The way I read that is that they'll reach out to you after the moderator removal process has been formalized and shared with the mods on friday. At least that's my reading of the OP.

@Magisch there's nothing in the letter that suggests that.

@Mari-LouA you're right, but I read that as implied by the sequence. YMMV though

@Magisch I will be very disappointed if they wait days before even contacting me to apologize and talk about plans. It would call David's sincerity into question. I think his intentions are sincere and I look forward to seeing them backed by action. First steps ASAP will go a long way toward rebuilding trust. The whole problem won't be solved in one conversation, but we can start.

Yom Kippur is tomorrow evening. 24h seems appropriate for a message. Lets see how the will handle it and keep the word.

@aloisdg Yom Kippur starts tomorrow evening. It's also a big holiday. By analogy, scheduling a meeting late in the day on Christmas eve with a devout Christian (who has obligations that night and not just the next day) would not be ideal. Today would be much better than tomorrow; trust me.

@MonicaCellio Sorry that this happened to you. I hope everything is resolved in a manner that helps address the hurt that you've experienced and enables you to continue your wonderful participation in the communities you've been such an important part of.

Thanks @JoeFriend; I appreciate the support. I hope so too.

Just for clarity, if they do reach out to you tomorrow, will you be online at all? (If not to answer, at least to update this answer with the fact that they've reached out?) Or is this holiday one where you will be offline entirely?

@Wildcard I will be online (intermittently at times) until a couple hours before local sunset. If I'm contacted late in the day I'll do my best to update this post before going offline for Yom Kippur.

@MonicaCellio Given what has happened, why would you (or anyone else in your position, for that matter) want to re-engage with them? I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. I just want to understand your PoV on why, b/c to me, it would seem to have passed the point of no return, like trying to go back to an abusive relationship, and would've probably warranted legal action, based on some of your comments about emotional distress, reputaional damage due to (AFAIK, IANAL) libelious claims, danger due to doxxing, and other details mentioned elsewhere. So, why? Is a sunk-cost fallacy likely?

@code_dredd Monica is best placed of all of us to indicate to the company what remedial actions she feels are warranted, or at the very least to get some closure on the whole debacle. It's hard to imagine why you wouldn't want that, though I do agree that at some point you have to cut your losses.

I consider it likely that given the fallout over this matter, SE are going to proceed with caution. I would expect that there will be a considerable amount of internal discussion before they settle on a course of action. Just because SE's CTO has issued an apology doesn't mean that those to whom he reports will have exactly the same opinion. Given the potential for legal action against them, their terms of service notwithstanding, the possibility exists that their legal counsel has recommended silence until all the potential ramifications can be considered.

Since יוֹם כִּיפּוּר is also known as the 'Day of Atonement' where repentance plays a big role its quite an irony when observing the timing of this 'situation'..

@OrangeDog At the risk of being conversational, in the US, Christmas Eve is a good example because nobody (religious or not) wants to start a serious conversation, only to table it over a major holiday. The same principle applies to Thanksgiving. Both days involve total shut-downs of many businesses. The point is Yom Kippur is the same to Jews in that regard

I would hope they would at least reach out to Monica and say, "I apologize for us not following our process and for how we publicly responded to your dismissal. I recognize that hurt you. I apologize. After the holiday, would it be amenable for us to sit down, have a meeting about this, and see if there's a way forward?"

@GeorgeStocker that would be a good start, and something they ought to be able to do without lawyers. So far there's been no contact at all.

I am baffled that SE is failing you — and there-for us, the community — again.

@GeorgeStocker IANAL but seems to me that saying that “their public response to her dismissal hurt her” could add weight to any potential libel suit. Frankly, I think they are guilty of libel against Monica, and I’m not even a litigative type. So their slowness in proceeding to contact her disappoints but doesn’t surprise me.

@wildcard I am not a lawyer (you may be, but I'm not); so I'd defer to lawyers on what is considered libel. Popehat has a good writeup; it appears that one of the criterion is that opinions are protected from being considered libel in the US: popehat.com/2013/09/26/…

I agree with Monty Wild and Wildcard. Disappointing, but not surprising. Because lawyers are involved, I wouldn't dismiss the CTO's apology as insincere. I'm also not a lawyer, but I've dealt with them enough to think there is a very real possibility that the CTO and any other staffers have been legally advised not to say anything more right now, not even to satisfy the common courtesy of acknowledgement (e.g. "Monica, we've seen your comments but are not at liberty to communicate further at this time."). It's frustrating and sad, but I'm still holding out hope.

@GeorgeStocker as I said, IANAL. But the top Google result for Monica’s name is now an article that includes, from a company spokesperson, “Cellio would not use stated pronouns” which is not an opinion. People have been fired for that precise behavior.

@wildcard if monica wouldn't use 'they' as a singular pronoun and she was 'fired' for not using 'they' as a singular pronoun (both true statements); then what is libelous? Truth is an absolute defense to libel.

@GeorgeStocker but the current CoC does not mandate singular "they".

@GeorgeStocker “stated pronouns” includes neopronouns, not just “they”. Monica was demodded for suggesting that some of us can write well enough to avoid pronouns altogether and not make it seem weird in a chat room full of people already hurt by SE’s ham-handed handling of LBGTQ+ issues. There have been mods that have said unequivocally bigoted things directly to individuals in that room who weren’t demodded.

To amplify what @ColleenV said, people in that room said things to and about me that clearly violate the current CoC. They remain mods.

@GeorgeStocker That blog post (and I follow Popehat pretty closely) links to some other resources, one of which has this page: dmlp.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-privileges.

Tbf, 15:36 UTC is give or take around 8 in the morning in America. You got it first thing in the morning - that's as proritized as it gets. If you don't consider that morning because it's not a UTC morning, don't forget timezones come into play

@Zoethetransgirl that's 11:10 AM in my and SE's time zone, and the second day after the post was made.

@MarkAmery it is almost certainly at least defamation. I haven't gotten lawyers involved because I want to resolve this with SE.

We’ll be reaching out to her directly to apologize for the lack of process, privacy, and to discuss next steps. If there was no apology for all of those things, Fullerton lied. If there was no mention about your future, about how to repair the damage, or how and when to proceed, Fullerton lied.

@MonicaCellio "Defamation", as defined in US law, is just an umbrella term encompassing both "libel" (written defamation) and "slander" (spoken defamation). The points George and I raise likely make prevailing in any defamation case against Stack Exchange an impossibility, for better or worse.

But, as always, consult with a lawyer and not random internet folk

For what it's worth, the only reputation-damaging claim I've seen that was outright, objectively false was The Register's claim that Monica had misgendered people by using the singular "they" to refer to them (which is roughly the opposite of what really happened, and seems to be wholly The Register's mistake). But even that error of fact probably doesn't suffice to make the claim legally defamatory; in the US, it is a defence against defamation if the overall thrust of the claim is true, even if unimportant details are wrong. [1/2]

[2/2] Of course, the distinction between the two is important to Monica. But will a court see any significant difference between calling a transman "they" and refusing to call a nonbinary person "they", in terms of the impact that being accused of each of those acts has on Monica's reputation? Or would such fine distinctions be met with a shrug, and both accusations be put into a general basket of "politically incorrect pronoun use"? I kind of suspect the latter, but I am not a lawyer or an expert.

I don't want to go to court. I want SE to talk with me.

@MonicaCellio Understood. Just trying to flesh out the legal possibilities since they've been brought up repeatedly here by others.

"...legal possibilities since they've been brought up repeatedly here by others" Monica has also expressed repeatedly that she doesn't want to go to court over this. I'm not Monica, obviously, but can we all please just respect her choice in the matter? If at some point Monica does want to litigate, she should consult with a lawyer anyway, who will be in a far better position to provide good legal advice than almost certainly any of us are.

@MarkAmery - I know you mean well, but how about deleting any of your comments that aren't directly relevant? If you want to talk about legal aspects, SE does have a Law.SE site where it might be on topic.

@aparente001 I won't delete them, because I think they are useful. I'm not sure I see the logic behind keeping the +17-voted comment arguing for the position that Stack Exchange's conduct was legally libellous but deleting the comments arguing that that is probably false. If you want the entire discussion of the merits of a potential libel suit purged, flag the post for a cleanup (though a mod may instead think they have value), but I'm not going to delete only one side of an argument.

@aCVn lawyer? Who needs a lawyer when we have the Workplace (and Law)... ;)

@MarkAmery - I didn't mean to single you out, sorry. My point is that Monica says she doesn't want to pursue legal action. I can certainly see that you might be interested in exploring what her legal options might be, should she change her mind, or for someone else who might find themselves in a similar situation. I would just ask you to do that in the appropriate place. // I've been finding that flag processing is quite delayed currently (understandable!), so I've been leaning more on community, collaborative moderation than normal. I will look for some other names to ping now.

@Wildcard - please see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334551/…

I'd appreciate it if the legal discussion could migrate elsewhere. I'm getting pinged on all of this. Thanks!

@MarkAmery - Please feel free to ping any others you feel might be willing to take the legal discussion elsewhere.

Monica ... since I don't feel I can say what I want without reprisal, I'll just say: I'm sorry you've been put through this. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

@MarkAmery: I very much doubt claims about use or non-use of gendered pronouns would be entertained as meaningfully reputation-damaging.

@MonicaCellio: Easy fasting, if you're fasting (or maybe you've already started and aren't reading this).