it's 3:22 I'll be having a cup of tea and some kind of food, I don't even care what anymore lol
(jk, I care <3)
you know these days I'm afraid I'll get suspended for posting a reasonable request without offending anyone or proposing anything radical, and I'm even uncomfortable posting this chat message haha
but like a user who's no longer a user once said, "you should stop worrying about a site so much"
I was told offline I need to provide this information ASAP. Trying to be brief until after RH.
Caleb described the issue, so I feel safe in expanding now.
In January a mod asked a discussion question on the mod team:
should we require that people use preferred pronouns? My answer said we must n...
there's nothing worse that can come out of this than someone getting harassed over this
user206222
This snippet will cause an already-angered group to seek the individual moderator in question. It is awfully close to violating the "never copy anything out of TL" rule in a way that slings crap in an undetermined direction. It is unscrupulous to post this, and whether intended or no, bears the seeds of a hunt. That direction is also likely to be me due to my resignation, which is incorrect, but is something I'm not in a position to be able to demonstrate. I hope you understand the position this puts me and other queer moderators in, and how it sets us up to receive additional anger. — Aza12 mins ago
user206222
I'm documenting this here because I'm sincerely worried that Monica's post will lead angered people, regardless of the legitimacy of their anger, to seek an individual who is at fault and cited here. It is careless and reckless for her to have posted this -- or at my most forgiving, maybe she doesn't grasp this severity since she's been away. I also fully recognize that individual is most likely to be me.
user206222
A comment can be removed but a onebox stays on transcript.
@Aza honestly - so much of this is reckless and ill planned and...
sigh
SO uhm. As a fellow user, and someone who spends a lot of time here. I realise folks are angry and worked up and... Its tempting to opine and share the latest news. And I'm sure folks are interested
but the last thing that we need to do is fire up a mob with pitchforks and torches
No matter where you stand on this
user206222
Paraphrased,
user206222
4:49 AM
It's not moderators I'm worried about as much as it is non-mod users, @Ward. Many moderators are currently vying for public support and pouring information out selectively to achieve that end. But many regular users are angry about this, and it's only a matter of time until that carelessness hurts someone. — Aza25 secs ago
@Aza I don't think it's reckless or even unwelcome. As for the masses, do you think that keeping them in the dark would stop any damage? I've seen quite a lot of damage caused by keeping people in the dark for just a few hours.
user206222
This is a different kind of "damage," @JohnDvorak. What, to Stack Overflow's reputation? To community trust?
user206222
I sometimes don't think it's obvious the level of vitriol trans people receive online, particularly when someone passively or actively directs anger our way. I've had friends who needed to go into hiding -- physically, into a safehouse -- because of extreme anger.
user206222
I don't think this reaches that level, but I don't know. Someone making a post with easily-recognizable potential to do that is not a good sign for things to come.
user206222
At some point, this stops being about "how do we repair Stack Exchange?" and more about, "how do we keep each other, our physical persons, safe?"
I really don't think you're in danger here. The only one this new information paints in bad light would be that one mod, and their identity purposefully hasn't been revealed
user206222
Y'know, man, I really wish I could wholeheartedly believe that. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. I'm going to go silent for a while, to see what happens with this info.
One thing's for sure: the mob's pretty fired up against the company simply because they know they're being denied information, and information's what they're up for.
If you know someone is hurt. Find out why. Treat them with the respect they deserve
I know a few people are hurt by this. In some cases, I wish I'd known earlier and done a better job of helping others do the right thing. I do hope I made enough of an effort in my time.
I also know there's some of this I cannot have done anything about
My best prediction - if the new information is true - is that people would seek out that the Mod's behavior won't repeat itself, and the mere fact that the company is finally talking would lift the mood immensely. As for what happens if the company keeps status quo - well, people are fearing for their worst and looking for backup plans should the company ditch them entirely.
@JourneymanGeek A couple of cases of that really have made me smile over the last ~72 hours. I think it's important that we keep finding reasons to smile.
Assuming there still is a shared goal, I expect people to listen. And the listening might not be the hardest part. processing all that listening to fit into your own beliefs and then admit you need to adjust your stance is the blockage here. Hard for individuals, huge task for enterprises.
@JourneymanGeek Considering all that's been said publicly so far - I'm afraid you are right that the community is powerless and the change has to come from within the company.
That is a bit of a problem with companies. They tend to have objectives that not in all cases align with objectives of individuals, either within or outside.
@JourneymanGeek maybe SE felt there is no social contract between a mod and the company, so there was nothing to break from their point of view. The free service for y'all to use is the only obligation.
First we need to wait for the "official" SE response / clarification / their side of the story. Then we need to evaluate that against our own understanding of the issue at hand, make sure we fully grasp their drivers / goal / concerns and make a judgement call if the envisioned route is one that you believe is a good fit going forward and is within your own fair personal agenda. Once that is settled you can start to think about how you merge that back into the community at large.
6
It is basically take a step back, evaluate, make up your own mind and then either engage or disengage.
Fun fact: while a company is just a collection of individuals, which can cause inconsistencies when viewed as a single entity - that same thing also applies to humans. They too behave in ... interesting ... ways because they're just a collection of parts that don't even stay the same throughout time.
When you chop a plant in half, both halves act as an entire singular plant, even forming new roots where it previously had none. When a human brain gets chopped in half, you end up with two slightly different people sharing a single spinal column.
It feels like recently every outrage generating event is similar to the last, and bigger every time. Every time we stray a little further from the things that actually matter. Every time people are a little more hurt and become more distrustful of the system. Every time SE employees feel a little more unwelcome in the community they administrate.
And now we're at a point where any shadow is a target, every bit of opacity a conspiracy, and everyone is either for or against the latest iteration of the culture war playing out here. It's saddening and it just keeps getting worse.
I acknowledge that this was written from memory, in a hurry, and probably not in the best of moods, but this is a misrepresentation of what happened: I went through the relevant parts of the transcript from the 18th and the words bigot, transphobe, or any similar accusation were never hurled in your general direction. No sentence like “Your ideals are wrong.” was uttered. Overall I perceived the discussion as intense, but not descending into rudeness, name-calling, or similar. — Wrzlprmft1 hour ago
And yet knowing I don't know anything is ... liberating to me.
I'm glad to see that things have calmed down since yesterday evening (CET).
If SE wants to implement gender based and other ways to support LGBTQ, then it can't be considered as a Professional network anymore. It'll become a social network. There're many other things that need to be fixed asap.
@JohnDvorak I'm waiting for something else. Until then, no
the optimum exchange was always 0% any social things and 100% business. Every reference, holdup or mention of social structures is considered a failing
@JourneymanGeek It may hurt newbies. But in chat, almost all of talk with humans, bots, dogs, cats, birds, robots and ultimately, with aliens (like me).
I know they don't hold elections over the holidays usually so if the current resignations hold it'll probably be february before new elections are held
If community's fears come to fruition, even if there are elections, nobody runs, and even if somebody does run, they'll resign when they learn what's happening behind the curtain.
Still his opinions can be considered because he's the one behind all this thing. I don't think Joel could make this without him.
There's hundreds of questions that doesn't have an answer yet. Assume a trans newbie asked a question, didn't get an answer instead got some downvotes, then they decided to claim the community insulted them for being a trans, somewhere else?
When we talk with user12345, we don't know from which country they're. Or we don't know their gender or age or anything. Still they don't have any problem and they'll get an answer they want
You served as a mod for years and I think you sent 100s or 1000s of mod messages. While you're sending a mod message, you're directly sending to the person and you or your is enough, right?
I read in someone's resignation letter that they need this to include in Mod message too
As a side note, any idea how the "destroy Stack Exchange because they dared to increment the content license version number even though they technically weren't allowed to do so" project is going?
Robert moderated the site for 8+ years, from the bronze age till date and he have significant contribution in keeping the site clean and very welcoming to new users
Good catch, I updated it to refer to 2.5 for consistency if nothing else. Not sure if the minor tweaks of 3.0 over 2.5 are particularly relevant to us, or not.
edit: as of yesterday, we re-licensed under cc-by-sa-3.0.
personally, I don't care about the license change unless SE tell me the contents you posted here are our property. You don't have the right to share it somewhere else
@OptimusPrime 'As far as I can tell, "cc-wiki" is an old working name for the license that eventually became CC-By-SA 2.5.' meta.stackexchange.com/a/211836/202324
@OptimusPrime longer explanation: if you don't license the code, and someone is forced to change it, they can not change it from your state without making a leap of faith in that you (or any of your successors, this is a tricky bit but important) won't sue them by copyright infringement. They would need to get to your state by iterating from zero.
The niceness thing has no legal value because it isn't forcefully transmitted to your heirs, unless you leave that written.
Happens that a BSD-2-clause or an unlicense is going to be shorter and more standardized than a testament.
I was told offline I need to provide this information ASAP. Trying to be brief until after RH.
Caleb described the issue, so I feel safe in expanding now.
In January a mod asked a discussion question on the mod team:
should we require that people use preferred pronouns? My answer said we must n...
Good catch, I updated it to refer to 2.5 for consistency if nothing else. Not sure if the minor tweaks of 3.0 over 2.5 are particularly relevant to us, or not.
edit: as of yesterday, we re-licensed under cc-by-sa-3.0.
Dunno when exactly, but it was fixed and rolled out to all sites:
