We can mobilize and step up the pressure, one week at a time.
In the U.S. in the early 70's, the anti-war movement stepped up the pressure to end the war in Vietnam by holding monthly mass mobilizations. The demonstrations took place once a month. It was a way of saying, "We want the killing, ...
This is a nice idea, but it wont work. The utter majority of people coming to the big sites, like stackoverflow ... they dont care what some "crazies" like us decide on META communities. Heck, most of them probably don't know what is going on right now. And most of those who dont know ... probably never visited MSO or MSE ever. When your union only represents 1% of the workforce, then calls for a strike will have no significant effects whatsoever. The only thing that could happen: less moderation from experiences users, no moderation work from moderators.
That would for sure increase the amount of visible garbage in certain areas. But ... it would take weeks of doing nothing before that would ever possibly impact new users coming in.
Long story short: I think we have ZERO leverage. We can only decide for ourselves, whether we stay, just to help others, ignoring the company. Or to walk away for good.
@GhostCat - Terminology: I think it's important not to call it a strike, because strikes are ongoing, continuous and indefinite. This isn't. // Have you looked at the optional second half of the post? The idea is to start with a snowball and for it to gather more snow as it rolls, getting bigger each week; our job would no longer be to engage in endless debates at SE Meta, but to pursue a coordinated action which builds momentum week by week. Yes, we would have to work to get this on people's radar screens. // This is an alternative to the feelings of impotence and desperation you described.
But if we don't answer ... we have no effect. No new user questioner will know. The newbies writing answers will love the annoying high rep users being silent, not writing better answers, not pointing out all the problems in their maybe low quality content. or respond only with our own version of a slogan ... when you do that, each and any such comment (or worse answer) would need to be flagged, and removed by moderators. And sure: stack exchange inc could easily ban you for doing this. That would be a mis use of their service. You have no right to user their servers to ...
call for a strike-not-named-strike-initiative regarding the company that hosts the service you use to put out your initiative. And just for the record: see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334626/… for example
Not sure if there is much else to say. As you can see for yourself: you collected 7 upvotes today, on a question that alone received 200+ votes in one day. My conclusion: as said: wont work.
I know, it is terribly frustrating ... but I do not see that we have any kind of leverage.
The ONLY thing I can see: I saw one person claim: one could potentially force SE/SO with DRM request to take down content. Like: one request per day for any of your existing comments, answers ... SE/SO can do almost nothing about such requests ... but follow them. Which is probably an annoying manual exercise. So: if 50 or a 100 people would do THAT for a month, that would probably hurt them. But obviously: a lot of ifs/whens in that idea.
I think there are 10, 20 important topics around all the time. And each one gets 5, 10 important answers. I think it is impossible right now to follow everything.
Thanks. What would you say to deleting some of your comments that show your skepticism? I realize that they come from your bitterness about the way SE has handled things. I share that bitterness.
