Tavern on the Meta

12:00 PM

There already have been a few, I think: The removal process, the reinstatement process, the 'no talking to the press'...

Understanding *exactly* what went wrong is very hard, especially if things are as complex as this whole mess. So I do try to always allow people some room for 'I thought the problem was X, but now that something similar happened when I did Y, I understand it may have been Z all along'...

Sometimes you need more than one mess up to really understand a problem :/

Magisch

I don't see any real understanding of what went wrong in anything they've put out so far

Tinkeringbell

Sara's now deleted apology post acknowledged that it was wrong to de-mod Monica before she'd be off the internet for a few days, which didn't help communications. The 'no comment' policy acknowledges that SE understands that talking to the press was wrong, even before they reached the agreement.

The removal process seems to show that SE understands there was something wrong with the process of demodding Monica.

There have been clues, but you're right about not having a view into their internals so nothing is for sure.

JAD

The last is tricky since they didn't follow up with retroactively applying it to Monica's case

Tinkeringbell

@JAD That's because the reinstatement process puts the onus on the mod that wants to be reinstated to start it.

Monica didn't want that.

JAD

I'm not talking about reinstatement

Tinkeringbell

12:05 PM

Oh sorry I'm messing up my messages...

JAD

I'm talking about resetting to before it happened, then applying the removal procedure

Tinkeringbell

Yeah well... real life is not some code you can roll back to a last revision :/

I can only trust there are enough reasons to not unilaterally 'reset to before it happened'

JAD

Sure. The point is that the only thing the users heard was "Hey, this wasn't right. We now have a process to do this!", without any indication why that process couldn't be used for that instance.

which leads people to believe this

6 mins ago, by Magisch

I don't see any real understanding of what went wrong in anything they've put out so far

Tinkeringbell

Hmm.

Magisch

Their version of events simply does not square with what I see and what monica has said about the events, and in the absence of actual evidence (which is not forthcoming here, for a variety of reasons) I simply can't just take their word for it. One side is blatantly lying

Tinkeringbell

12:09 PM

@JAD Well, I hope they'll give SE time to convince them, because at this point I can offer you a lot of interpretations and hearsay and nothing concrete so... I'd only make it worse, I think :)

@Magisch He-said-she-saids always have a middle way.

I have a co-worker that talks a lot with me because at home things aren't going so great... but I always need to remember that I'm only hearing his side of the story, and to keep myself from offering 'solutions' based on that.

JAD

@Tinkeringbell hmm, I'm not particularly invested in it all any more, so meh.

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell right. But in this case initially it would have been easy for SE to claim the high ground by offering some real evidence, redacted where need be, just enough to show the context. This is what mods do when users misrepresent the reasons for mod actions on meta. It's the expected standard of behavior for the moderation on all SE sites. Instead, they doubled down with some more accusations, also to the press. This leads me to conclude that one of three things must be true

1. Monica's version of events is correct and SE is lying directly
2. SEs version of events is correct and monica is lying, but SE have been terrible about handling it
3. The truth is somewhere in the middle and someone or some group in SE has such a massive bone to pick with monica that they decided to screw her as hard and dirty as possible in the most public way possible

I don't think 3 is fair to believe so that leaves 1 or 2

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch I'd go with 4. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

brb, family lunch time.

Magisch

If the truth is somewhere in the middle then someone or some process at SE has produced such a malicious result that either people need to be let go for cause or a lot of soul searching needs to happen

djsmiley2k in darkness

AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHH

Mithical

12:14 PM

or people are human and mucked up

djsmiley2k in darkness

when I read a piece of documentation, put it into practice and it actually works :O

Magisch

mucking up is fine, doubling down and refusing to correct it isnt

djsmiley2k in darkness

@Magisch and there's the problem.

Mithical

From what I saw, the truth is that there were problems, the problems were handled badly amidst massive communication issues, and the combined issues of a.) the subject matter b.) the involved person c.) bad communication ended up setting off a chain reaction of events that led to the mess we're in now.

djsmiley2k in darkness

And I can't discuss it here, because it's directly about certain people

Mithical

12:18 PM

If it had been over any other issue or involved any other person this would not have happened.

djsmiley2k in darkness

So we leave it at that xD

the users 'outside' the network never get to know any more

Mithical

See... there are about two people who know what actually happened, about fifty who mostly know what happened, a thousand who know some of what happened, and several thousand who have heard some sort of distorted condensed bit of information about it.

djsmiley2k in darkness

yup

Magisch

I still think on a moral level the community is entitled to transparency

djsmiley2k in darkness

Fact is, someone somewhere pulled the trigger.

Magisch

12:22 PM

the fact that they have chosen not to provide it leads me to draw an adverse inference not in their favor

djsmiley2k in darkness

Either by themselves, or on instruction.

@Magisch indeed.

Mithical

ooorrr on a moral level they are required to keep people's privacy and not leak stuff that happened in private places

JAD

there could be multiple morals at play here

Magisch

@Mithical I don't know. I don't feel like anyone's privacy interests weigh in this case except monica's, and that privacy interest was already broken as much as it is possible to break

and you can't unbreak it so I don't see that concern

Mithical

> I don't feel like anyone's privacy interests weigh in this case except monica's

that is incorrect

like extremely incorrect

Magisch

12:28 PM

It's not like any of us normal people could know that though

Mithical

so? SE still isn't going to release everything that happened if private just because most people don't realize that other people don't deserve to have their private conversations dumped into a spotlight of several thousand people

Gimby

"Normal people" :) Speak for yourself, I am far from normal.

Magisch

Like I previously said, for all I know this could be an utter nothingburger and the reason they haven't released any is that it would make them look super bad. In legal systems there's a concept of an adverse inference, e.g when someone withholds or destroys evidence in a proceeding, it must be assumed that the evidence says the worst it could possibly say about them in context. This isn't a court, but the basis of why that rule exists holds true even in social settings

Mithical

I'm saying believe what you want, but there is no way that SE is going to release the stuff that happened in private and they shouldn't.

2

PM 2Ring

@Magisch That's correct, we can't. But we do know that several LGBT+ mods complained about anti-LGBT+ stuff happening over a long period in the Teacher's Lounge.

Magisch

12:32 PM

fair enough, but then you can't really be mad at people demanding more consequences

@PM2Ring That casts what SE did in a worse light, not a better one

If there was a problem going on for years and this is how they chose to start addressing it ... yikes

PM 2Ring

@Magisch I'm not trying to defend SE. I'm just pointing out that there's a significant body of private information related to what led up to Monica's demodding, and that it cannot be revealed without breaking the trust of all the mods who frequented the TL.

Mithical

Or the private mod Q&A, which is relevant as well

Rob

How that came about: "A New Study Indicates Humans Self-Generate Misinformation".

Magisch

At the risk of sounding like captain hindsight, thats even more reason not to make it a public affair, which they did

now that it is, people are understandably demanding complete transparency

Mithical

Well. They made it a "public" affair by announcing it to the entire TL, yes; but it was only after moderators starting posting about it on meta that it became a public affair. I don't think anybody at the beginning could have predicted how it developed.

Magisch

12:39 PM

vis a vi. Now we have the worst of both worlds

PM 2Ring

@Magisch Yes, many people are demanding that. And I'd like more facts too. But I also believe that private spaces for mods must be respected.

Magisch

I'd argue what's happening right now is markedly worse then if they'd just released the entire TL transcript of the past 3 years and made the mod team public

because speculation tends to eclipse reality in seriousness

Mithical

Wore for who?

Worse for SE? Maybe not. For the mods? Hell yes.

Magisch

monica, SE and the lavender community at large

maybe not certain individuals

you probably noticed but the environment all across SE has gotten a lot less safe in the wake of this

Mithical

Even aside from the fact that there are users' IP addresses and emails and other info contained there, people wrote stuff in there with the understanding that it was in private and would stay private. People write differently in public and in private. People share different things. Releasing it would be an extraordinarily bad idea.

Magisch

12:43 PM

I don't really publicly comment on the whole thing anymore either outside of this room because the last 2 times I did some dipshit tracked me down on twitter and discord and decided to make a fuss because I side with "leftist extremists" in supporting the new CoC

djsmiley2k in darkness

@Magisch oh i welcome the dipshits

Shadow The Burning Wizard

@AdrianMole oh. Why would it be Israeli? :)

Magisch

The fact that these views have gained support and legitimacy is a direct consequence of SE bungling the whole thing

Shadow The Burning Wizard

@Mithical who wore?

Magisch

@djsmiley2kindarkness I don't. despite how it is cool to play it off on the internet, harassment unnerves and upsets me and I'm not up for more

djsmiley2k in darkness

12:44 PM

:(

Shadow The Burning Wizard

trying to avoid reading everything TL;DR of drama?

Adrian Mole

@Shadow The lyrics were written by folks from Israel (2,500 years ago - it's a merger of two Psalms).

djsmiley2k in darkness

@ShadowTheBurningWizard i posted link to tech news thing on yt that happened to do 30 sec about the legal announcement

shows how little people outside of the 'community' know wtf is going on

Shadow The Burning Wizard

@AdrianMole lol.... eh... so maybe "song with Jewish roots".... but by Israeli I mean something done and originally performed in Israel. :D

@djsmiley2kindarkness I think I know what people from outside think: "SE kicked out a bad moderator, the moderator fought back, causing a rebellion".

djsmiley2k in darkness

@ShadowTheBurningWizard hmmmm maybe

Shadow The Burning Wizard

12:47 PM

Wait... what legal announcement?

The one with the agreement?

djsmiley2k in darkness

yes

welp, sorry if this has been painful

I just thought it was really interesting

Magisch

@Mithical you may be right about the privacy thing, but it's really hard to see from the outside

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