7:11 PM
@ResistanceIsFutile I'd like to address this, since I've heard it a lot. It's not... Wrong, but... I think there might be some value in understanding how it came about the way that it did.
This all started with a violation of an old, old principle: "admonish in private, praise in public". There are times and places that require deviating from this maxim, but they are few and far between; I've found that the necessary work can usually be accomplished by keeping targeted admonishments private, and falling back on statements of principle in public.
By doing so, the target then is helped to correct without being tarred before their peers, while those they have hurt are able to take comfort in knowing that the stated principles apply to everyone. The only loss is the thirst for vengeance - and sating this thirst should rarely be our goal.
So upon observing this violation, I sat down to write a formal process for admonishing moderators, hoping to prevent the mistake noted above from recurring.
As other people got involved, this process morphed into a process for moderator removal, then spawned another process for reinstatement. But through all of this, the core goals remained the same: the processes should be quick to execute, hard to bias, and transparent to everyone involved.
If worst came to worst, and the details needed to be made public... There should be no reason for anyone to feel betrayed or misrepresented; crucially, the process itself should not suffer due to an introduction of such "sunlight".
Critically: for a moderator to go through one of these processes, they should have seen little practical difference from a moderator having a conversation with me in years prior.
They should have felt that they understood the reason for the conversation, felt empowered to voice their own thoughts or concerns, defend or explain any actions they'd taken, and walked away clear on what was expected of them - and what they should expect from the company. IOW: it should have been exactly what Monica had been asking for.
...Then management got involved and larded them up with overhead and black boxes. We tried to push back against that, arguing that they would hurt confidence, but to no effect. When the processes were published, the reaction was as we had predicted: a deep suspicion instead of trust.
In the end, it came out that we had been working at cross purposes: our goal was to design processes that led to effective communication, while management's goal was processes that ensured Monica would not be allowed back as a moderator. In short, our efforts were doomed from the start by bad faith, and the public reaction to the processes reflected this.
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With all that said... I still believe that the original idea behind those processes is valuable. Having a process for the company to follow could aid in avoiding precisely the mistakes that led to all of last year's nonsense. But to develop such a process, it is necessary that it be both written and executed in good faith; indeed, a well-written process should make it obvious to all when someone tries to execute it in bad faith!
My hope is that Teresa is sufficiently strong to push back against legal, and restore enough autonomy to the CMs that they are once again empowered to develop processes that serve the people. If this happens - and there are some signs that it may be happening - then it may yet be possible to avoid a repeat of last year's debacle.
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