what 60% of those emoticons were supposed to mean.
    – Dan Mašek
    Jun 19 '19 at 18:32
  • 17
    It feels as though this was a poor attempt at being "young" or "hip" and it definitely doesn't work. It just detracts from what might possibly be a good post.
    – Script47
    Jun 19 '19 at 20:30
  • 8
    @Stijn Excellent example of how implementation-dependent emojis are. Rendered in Google Chrome on Windows 10, I see (in order) a grey hand, a rectangle, two ?elephant men/tentacle-faced aliens? in blue suits, two more aliens, a yellow trophy, Trogdor's arm, a man a woman, a girl, a boy, an extremely small red triangle and another rectangle. (Without context, I would not have recognized the girl or boy and one could probably be forgiven for mistaking the woman as a canoe on fire.)
    – jmbpiano
    Jun 20 '19 at 15:41
  • 5
    Ban them outright as far as I'm concerned. This is a programming Q&A site, not a teenage text chat. </oldgit> Jun 20 '19 at 18:36
  • 4
    It's important to remember that emojis are inaccessible to some, so you should never use them to convey actual content, only as decoration. (The referenced post complies with that.) @Stijn's message, to me, is: hello, yellow-and-blue-thing, and welcome, is-that-a-frown?wtf? to Stack Overflow! praying-hands? praying-hands (Wait, am I going to need divine assistance to continue?) Jun 20 '19 at 18:46
  • 7
    Does the "Data science time!" post need all the emojis it has? No, it comes off as noise. But banning them outright is going to make legitimate questions about emojis difficult.
    – zero298
    Jun 20 '19 at 20:25

I hear👂 what😦 you are saying and am thinking💭💭 hard about it. My robot🤖 companion has forwarded🔼 your concerns😟😟 on🔛 to the 🏉team🏉 and we will be sure to take it into consideration when composing future📡 messages💬 and announcements.

For now, here📍 is a 🏰castle🏰🏰 made of bananas:

🍌 🍌 🍌               🍌  🍌  🍌
 🍌🍌     🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌     🍌🍌🍌
 🍌🍌    🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌    🍌🍌🍌

Want to write obnoxious messages but don't hang with the kids? I recommend https://lingojam.com/🐌EmojiTranslator🎲 - "It's unlinkable!"

  • 16
    – Meg Risdal
    Jun 20 '19 at 23:36
  • 8
    Is there a 🅰️ link 🖇 that 💼works💼 in reverse◀️? I tried copying your 🚩post 🚩 into the Emoji side and it didn't go ⬅️ back 🔙 to plain English. (by the way ↕️, +1 👍 for the castle 🏰) Jun 21 '19 at 1:29
  • 4
    @astonearachnid I regret reading that comment.
    – pushkin
    Jun 21 '19 at 1:48
  • 15
    Perfect tool to use while writing flag decline messages ...
    – Bhargav Rao Mod
    Jun 21 '19 at 3:53
  • 6
    This is the best answer. Not only you take action, it also has a banana castle. 👏🍌🐦 Jun 21 '19 at 9:22
  • 4
    – Shinjo
    Jun 21 '19 at 9:55
  • 4
    Never before have I seen such a magnificent banana castle.
    – AkselA
    Jun 21 '19 at 10:47
  • 7
    Aside from the obvious lack of professionalism and wrong tone that the use of emojis conveys, there is a very real usability problem. This is what your answer looks like on my work computer. Half of it is just white boxes. The other half is, of course, bananas, which I guess I can't really complain about.
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Jun 22 '19 at 4:37
  • 1
    Oh yeah, I get some of those too. Also looks completely different on each machine. Uh. 😂
    – Shog9
    Jun 22 '19 at 4:42
  • 1
    dude--y no blinking?! otoh why bother w/ all those caps & wordywords & grammr & splg? & why no hi n bye, dont u wanna b nice?
    – philipxy
    Jun 23 '19 at 23:19
  • Related: The now classic kbd castle (cross-site) (breaks at high zoom levels). Sep 6 '19 at 14:52

Of all the things to be upset about in that post...a smattering of emojis used in certain places is probably the least significant thing to be bothered about.

It isn't like the post is drowning in them, nor is it the case that they're used offensively or excessively.

I wouldn't bother with this one; there's really no benefit to it. There are other things to edit out on Meta that don't involve needlessly editing an employee's post.

  • 8
    Fair, but I assume the question is not "should we edit this particular question" but more "Do we include emojis in our standard of a good meta post?". Fine, leave this one as it is, to avoid conflict. Please, I'd rather they not write the next one with emojis. Jun 21 '19 at 9:19
  • 5
    @AnderBiguri: And if they did, seriously, is it that big of a deal? How much more paint do we need to apply to this bikeshed before we turn our attention to the big ol' crack in the cooling tower?
    – Makoto
    Jun 21 '19 at 14:37
  • 3
    @Makoto: I heard it was the lead paint they used on the bikeshed that caused the fumes that eroded the metal in the cooling tower.
    – halfer
    Jun 21 '19 at 15:21
  • @Makoto, I'm not trying to make a big deal out of it, I agree with your approach. It would not be desastrous at all, but well, I rather they don't. Nothing more than that, I just prefer this not to be standard. Not trying to get a pitchfork or anything. Jun 22 '19 at 15:05


Sure, that sounds reasonable. Anything else?

Ultimately, if someone (mod or otherwise) wants to jam a bunch of emojis in a post, I don't really care.

Yes, it can make it harder to take seriously, and yes, I can't help but roll my eyes 180° until I've blinded myself, but it's not something worth fussing over.

I most certainly don't support MilkyWay's extreme stance of:

we should NOT allow emojis

If people keep making posts with a bunch of emojis and users don't take those posts seriously as a result, well, then hopefully the posters will learn their lesson and stop using as many emojis.

We don't need any hard rules about this. People should simply use their best judgement.

  • Ok, you don't care either way, but there are others that do care. I personally think that it makes the posts harder to read and therefore is an accessibility issue at the very least. I think "I don't care" is not a considerate response here, it actually seems fairly lazy and insulting to those of us who do care.
    – user4639281
    Jun 21 '19 at 14:44
  • "Ultimately, if someone (mod or otherwise) wants to jam a bunch of emojis in a post, I don't really care." That is what I'm taking issue with. Also the "not something worth fussing over"
    – user4639281
    Jun 21 '19 at 15:03

I didn't even notice the emojis until it was pointed out here. I guess I filter out emojis like that because they actually add no content to the post, which I suppose is part of the problem. What is the purpose of literally just copying what you just said and trying to translate it into emoji (tumbleweed = 🌀🌾 hurricane plus wheat now I guess). This isn't even how people text emojis. Just comes off as forced, out of touch, and it's just noisy.

That being said while I agree some one could probably construe this as unprofessional, to me this is more silly than anything. Looks like the kind of language a company community manager would use when sending out an invite to the annual company potluck, and not anything really out of the ordinary for a company representative.

What we reaally shouldn't do is make a big fuss about this and raise our pitchforks against this harmless out of touch use of emojis. And we really don't want to target this individual in particular, who at this point appears to be the only one doing this.

I don't think it is worth our time to complain about this, StackOverflow as a company already has a hard time taking meta seriously with our actual issues. What do you think is going to happen when every-time someone makes a typo, or some minor formatting issue the whole community gets in an uproar?

  • 9
    I was kind of in the same boat; "Wait, there were emojis there?" I just filter them out when reading.
    – Davy M
    Jun 20 '19 at 18:59

Yes, we should NOT allow emojis

First, no, I'm not what you guys would call old. I just fail to understand the use of emojis on a serious Q&A site.

Emojis, while handy for expressing emotion, don't add anything to a question. There is no need to express thoughts through emojis when you can use text because emojis aren't recognized worldwide (some of them, at least).

However, there are always exceptions. Questions about emoji domain names, programs which use emojis, or esoteric programming languages that use emojis should be allowed.

  • 4
    I find it unusually amusing that this answer was written by someone who chose to take on the username MilkyWay90 with an avatar that is really close to an emoji.
    – Gimby
    Jun 20 '19 at 8:10
  • 6
    @Gimby It's my Geometry Dash characters (or former character). My username came from when I was in 1st grade and had no idea about emojis.
    – MilkyWay90
    Jun 20 '19 at 13:54
  • 3
    I am not sure emojis are unprofessional but if you do consider that being or looking unprofessional as a reason for not being on Stack Overflow wouldn't that also include a lot of usernames and avatars as well? A more appropriate reason for not allowing them would be that they don't add anything of value to a question or answer.
    – Joe W
    Jun 20 '19 at 15:17
  • 1
    I'd like to point out that in some cases the use of emojis might be necessary in questions and answers. Think about questions relating punycode domains or evil programming languages. The usage of emojis to express emotions will probably rarely have any added value on this platform.
    – Wouter
    Jun 20 '19 at 21:50
  • @Wouter Yes, I am aware of emoji-related domains and esoteric programming languages. of course there are exceptions.
    – MilkyWay90
    Jun 20 '19 at 23:45

This whole thread is not a good look for inclusion in tech.

Stack Overflow's user base is 90% male according to the annual survey. And here we have users writing a post and replies to police the communication style of a female employee, annoyed that she used a whole five emoji in a blog post. Does that aspect not jump out at anyone else?

Communication in general is gendered, and this includes emojis. Norms and patterns concerning emoji use vary by gender and by Internet subcultures. For instance, women have been found to be more likely to use emoji. Emoji use is widespread on the #rstats Twitter hashtag - a professional space where this author collaborates - and is even more frequent within the well-regarded RLadies community of female data scientists, also a professional space. For example, look for emoji in the posts of https://twitter.com/rladiesglobal.

This seems to be Julia's authentic communication style and it's valid within many online professional spaces. If it's not how you prefer to express yourself, or the style in your professional spaces, just let it go. It's different, not wrong.

Non-emoji-using developers may find the post "The Minimally Nice Maintainer" interesting, which makes a good case for why more developers should start using emoji as they collaborate on open-source. See the section "Be Effusive". It took the author a while to realize that in his open-source communication, emojis were a valuable tool, conveying meaning that words could not.

Lastly, it was unnecessary to mock the idea of "triggered" as something "the kids" say these days. An example of actual triggering would be a soldier with PTSD being shown war footage that brings back the traumatic experience they suffered. It's a real thing; joking about it starts this off on the wrong foot.

  • 22
    Though I agree the post is a little fussy, and I don't know why we need to argue about emoji use, your comment about how we're policing the communication style of a female bothered me. What does her being a female have to do with this? A guy could just as well write a post with a bunch of emojis, and people could take it poorly. "not looking good for inclusion" - oh please ."seems to be her authentic communication style" - ok, and who cares. If my authentic communication style was to insert curse words at the end of every sentence, would it be wrong for people to have a problem with it?
    – pushkin
    Jun 21 '19 at 14:36
  • 5
    The use of 'triggered' to mean being caused to take action, has been around longer than the concept of PTSD. I was hoping we could avoid making this personal, there's no need for that.
    – AkselA
    Jun 21 '19 at 15:06
  • 21
    Just like OP, I think emojis in that context are a bit silly and unprofessional. I didn't care enough about it to make a Meta post, but I still feel personally attacked by your answer and I take great offence at your accusation of sexism.
    – user247702
    Jun 21 '19 at 15:15
  • 2
    I edited out the offending word.
    – AkselA
    Jun 21 '19 at 15:17
  • 6
    Of course we police content and we've always done so (formatting, salutation rules, thanking in posts and comments, general noise) because if we don't then we get all kinds of mess. Why would emojis be different?
    – Script47
    Jun 21 '19 at 16:40
  • 7
    An interesting take. Not that I'm necessarily opposed to a change of culture, but the "be effusive" advice seems directly at odds with SO's "minimalist" take on question language, where even saying "Thanks in advance" at the end of your question will be edited away, so I'm not sure I agree with the Twitter analogues being relevant. However, the difference in language by gender (which I wasn't aware of) certainly is. @Stijn and others would do well to remember that sexism doesn't need to be intentional, it only needs to be discriminatory or exclusive. Impact matters more than intent.
    – Keith M
    Jun 21 '19 at 22:14
  • @Stijn, there is a "flag" link at the end of the answer you can use if it's too offensive or if you're being attacked.
    – Rob K
    Jun 24 '19 at 20:32
  • 2
    As a woman in tech, #rstats user myself, linguist by training, and (of course) huge fan of Dr. Silge's work and influence I'm thankful for your response, Sam.
    – Meg Risdal
    Jun 26 '19 at 7:15
  • 5
    "emojis were a valuable tool, conveying meaning that words could not". No. The meaning can be conveyed using words. Emojis change the building blocks of communication from objective (meaning) to subjective (feeling). Unfortunately they also greatly increase ambiguity and opportunity for confusion in the process, doubly so when using Unicode emojis which are not presented the same way to every viewer.
    – Ben Voigt
    Jun 29 '19 at 19:39
  • 1
    If my natural communication style is to pepper my speech with expletives, then Stack Exchange is not very inclusive of me and my communication style, either. Even though that might be my authentic communication style, accepted in certain communities, and an important part of what I consider to be my "identity". Which is why this is not an inclusivity issue; it's a professionalism one.
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Jul 18 at 11:09

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