A bit yes, in general it's conflating the licensing issues with the latest moderation issue. But I agree that it does figure into a bigger picture and I'm just glad someone shines a light on this horrendous mess on Meta.SE without the moderators having to do so by posing as ignorant of what's going on. We're not ignorant and know full well what's going on, even if we likely won't be able to share the full picture here. But if anything needs to explode on MSE, this does. Even if response from SE or any remotely significant consequences to this mess are unlikely to happen.

I hadn’t heard about Monica or the other resignations. I’m glad you collected all this news here. It is a bit suspect that Monica was the CM with the loudest and most consistent voice in advocacy for the veteran users. But then who knows what goes on behind the scenes. I have had a chat with a few SO mods who made it clear that they’re trying to shape Meta to “tow the party line” in an effort to preserve at least some semblance of it. The undertone was that of Meta overall doesn’t come into (party) line, there may be no Meta at all.

It's a long complicated issue. I'm a mod at Writing so I'm privy to all the details mods have (which is not all that staff knows). Aza's resignation happened first and is not related in the sense you mean but is related to a degree. The way SE handled this is beyond horrible. Disproportionate response done suddenly just before the Sabbath which is just before one of the biggest holidays of the year (and well known that Monica celebrates both by going off line).

@DanBron I assume your "CM" means "community mods" (i.e. elected moderator), not "Community Manager" (a job position in SE).

@MetaAndrewT. I actually thought Monica was a “community manager”, not a regular diamond mod. I didn’t know the other names as I’m not active in those stacks. My mistake. Feel free to mentally read “CM” as “diamond mod” in my comment above.

@RobertHarvey I agree.

On Stack Overflow: Yvette Colomb no longer has her diamond. No comms yet.

@Kevin Yvette resigned earlier, she left a YT here: chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/47359972#47359972 do know she handed in her diamond on pets.se earlier this year.

@rene: Ah, I did not see that since I basically never chat. I didn't watch the whole thing (it's 45 minutes!) but it sounds like she just wanted a break and this was bad timing.

The Creative Commons stuff is somewhat irrelevant to the post and pretty minor compared to this.

Aza and Monica's threads both reveal behavior from SE that I personally can't let slide. The licensing is a bit like a broken window in the middle of a tornado in comparison.

@PrincessOlivia From reading Aza’s post and some comments under this thread, my guess is that their and Monica’s departures are related but on opposite sides of the coin. That is, Aza’s resignation sparked some CoC change that Monica dissented from as the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction, and voicing these concerns got her dismissed. I say this because Aza’s note paints other mods in a poor light, and directionally points in the same direction as TPTB have forcefully pushed the CoC in the last few years. I expect SE will announce the CoC changes in this light.

@Stormblessed For me, both are important. The CC issue pissed me off a lot because it demonstrated deep disregard for the community and for their legal obligations. The moderator firing itself is a morally more complex issue, but the manner in which it was performed is irresponsible, aggressive, and hurtful. My question is primarily about SE's vision for the future company–community relationship, not the firing.

This should definitely be [featured].

Unfortunately, I doubt that will happen. They haven't on some other posts anyway. Until that happens, and as much as I hate recommending this: use social media. That currently seems like the only way to give this problem the attention it needs

@rene that's a fairly long video, and apparently is mostly about non-stackoverflow stuff. Has anyone produced a summary version?

Response from a Stack Exchange employee.

This feels suspiciously similar to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:FRAM.

@Alex: That answer is completely astonishing. I sincerely hope it's just panic-mode get-out-in-front-of-the-story and not their actual, official, considered response to this circus.

The reason why Monica was fired has been out and clear. She had a different view point from what the director of Q&A had, and was therefore thrown out like street garbage. The director has repeatedly demonstrated that they don't care about the community's feelings. There used to be a time when users were free to oppose whatever the company had done, and were able to remain on the site. But in the past few days, the Stack Exchange staff have tried to take down posts on MSE and Stack Moderators teams which were focused on the resignations, and suspended a user for posting that.

@BhargavRao Based on the actual post in question, it looks like the user was evading a long-term suspension.

@amon I wonder if this summer's upheaval over at MSO (starting roughly here, I'm sure many others would be more-competent guides to the timeline of events over there) merits inclusion in your examples of "SE is burning up their <strike>community</strike> collection of volunteers."

@GlenH7 as an outsider I think the most damning part of this even though demographics imply that a significant fraction of the moderators likely have political views in that would support what it seems likely that the CoC changes are about; is that not one person with access to the relevant data has even gone as far as saying management may have had a reasonable basis of concern.

@DanNeely It seems to me that if there were a reasonable basis of concern then that might mean that a user had acted badly; the people with access you're talking about come from a pretty strong culture of not talking about users' bad actions (and I'm not saying whether I think there was or was not in this case) publicly unless the user themself brings it up publicly. So I have a hard time reading "those with access haven't argued on the management side" as a damning signal.

@amon copyright infringement is not, has never been and will never be "stealing." It's one of those awful exaggerations invented by the MPAA and RIAA when they wanted to jail people for copying songs on the internet, and they needed to justify that. When you "steal" something, the horrible thing is that you take it away from someone. In this case, the content is going nowhere.

They better have an incredibly good and detailed explaination for this coming.

@Magisch I want to make it clear that staying on is just as valid as resigning. For some mods, the love of their community outweighs the discontent of SE's actions. And many mods are just waiting to see how SE responds to these problems before making their decision. It is my hope as well that problems can be fixed and rifts are mended. Pressuring or encouraging resignations doesn't help.

@Magisch Not yet, and I can't put it in a better way than what amon has mentioned. That said, I've always been quite vocal in mentioning that the upper management hasn't necessarily been the community's friend off late. The CMs (and the PM) are still good people, but they don't have much power to take these decisions.

@BhargavRao I'm not too into the company structure - both you and Monica mentioned a director - is that a separate position, or is it a reference to the CEO (existing or new)?

@PrincessOlivia Probably someone like the Director of Public Q&A at Stack Overflow.

I had already asked to step down (mostly because of SE behavior), but this firing just prompted me to totally stop right now and not wait the elections on devops.se

How is Aza's departure related to the incident with Monica? Is it possible to explain that w/o details nobody wants to give yet?

@BSMP I think this comment has the most accurate measure meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/…

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog For us non-10Kers, can you summarize in a comment or post that deleted link, what it said, and who it involved?

@Mari-LouA It’s possible, but I doubt it, because I have formed independent opinions about them both from their patterns when posting on various Metas. I ran slightly cool on Catja after the debacle on EL&U re the redesign. The quote you reference happened on SO Meta (more specifically: a special chat the most invited me to), with several mods, but the one in particular I had in mind is actually mentioned in this post as also resigning. But the topic of conversation could have as easily for on MSE.

It's sad to see Gilles worried. He's got sauce.

This all leaves me wondering if we've wasted our time investing so much in this company. It's not a community. We've all participated in OSS projects, this is not one of those. There are no NDAs and secret plans in OSS. I can't help but feel we all made a bad decision to trust that this company won't do what companies always do. Now we're in it, now we have years of contributions at the mercy of capricious profit-motive decisions, now we watch the company walk away with our investment and a "we're sorry you feel that way" tossed our way.

We seem to all agree that this resource should exist, it seems few of us think it should exist like this. Time for something new?

@Chris I’ve seen calls for a general boycott in chat. I think a better approach would be for someone to launch an SE competitor architected along the lines of what the veteran users here thought they signed up for. But I’m not volunteering to launch that product myself; I’m quietly waiting for someone else to.

@DanBron I think that's the rub -- we feel like we already have the resource (even when it's proving to not be what we imagined), it's hard to gin up the motivation to recreate this all. Sunk costs and all that.

The existing content is freely available under Creative Commons, that makes it possible to seed a competing service. (This is part of the reason why I'm twitchy about any license change.) However, launching a competing service just because of bad management sounds disproportionate. “SE with less restrictions” would likely have the same fate like Voat. It would be far better if SE gets back on course.

@amon The thing about SE is that even if it "gets back on course", it remains a corporation with non-altruistic goals. We all knew this when we started out here, but I guess we were blinded by the talk of community and the illusion of control that we thought of this as yet another open-source, community-driven project. It grew to the point that the corporation couldn't help show its claws. What's the path to go back? I really think the mistake was ever believing a corporate project could ever be something for a community. We all know better, then we get reminded.

@Chris There might be an argument that capitalism is the root of all evil, but I'd disagree. Non-profit projects such as Wikipedia also suffer from insane politics. The problem isn't money, it's humans. Companies make stupid decision because they are made of humans. Fortunately, humans are also capable of forgiveness, and that gives me a bit of hope.

@amon well technically... when SO violated the license on all content a few weeks ago (and possibly even before then) it rendered it void.

There is "new" information available about how this all started here and here. "the touch-stone issue is almost comical. Pronouns. No seriously, pronouns."

@thirtydot If it's too much going into detail about the private moderator chat, it might get deleted by SE, though.

@ChristianRau Technically, it is going into too much detail... but who knows what SE are going to do.

@OrangeDog: It doesn't work that way. SO (might have) invalidated their own license. But each person who comes into contact with CC material gets a separate license automatically, and SO has no ability to abrogate those, no matter how badly they break the rules.

for what it's worth I have gone inactive on Worldbuilding for the time being, waiting to see what happens when the dust settles. Monica taught me not to moderate while frustrated/angry...

Like @James, I've also decided to go inactive, on all four sites I moderate. I can't condone all of Monica's actions, and I don't support her views in this case, but I also disagree strongly with SO's response to the situation. If one of my sites has an emergency (spam wave, abusive user, etc.), I'll step in, because I don't want to see that. But that's it for the immediate future. So many people have been hurt lately. I cannot moderate for now, but I can work to try to heal everyone's pain. And try to fix what happened to Monica.

Perhaps I am overly paranoid, but given the recent unilateral actions from Stack Exchange, has anyone taken the precaution of saving and/or publishing full copies of this and all the linked resignation notices? (Note that while SE may not like that, it would be specifically allowed under the CC license.)

@Wildcard this page and many of the linked ones have been submitted to the Internet Archive wayback machine.

@HDE226868 Thank you for keeping a positive outlook. That sums up my feelings pretty well.

I assume it's not a coincidence that this happened after the CEO change?

@Mehrdad The change is tomorrow.

@amon: Ah okay. I guess, "around the same time as" then. It seems too much of a coincidence.

@vcsjones, that's not entirely reassuring, as at least one wayback machine archive pertaining to recent events has already been removed.

One of the mods on SO, @GeorgeStocker, has gotten a reply that it's probably going to be tomorrow or the next day before we get a public response to this. In light of the communities reaction to the brief message posted on Sunday when this first blew up, taking time to get all their ducks in a row first before making another statement is a good thing. chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/47443547#47443547

I've translated this question for the spanish site. My heartfelt thanks and support to Monica et all.

@HDE226868 as you seem to be doing a lot of updating, I don't think all the resignations are directly related to Monica's firing. For example, Caleb's seems to be about the CoC. I think it is important to separate out those resigning in support of Monica from those resigning for other reasons.

@StrongBad I've only updated mine and James', and that's because we both talked with each other for a while in the WB mod lounge prior to those decisions. I haven't been party to anyone else's private thoughts or considerations, so I haven't added, edited or removed any others, as I'm not privy to those details. I'm not involved with any of the other editing decisions - it's not up to me. I think you know just as much as I do. :-/

Either what StrongBad says, or make the following "As far as I know, the following mods have been fired or taken action in protest over the firing" you know, more inclusive. So it also covers people resigning over the new CoC, since that's what the list currently covers as well.

@amon oh, and twitter shutting down HNQ last year, despite years of pending requests around here asking for changes to HNQ.

A healthy Stack Exchange site needed to moderated by its community. I have been watching here 2days, there is no acceptable response from SE, and number of protesting moderators keep increasing, SE shall ASAP explain to its behavior before anything goes too late.

The last time SE went against the community was the removal of Hot Meta Posts on SO, and a fall in the pit, another fall in the same pit.

Monica was really a good moderator. Why she go fired?!!

@Snow no active mods in Workplace.SE? isnt there another mod ? According to mods section in users tab.. Not active in that community.

@Script47 ... This nonsense is going to cause so many issues like we see right now. Can we not just leave things as is? ... sorry, but that statement is also non-sensical. It starts with: every person reading your comment will have its own idea what exactly "this nonsense" is meant to say, and will interpret "leave things as is" in their own way. The real point here is: a lot of people are unhappy. And these feelings aren't caused by this one event, they rather reflect many months that got at many people on different levels. Sure, changing views (and how language gets used) is ...

a painful process, and causes a lot of churn. And it might take months to get to something that works for most people in reasonable ways. But the key topic is simply: how SE handled the whole affair, and threw a well trusted moderator under the bus. Only a real statement from SE.com and meaningful follow-on actions has a chance to "stop that nonsense". Many people are willing to leave years of work behind, and move on. This is existential for many people. Not at all "nonsense".

@GhostCat you misunderstood what I meant as nonsense. I am keenly awaiting the statement and I think SE/SO should held responsible. The nonsense that I am talking about is this talk about the proposed CoC. It was meant to be a reply to thirtydot's link.

Honestly? This is in its own way good. It's not good for the parts of the community still trying to remain active, but this might make a massive impact on the future of all users if SE starts taking action to ensure users and moderators alike are treated properly. And if SE doesn't... More users and mods will follow

Sara Chipps in The Register's The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row: "We understand that a few other moderators have resigned, and they may or may not have full knowledge of the situation."

'In response to an email from The Register, Stack Exchange director of community Sara Chipps said, "On Friday, we revoked privileges for one Stack Exchange moderator when they refused to abide by our Code of Conduct (CoC) after being asked to change their behavior multiple times. The disagreement stemmed from an interpretation of a certain policy, but our CoC is not up for debate."' - I'm confused. Is the CoC out or not?

@Blue Seems like it since it goes onto say: 'Asked to confirm that Cellio was the moderator in question, a company spokesperson said, "Cellio (she/her) would not use stated pronouns, which violates our current CoC. [...]' but goes onto to say... '"We are soon publishing an update to the CoC to even more explicitly cite misgendering users or moderators as a violation."'

FYI Sara: 'But we hope all moderators know that we very much value and appreciate their contributions [...]' - Actions speak louder than words.

@Script47 It entirely depends on your understanding of what’s polite. Stack Exchange, and several moderators, maintain that the current CoC already covers this, and that any future changes would just be further clarification, not an actual change of policy. (I’ve made my own stance clear elsewhere.) Others call this interpretation “obscure”, clearly due to a different understanding of what passes for polite conversation.

@KonradRudolph Well, let it be known you have entirely missunderstood the debate, though. The "use of non-preferred pronouns" was never under debate, by anyone. But it's not like you can be blamed, with all the vagueness flying around everywhere.

@ChristianRau You’re citing my tweet out of context. I think I understood it reasonably well, actually. My initial tweet would have been more explicit if space had permitted for it. Ultimately the distinction you (and others) are trying to make is not as relevant as you think it is (and that is part of the issue here). I readily acknowledge that there is a distinction, though, and I’ve made it subsequently.

Also inaccurate, I'm afraid. But granted, it is a confusing issue with people claiming inaccurate things left and right. This is only exacerbated by none of the moderators being able to share exact info and having to beat around the bush (whilst also having various different interpretations of the specific issue), while SE is even more vague and acted on all this before the CoC addage was even public.

@Chris - "This all leaves me wondering if we've wasted our time investing so much in this company" - Absolutely, categorically, irrefutably not. Even if SO went offline tomorrow, the millions of users it has helped, the countless projects that it has delivered, the motivation it has given people to take on things outside their comfort zone knowing they had support if needed is phenomenal and cannot be undone. YOU, the mod team, the community, made that possible and shaped the world of I.T into what it is today. Even Rome fell but it's influence lives on. Your time has not been wasted.

@Blue We don't need to turn this post into a dumping ground for off-site links. What value does the Register's take on current events add here? Why is it relevant to the conversation happening here?

Not to mention, there is more official information about what happened in that news story than on all of SE combined.

Emacs is down to one mod now. We're dangerously close to a second, mod-less site.

Not my platform!

In addition to all of the mod resignations, there is at least one non-mod requesting to have their account deleted

Speaking as a former diamond mod, this is completely unacceptable behavior from SO corporate. All site users, and especially mods, enrich them with our free and diligent contribution, and if they are willing to treat us with such lack of regard, they don’t deserve that free work. They need to make this right fast.

Can users please delete comments that are no longer needed? I have deleted a few of mine scattered here and there.

Instead of requiring deletion, flag comments that are no longer needed as no longer needed. Much easier

@PrincessOlivia who is going through the comment flag queue on MSE right now? There's only 1 active mod left on here either.

This is unfortunate. SE leadership evidently believes that "peace" is equivalent to lack of opposition. This is, of course, false, as disagreements are a normal part of human interaction. Hopefully community feedback will help them reevaluate this position.

A snowball effect started from a couple of pronouns ,,, Which from my point of view makes this so tragicomic, since there's only a single word for the third singular person in my native language. Furthermore, words are not categorized as masculines and feminines. I suggest SE moves to Finnish language to avoid conflicts like this, and to become the most hyperpolite site in the internet.

@Teemu I think it's more to do with the fact that it seems that Monica was fired for asking questions about an unimplemented CoC change.

@Script47 But those pronouns were a subject of a/those question(s), weren't they?

@Teemu That being the subject of the conversation doesn't mean the mods have stepped down due to that. If you read most of the statements, they mention treatment of mods/long time users being the primary factor (among others).

@Script47 Ofcourse not, I also never said that, I just said "A snowball effect started ...". I understand (and have been following it for years) the core of the "snowball" has been growing for a long time before all this. I'm just a regular user without effusive passion to the community or SO the company, but I wish this episode can and will be solved in a decent manner. In the meanwhile, I'll continue to write comments about reading the documentation, for hypocrates to flag and any current or future mod to remove.

As of right now, this post on meta has 997 upvotes and just 16 downvotes. Everything else aside, that's a shocking display of unity on Meta SE!

Official response meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/…

After having waited patiently for days, after reading the latest official response I have decided that it is time that I too suspend all activity until real progress can be made. The continued mis-handling of the community and this situation is exceptionally discouraging.

I'm not interested in contributing my time and content for the benefit of SE/SO if they can't respect us. I've been light on the contribution the last several weeks and I come back to this?! I'm very upset. I'll find another way to give back to the community. If anyone has good ideas, let me know.

@amon Savvy on fennec, my bad. Your call on the update link, but for the record I think top-posting it and maybe even oneboxing it would give the best hand out wanting to give SE the opportunity for a fair shake here if they want it (rather that trying to kick them as hard as we can while they are down) and, unfortunately in this case, be a tangible demonstration of why so many people are up in arms.

@amon You can add me as disappointed. I have considered taking leave but have decided not to at this time. Here's my response to this incident: meta.stackexchange.com/a/334289/228367

I noticed some of my additions to the list have been moved: where does the line go between the first and second group of resigned moderators? (asking because with over 100 revisions, I'd prefer not having to create two every time I add something :])

@PrincessOlivia some mods resign or take action because … all of this (waves hand) but do not want to be associated with Monica's firing. They should go into the third group (“for their own reasons”). Sometimes they explicitly indicate this in now-deleted comments.

I don't have all the information, but I can't think of anything that corporate could do to make me want to stop helping real people. I stopped being enraptured by imaginary internet points and friends long ago. The word of the day, everyday, is posterity. We're not here to change the freaking world; we're here to provide others with the information to do so. - TL;DR: all you people who quit in 'solidarity' might help the next guy, but it won't help humanity as a whole.

When is a comment "no longer needed"? I'm pretty sure I made a relevant, substantive, and unique comment here, but it seems to be gone with no record of ever having existed. Are critical comments being deleted out of hand?

@gnat I truly hope that your bounty will go to JourneymanGeek's answer. It was honest, heartfelt, relateable, promoting peace over division. Kudos to him for expressing himself so well.

@Randal'Thor I haven't yet made up my mind (I just didn't expect many new worthy answers posted after I opened bounty) but it is in my short list, that's for sure

The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row is a very, very, very big black-eye for SE. I've sat across the table deposing executives all over this country for 20+ years, and the one truism that emerges is that many never moved beyond kindergarten in mental development or in interpersonal skills. This is shameful and an embarrassment to all who have helped build this community, not to mention Cellio. Do the right thing and FIX IT.

@Martin maybe your resignation should still be mentioned, but in the third list (additional resignations)?

Martin purposefully self-removed from the list, see also the edit description. Everyone should respect that. Cc. @iBug

@AndrasDeak I intended to inform Martin about adding it back to "other reasons" category, but it slipped through my mind.

@iBug Martin requested not to be added at all.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit - I apologize, it does appear a bit of American arrogance was unintentionally displayed. That would be the temporarily deranged US of A.

It's being going downhill for years! It started when Jeff left, the one with all the vision for a great "community", and Joel took control, the one who just wanted to make money of other peoples hard work, that they tend to give this corporation for free. Shame on you StackExchange, for making such poor decisions, and ruining what some have spent years contributing to in good faith.

There have been posts requesting that the new SO CEO react to this. I just took the time to read Monica's timeline blog (last link in the question), and this has already gone to Joel Spolsky. He wasn't even willing to acknowledge receipt of Monica's correspondence. He created something fantastic and is now overseeing its descent into an undesirable place to be. Even if actions are reversed under pressure, it will be for the wrong reasons; the business has lost its ethical footings and guiding principles. I may wait to see how things fall out before quitting entirely, but don't have high hopes.

@fixer1234 A response by a CEO would be unusual, and Joel left that role past Tuesday – was likely quite busy doing the transition. However, the CTO has just offered an apology here. Doesn't promise reversal of anything, but acknowledges problems with their actions.

Perhaps the 3rd official response link should also be posted at the top of this question as it is quite important and the first true positive response that we've received from SE itself.

@HovercraftFullOfEels I see your point but don't want the first few lines of the post to change. If you think that other post resolves this question, you can vote to close as duplicate. (I think the core question about a vision for the company–community relationship remains mostly unanswered.)

I agree that the response is not a comprehensive answer to this question, but it is a key player and should not be buried at the bottom.

@DavidC.Rankin Hehe ;)

There IS NO forced relicencing. It is either a legitimate action or it does not and cannot happen. The label may change - but "the goods" may not. || So too the unquestionably illegal copying of linked copyright images to Imgur - such actions do not convey any claimed new rights wrt the stolen images - they are just claimed to do so.

looks like in addition to resigning, GlenH7 removed his accounts from SE network

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334900/…

Monica said she was seeking clarification. That’s not “dissent.” Nor is it what SE claims: “repeatedly refusing to comply.” Who’s lying?

Add to the Gilles list Unix&Linux,

This is now #5 of all questions on Meta, ordered by net score.

@Mari-LouA those are good suggestions, feel free to move the names around yourself. E.g. temporarily resigned moderators could be mentioned in the “other actions” list, or moved to the end of the resignations list.

Another user lost

This is so sad..

you can add another disappointed Movies.SE user to the list: movies.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4575/…

Here's hoping for a few more fingers crossed

Assuming that continuing/restarting to work with the community is the intent of SO Inc. (it may not be, and for legitimate if sad, capitalistic reasons) I think it's obvious that this situation needs external mediation. The Community does not have recognized leaders and no effective way to elect some; Stack Overflow Inc. does not have much good-will left to work with (esp. the individuals closely involved with this affair). So go hire the best independent community management professional/consultant you can afford, for as long as it takes.

I am going inactive as well.

@Luciano There are lots of disappointed users not listed here, this list only includes posts from diamond moderators.

SE would do well to contemplate that "Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy."

As of this comment, this is the second most up-voted question on meta. In comparison the most down-voted is Sara Chipps' "apology". The second most down-voted was CesarM's FAQ on gender pronouns, which has been saved from that status because it was deleted.

It's very strange, i never thought of Monica having even a thought of doing stuff that doesn't align with the Code Of Conduct, it's a very unacceptable decision for me, can't imagine how the person who fired you thinks you're gonna do inaccurate stuff, there goes the end of SO :-), they should get you back.