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9:00 AM
The company brand has almost no value
The accumulated content has value, of course.
But you aren't going to sell that to VCs anymore.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard Basically means SE will be reviewing your request thoroughly, and other mods will be asked if they want you back on the team.
@CodyGray SO's the only brand marketing folks have ever seen value in
Oh, right. I forget people here see value in other brands, too. :-)
If they did, I would be surprised
But in all seriousness, those brands have value as penumbra brands of Stack Overflow. Not in isolation.
9:03 AM
@CodyGray especially since it's CC licensed
which means literally any other company that wants it can take it and use it for themselves
Yeah, I really don't get it
When they started ruining their brand, I just really didn't get it.
I'm really getting the feeling someone in upper management has made it their pet project to make the site more inclusive and fitting with sillicon valley tech culture by any means necessary and will burn it down if they have to to achieve that
You've got a million programmers in India and other places who aren't going to care about whether or not the brand is ruined, but they're not going to be loyal. They're going to just go to any site that has a textbox that allows them to type in a programming question. It won't be here unless they're getting high-quality answers, and they won't be if we can't attract and retain experts.
@Magisch Fun fact: "inclusive" is not Silicon Valley Tech Culture
Not even a little bit.
I live and work in Silicon Valley.
@CodyGray I'll also look into this
of course not, but sillicon valley tech culture prides itself as inclusive
9:06 AM
@YaakovEllis Thanks. I alerted Shog in the SO moderator chat room a while back. He said he poked the appropriate person, but that it might take some time for them to put together an answer. I imagine that ball has since been dropped, so thanks for picking it back up.
@Magisch I don't get that feeling
ironically the events of the past few months have led to more identity based harassment offsite for me then i've ever got from another place
Also... there go the complicated serial voting cases...
@YaakovEllis you must have some insights then that I don't, because even trying my hardest to assume good faith (a requirement that was struck from the coc, natch) I can't see another view on it
Very sorry to hear that
9:08 AM
The CoC changes definitely smacked of that. But it could also be explained by good intentions and an utter failure to consider the reality that you aren't going to change the entire Internet overnight.
But I don't see much else going on that jives with an interpretation of "inclusivity".
it feels like I'm in the twilight zone of the moral busybodies, and the fact that it's here is stirring people up in opposition. Suddenly, outing yourself as autistic means people will track you down in other spaces and mob you for it. I've never had that before on here
never even thought it would happen on here
@Magisch All I can say is that things look different when you have access to both sides, and can hear and talk to people when they are able to speak freely (which people can't do on meta). And also when you have access to "the big picture", and more medium/long-term plans. I totally hear how things feel to y'all. And am also upset at how some things have been handled. But I have the advantage of a perspective that most do not.
It's amazing how liberating and informative that information can be. If only there was some way to share that sense of power with others...
@YaakovEllis We'd love to get to see some of that perspective
@CodyGray That'd be the day when the SE CoC would also impact how people act on Reddit or Facebook :)
9:12 AM
@ShadowTheBurningWizard done
@JNat thanks!
@Tinkeringbell so Monica was afraid they'll deny the request after all?
Who wouldn't be? And that would give them the perfect cover.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard I don't know. I can only guess that's at least part of it.
Well, if I were Monica, I wouldn't want to be a mod again at all. So kudos for her for wanting it, despite everything.
9:18 AM
There's also the indignity of having to go through a process of reinstatement when you are denying the legitimacy of your de-instatement.
I will say
as someone at ground zero. It would have been a lot easier if they hadn't had three crisis at once
*four
turns out I do count after all.
What is the optimum number of crises to have at once?
@CodyGray 0, or 1
9:20 AM
multitasking at least is bad.
> Always be ahead of the next crisis
There's the CoC / Monica crisis, the relicensing crisis, the ads crisis, and the CM cutting crisis now. Plus the new CEO. And the redesigns. :|
the relicensing and redesign thing almost seems quaint now
@Mithical the redesigns were not that bad
relicencing would have been handleable if it was on its own
Forget about all that. My true crisis now is that I'm out of milk! :(
9:22 AM
Coffee. I need coffee.
this news genuinely ruined my day
@JourneymanGeek In retrospect, no they weren't. But they started the downfall of the trust between SE and the community.
I want to home and go to sleep and it's 10:20 am
@ShadowTheBurningWizard brews a cup of jQuery for @Tink
@Magisch it happened to me, too. I got no work done pretty much all day today.
And now...it's super late at night, so I really need to go to sleep, or I will have the same fate tomorrow.
You sleep, we fill up the MSO flag queue for you ....
Cody can handle flags while sleeping.
@CodyGray Go sleep. My fitbit says I got 5 hours last night. My fitbit is a liar ;)
Running on no sleep isn't good.
9:25 AM
pffft
I have 3-4 hours.
I usually hit 7, easily.
You're supposed to sleep between 7-9 hours.
Last time I slept 7 hours regularly was... during the army. Had no choice or anything better to do. :D
I usually get 8.5-9 in
I think I did 2+2
I'll catch up tommorrow
I'll make today short, then try and sleep up tonight.
@JourneymanGeek sale? Buy 2, get 2 for free?
:P
lol
I need to find another job with saner hours ;)
Maybe... Shog Overflow?
Or... Shog Exchange?
New Q&A platform! :D
9:33 AM
... seems the new episodes were just released ...
final season...
Should I be happy? Don't think so.
@Hitodama well it did get tons of people into the Tavern
@ShadowTheBurningWizard apparently the IT department where my brother works is hiring. Also has a high turnover rate
And brought back even Jin to say goodbye
@JourneymanGeek are they hiring for remote work? If so, feasible option for Shog. :)
9:35 AM
@ShadowTheBurningWizard much lower end
Shog can probably do much better
Maybe he now wants something simple.
Let his brain rest for a while, but still keep the lights on.
Heck.... after what he's been through, I'd surely want such a thing.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard eh, ground level IT, or IT management?
would be a waste ;)
and I'm grudgingly looking at the latter cause the more interesting stuff I want never seems to work out
@JourneymanGeek IT management? Have you gone mad?
@Tinkeringbell sigh
Maybe a slight loss of hope. I'd rather be a data center engineer or get my foot in as an SRE but that's difficult
9:40 AM
become a CEO
@Magisch eww
@Magisch there are depths to which I will not plumb yet
become SE's next CEO
start by laying off all of management
@Magisch That's unlikely.
yep, when there is a flood people trapped in a building usually run to the roof....
But that doesn't mean they get there to party.
But I'm sure we'd 1) either have a golden age 2) run out of money 3) both.
JAD
JAD
9:42 AM
I've seen the term SRE floating around, but what does it mean?
@JAD System Reliability Engineer
JAD
JAD
ah
Basically a sysadmin in the modern context
but rather than dealing with servers on their own, there's a lot more automation and such
JAD
JAD
An Azure/GoogleCloud/AWS buttons-pusher :P
@JAD erf. kinda sorta
which kinda my issue. The whole idea of cloud centric computing is... boring
Stuff is abstracted away until you don't need to understand the system
points at crappy SF questions
9:45 AM
The Cloud Just Works Serverless ™
until it dosen't
Desktop support pays badly
and frankly what I see on the ground is appalingly bad
JAD
JAD
last week our development team had an Azure cloud hackweek, to try out that stack. People were really happy about it
Sounds like it was fun?
JAD
JAD
hmm, I didn't have time to join sadly
10:15 AM
@JAD he he, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye putting it into production :)
... Some users don't have any imagination...
A sinking Titanic... really?
The usual "Departure at the Grey Havens" picture would have been far more fitting.
There's many fitting pictures... but none of them that say 'thank you'
If I guessed correctly at what you're talking about, anyways.
@Tinkeringbell I assume that whoever posted that wasn't there to say thank you but just to express anger at the company. Yet, the image I was talking about would at least suggest that the ones who left (don't know on what terms) went to a better place.
Yeah. Still... Just write something nice if you really have anything to say.
10:28 AM
eh
Or at least clever
It's no good being angry at the company on a thread that's basically someone's goodbye wishes.
Wish them the best, tell them how much you appreciated them... but don't use it to be angry at a company they're no longer representatives of.
Then what should I use to express my anger if not that?
@JohnDvorak There's two other posts out there, I think?
If within reason, go ahead there.
IIRC, this was the only one at the time
10:30 AM
@JohnDvorak It was the first, sure.
The others didn't follow long after though.
I guess other people could've made those other posts.
@JohnDvorak If you are friends with a board member or investor... :D
Yeah, I want to speak to the manager here....
take to twitter and blast them there
on an related notice... who unfeatured the other Thank You post?
Actually that's the stratergy that feels the rightest
@Hitodama I still see the tag
I'm not sure what's going on
10:32 AM
they're both featured
I just refreshed the page and "Thank you, Robert Cartaino" is no longer on the featured tab
Yeah, it's missing on my featured tab too... caching?
@Hitodama I'm not sure but I'm looking at the timeline and the post and the tag is there
ya
I think featured on meta seems broken
10:35 AM
coincidence? I think not.
Well its always been super flakey
probably a coincidence, but don't hold your breath for a fix
broken or a case of "It me. I allowed it"
@Hitodama The tags are still there
and I set both, so if anyone has an issue with that, they can blame me.
In this case though
its just broken
I place my personal bet on "Shog's 'in case I have to leave' timebombs are setting off" :P
10:37 AM
actually I think the blog post vanished too
The blog post was already gone this morning, for me at least.
anyway...
10:50 AM
@JourneymanGeek out of curiosity... could you try to remove the tag and then add it again?
no good :/
@Hitodama lol
was there an archive.org of this blog post?
If someone told me in January 2019 that they'd fire Shog within a year from now I'd have laughed in their faces
10:57 AM
blogpost?
@OrangeDog It's probably still on the blog, just not in the sidebar? Though I can't seem to remember the title.
@Tinkeringbell just to be clear - you mean a blog post about Robert/Shog9?
In that case, it isn't show on the latest posts tab in the blog either.
@Hitodama nope, something entirely unrelated
@Tinkeringbell oh, well, then I don't know. The dog said "actually I think the blog post vanished too" while we were talking about Shog9 so I thought it was somehow linked.
11:10 AM
In the sidebar I mean
@Hitodama Yeah, linked to stuff disappearing from the sidebar... not subject-wise to the stuff that disappeared from the sidebar ;)
anyway, I am mistaken or the parrot is now in rage mode?
sad mode, more.
Red is rage, black is grief.
I could've kept red, but it's also passion, love... that's gone.
In the end... the parrot was too red, even for me.
@Tinkeringbell and cute, happy and friendly. None of which seem appropriate anymore. I hear you.
11:23 AM
@terdon i hope friendly sticks...
@Tinkeringbell For you, of course! For your avatar? Maybe not :)
Also, I thought that was a bird of prey, I hadn't realized it was a parrot again. So I had thought you'd shifted into Attack Mode!
Nah, I still stuck with the parrot.
Birds of prey were considered and discarded.
> Parrots represent communication, friendliness, sociability and playfulness
I don't know... wanted to keep that, I guess.
oh, well, to be fair I am considering switching name to onibi, so...
11:32 AM
Sounds a bit like a 'dwaallicht', except for the diet of life force.
Hitodama are lingering souls near graves - souls that didn't yet leave but otherwise are harmless.
Onibi are angry souls.
@Magisch of course that license is probably now invalid for most of the content
Yeah, I got as much... a dwaallichtje can be a soul of a departed person, but not necessarily angry. One part of the folklore does have them be devillish though, tempting travellers to stray of the road and drown in e.g. a swamp/get lost.
I might find a suitably annoyed hatless pic of ash
@JourneymanGeek ash mid bark
11:38 AM
When I lived in Coffs, I'd occasionally see black parrots flying over our yard, but they never visited our bird-bath.
@JourneymanGeek mumble.... what about this one?
@PM2Ring yep, those are called "ravens" :P
JAD
JAD
The pillars of creation remain unaffected by human's folly
Probably. But sometimes it feels good to just do anything anyways.
@Hitodama :) We'd get a few crow species visiting our yard, and occasionally drinking from the bird-bath, but not the black cockatoos.
Thinking of
11:46 AM
@JourneymanGeek dont you have that picture of ash mid bark?
Not really clear
JAD
JAD
@Tinkeringbell There
:waits for caching:
@JAD kicked the cache for you :)
JAD
JAD
thanks
@JourneymanGeek No, your honor, I didn't kill him, I swear! I just walked in and he was like that!
JAD
JAD
11:49 AM
@terdon What you gonna do, call the police? You're next!
@terdon he loves that bandanna 😁
@GhostCatsalutesMonicaC. it's too long to articulate in the comments. It's like there's been a revolution and the people didn't win. — Yvette Colomb 2 hours ago
captures it surprisingly well
JAD
JAD
would that be a coup?
Well, I suppose that I could switch to this picture as an avatar....
JAD
JAD
12:05 PM
@Hitodama I can't really tell what I'm looking at
@JAD a white heart shattering
maybe you should be shattering the red one instead
> but it refused
I really wanna write a MSE question called "Shame on you SE management" and let all my carthartic anger flow into it
3
Writing is always an option... just reconsider pressing 'post'.
JAD
JAD
12:22 PM
or post it, and then immediately delete it. so only they can see >:D
(don't listen to me btw)
12:36 PM
@JohnDvorak fun fact: few realize that that is probably a reference to this
about two years ago... a customer was looking for some "intranet site that they could use to build a wiki of questions and answers". I suggested looking at Stack Teams, they chose a SharePoint wiki site.

Today, I would suggest SharePoint.
and they'd choose teams
so suggest wordpress so that they'll choose blogger!
@Hitodama I can't say I recommended SE or teams since what they did to monica
1:17 PM
just saying....
This is a post from last year.
now... either I've become blind or there are a post or two missing this time.
@Hitodama Jaydles quit and wasn't laid off. They didn't have farewell posts for the big layoffs last time either
still, this reeks
and the "align our company" PR nonsense could easily be read as "purge people who dissent from the current course of action"
those bold bullets ...
Shog wasn't even given the time to say goodbye. He popped into the TL and left one goodbye message but then his diamonds were removed before we had a chance to talk to him.
I keep ruminating on what to do
I'm angry and want SE management to know it, but it seems pointless to try and tell them cause they obviously dont care
1:29 PM
@terdon TBH though... there probably just wasn't much to talk about.
yep
@Tinkeringbell Shog had friends in that room. People he had spent years talking to. I find that very hard to believe.
It just seems super ice cold. Laid off on a monday apparently with no advance notice or severance. No blog post to wish goodbye, no acknowledgment of 10 years of iron commitment to the mission. And this weak as hell vaguely threatening PR speak response that feels like it has been written by Dr. Evil himself.
People don't "suddenly" start looking for a new job unless they were fired or something so bad happened that they had no choice but to immediately resign. Either way, it's bad. — tvanfosson 19 hours ago
^ to be fair, I have to agree that everything seems to point to the fact that whatever the reason behind this are, they didn't leave on good term.
Yeah, perhaps... though other people also aptly observed that removing special privileges is often done almost immediately when someone is fired... as a matter of procedure.

I do hope those friends manage to find Shog's answer to his own appreciation post.
@Magisch we have no idea if there was a severance package involved.
1:33 PM
@Magisch Yes... and no. I can almost understand the 'no blog post' part... if a company lays you off like this, writing an appreciation post can also come across as unnecessary hypocrisy.
@terdon occam's razor says no "the 'in need of employment' tweet"
either that or a very minor one
@Tinkeringbell Again, this is shog we're talking about. He practically built this place and all of a sudden you don't trust him enough to give him a few days to put his affairs in order? Screw you and the high horse you rode in on!
@Hitodama only profile page supports gif, sort of.
If you try enough times, that is.
@terdon Probably yeah. It's too damn reasonable to calm me down much either.
Um. Not you, @tink, I hope that was clear.
1:35 PM
yeah, got it.
OK, phew. I just re-read that and thought it could get misinterpreted.
I apologize for the external link; but to my way of thinking, this is what Shog9 is due: twitter.com/gortok/status/1216872311439142913?s=20
Your horse is short, everyone knows that! :P
@terdon it's the kind of soulless corporatism that walks people out at the minute of their layoff too
@ShadowTheBurningWizard oh, trust me, I have plenty of pictures that I could use.....
1:36 PM
not people, just automatons serving the cynical caricature of what human interaction is
@terdon There's a horse? And here I've just been walking and using public transport to get anywhere.
:)
@GeorgeStocker That whole thread of yours is great. It almost made me want to use twitter.
@GeorgeStocker I agree with the first part but I keep thinking that pressuring mods to resign it not okay. This has to be voluntary.
@GeorgeStocker heck, he deserves the same honor Jeff had: to keep his diamond(s) for a while.
1:38 PM
@AndrasDeak Where did he pressure anyone to resign?
He said he hopes we will, that's not pressuring anyone.
yeah, and asking "where [their] line is" if even this doesn't make them resign
I honestly expected that if shog ever resigned (I never thought they'd be inconsiderate enough to fire him) that they'd let him keep his diamonds as recognition of the entire damn decade of hard and draining work he sunk into making this place viable
I imagine Andras is referring to this part of the thread: twitter.com/gortok/status/1216894274870161408?s=20
it's as pressuring as a random tweet gets
which is not a lot, so take it or leave it
For what it's worth, as a mod myself I don't feel pressured. And I also feel that George has won the right to say things like that since he was a mod himself for a very long time.
1:40 PM
and I'm not a mod so I don't either ;)
Agree with @terdon on this.
If I was a mod, I'd resign over this either. As ordinary user, it's pointless.
I'm on the fence, myself. I've resigned 2 of my 3 diamonds, and I'm thinking of dropping the last one too. But on the other hand, I don't think it would actually achieve anything useful. It sure as hell won't put any pressure on the company, they clearly don't care.
It won't put pressure on the company, and it will harm the community. But at this point I'm wondering if there's any point in preserving the community if it's all going to sink soon.
@AndrasDeak Recognizing that most mod's don't go on twitter, that's a serious question from me. If this doesn't make you resign, what would? Would anything? Everyone has their principles and their breaking point, what is it?
So I'd end up with even less of a voice than I have now, and would be abandoning my community to the madness of SE. At least now I can still focus on my site and try to ignore the company as best I can. I certainly don't see it as my job to act as a middleman between the company and the community any more.
1:43 PM
@GeorgeStocker I don't think anyone could answer that before reaching the breaking point, but I guess you'll see
@AndrasDeak When did Noah build the ark? Before the flood.
:-D
@GeorgeStocker The animals only came when the ark was finished.
@Tinkeringbell They're animals, not idiots.
and the T-rexes didn't fit :(
Not much point in coming before. He'd probably make them help build the thing!
1:45 PM
I'm quite close to resigning. The reason I haven't done so yet is because I've got quite a bad feeling about the network sites and figure that if my sites are at the risk of being shut down, I'd rather stay onboard until they do. I can't do anything to change minds in the company, but it would show the people who use the sites that at least the mods care, even if the higher-ups don't.
And that's probably exactly it... If people decide to find their ark, I'll go with them. Otherwise, I'll take care of them here.
@Tinkeringbell so you're watching to see if all the people drown. Understood :P
A captain also goes down with the ship.
I thought Shog would be that
@HDE226868 The reason I ask the question is that at this point, any positive action taken to care for the community reinforces that the company is doing the right thing, by all the metrics the company cares about. So counter-intuitively, if we stick around to help, we're tacitly approving of the actions the company takes.
2
1:46 PM
Well, then the ship is apparently down and I'm just floating here on my door. Time for a sad song.
user316129
Shog outlived his usefulness
@Tinkeringbell just let Leo on that door, please. Both of you can fit, I've heard
@AndrasDeak I'll share it with as many people as want to get on there. Even if that means it's getting too much too handle ;)
@GeorgeStocker Yeah, I certainly get that argument. Been turning it over in my mind for a while now, tbh.
1:47 PM
@GeorgeStocker Is that true though? I can think of several positive actions whose entire point would be to separate the community from the company and/or shield the community from the company.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard Aptly called 'captain coward'. If you think that describes me in any way, thank you.
@Tinkeringbell no? lol :)
user316129
With the amount of sheer venom building on this site over the past few years, this was inevitable
I feel the only way forward imaginable, if there can be such a thing, is that all of us just ignore the company.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard Then a captain goes down with the ship.
1:48 PM
Shog was no captain either, just a sailor
@RichardsaysReinstateMonica joke's on them, having fired the last person who could post on meta without drowning in downvotes
user316129
Shog had a mind of his own, so his days were numbered
We don't ask for features, we don't do bug reports, we accept that nothing will change. So we let them do their BS thing and post their blogs or whatever, and we get back to Q&A.
which reminds me of my original "meta is going down soon" FUD
user316129
@AndrasDeak The two people I respected most at SE were Shog and Monica
1:49 PM
@terdon think of it this way: a landlord does not care who cleans the building. If a landlord cares about his tenants, he'll hire a top notch cleaning crew. If a landlord doesn't care about his tenants, he may hire a bottom-of-the-barrel cleaning crew, and have the community pick up the slack. He is a landlord in New York City, there will always be new tenants. By sticking around and cleaning up the building, the people are tacitly approving his actions, even as it hurts them.
@RichardsaysReinstateMonica the company would like to have a word with you...
We should think of Stack Exchange the way people think of Medium or Blogger or whatever. They just host us, we shouldn't look for, expect or ask for anything more.
user316129
@AndrasDeak yeah, I've got a few for them as well, all four letters long
user316129
@terdon but we don't even get that
@GeorgeStocker I would believe that if I had reason to think the company gets any value from the Q&A sites. I don't think they do. The respective communities do, yes. But the company? Not much, if any.
Which is why they don't care. And which is why whether we stay or not will make little difference.
user316129
1:51 PM
If SE just hosted us, that would be one thing @terdon but they've turned into the thought police
I thought that SO's traffic is important to them. Not quality traffic, just traffic.
user316129
THIS ^^^^^^^^^
SO's, maybe. Everyone else? No.
ah yes, everyone else no :P
And even SO, we're not needed to drive traffic any more. There is more than enough content to keep it going for years. And even if it closes, who cares? What they are interested in is Enterprise, Teams and Jobs.
user316129
1:52 PM
All you need to know about this company is that an executive can publicly libel someone, and keep her job.
@terdon Actually power users hinder traffic by closing crap. They want poor quality control for the helpdesk to function.
maybe
ok, I was going to just post this in the other room, but at this point...
I honestly don't think they care about public Q&A at all.
1:53 PM
the implementation of the welcome wagon was poisoned with this from the start
Everyone, sing!
user316129
@terdon they care about their appearance and about appearing "woke"
@RichardsaysReinstateMonica OK. But, again, that doesn't mean they care about public Q&A. That there is any way we, as public Q&A users can exert any pressure at all on the company.
So the only way forward I can think of is that we completely ignore them.
We make our own rules, just as we always have. If they don't like it, they can shut us down.
But in the meantime, we should do our thing.
> In Our Town, in Our Town
We work as a team
You can't have a nightmare
If you never dream...
@AndrasDeak that is just comedy. The song I posted... there is an horrific dissonance between the happy words and the fake, forced smiles... it is just unnerving.

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