@Aibobot i'm not sure i follow. you're suggesting there's issues with people qualified for the role having preconceived notions, and there's also issues with people who already have experience within the community. you seem to be saying they should maybe try someone who is neither qualified nor knowledgeable, but i don't think you mean that. :P

@Tinkeringbell until the job opening comes up... :D

What do you think?

@doppelgreener well - consider the folks on team chaos

@BabaYaga Why are you interjecting this in the middle of an ongoing conversation?

Please delete it, I didn't see that earlier

@doppelgreener hmm

Maybe I can put it better :D

What I'm imagining is that a professional CM would necessarily bring in different perspectives from external sources where they've been a CM before. Also, part of their professional skill will be the ability to be flexible with a new community and take time to understand things from the many perspectives at play.

yup

but a lot of CMing is soft skills like empathy

and well, in some cases a non traditional candidate might have perspectives to stuff like the needs of different groups of people that say, I might not

also the pool of professional CMs is small, and SE's kinda had a ... unusual but effective approach to it in the past

and some of the really effective CMs we had were not really pros

actually none of them were XD

i figure if a professional CM isn't capable of empathy and perspective, they're not really a very professional CM. (or not one qualified and fit for that title)

but also having a diverse and inclusive CM team will give them more capacity to have varied perspectives

well yes, but its uh...

ah, but that might mean looking at folks who arn't professionals

and possibly non mods :D

if they're a good fit. But finding them, and them finding the role is a tricky thing?

so either classes arn't a bad thing. Just that in some cases, finding diversity means not just "insiders" :D

@Aibobot Shouldn't be too hard... ever seen the application forms? You have to tell more about what you are than what you can do ;) Just discard all the "whats" that are already present somewhere ;)

@Tinkeringbell how do they find the application form? :D

and yes, having applied twice...

Twitter?

uh, maybe, if they know someone who's talking about it

@Aibobot I mean, if you're looking for a job and want to work for a specific company, you've probably set out a network aimed at getting there?

:D

but if you want to work for SE... uhhhh

you bookmark the 'work here' link ;)

I feel like I am missing a lot of history XD

cough

and check it every so often yes :D

but at this point you're hooked :D

See? :P

@Aibobot yeah that makes sense

I'm (again) considering team chaos

:D

I can like chaos :) Never saw the team, just a few posts about it.

I guess folks might go "Hey, so, I know this job and you're a great fit... so uh... give it a shot?"

To be totally unfair...

I do like the CMs that care more than 'it's just a shot' best.

lol

Well - yes

(I'm trying to flail out a point and feel like I'm missing :D )

I think I get the point you're trying to make, you want another team chaos ;)

also that it might be good, given scale to consider how to hire more diverse groups of people on the team :D

at the moment, SE needs to (re)build a core community team

@Aibobot I don't think they need to consider how to hire, from what I've heard and seen they're already doing ridiculous (to Dutch standards) amounts of checking for diversity...

@Tinkeringbell oh uh

I don't just mean as tokens though XD

So hiring the best people for the job, regardless of how many tokens they are?

Sounds good to me ;)

I don't know what Team Chaos has to do with this, personally. Team Chaos's job was to come in and work on promotion:

> CHAOS works directly with Joel and me to come up with, and execute on, new ways to promote all of the new SE sites and bring in new users. Looking at the original job posting we put up, you can get a bit of a feel for what they’ll be doing [...]

— stackoverflow.blog/2011/09/15/welcome-chaos

... and I don't really clearly recall what they actually did

(2011 was around the time I was just starting to get involved in Stack Exchange, so it was a bit soon for me to recognise what an all new team was up to)

2011... I was still in university studying archaeology back in 2011. It's that long ago...

sdc coffee Shadow

@Ollie brews a cup of Ristretto for @Shadow

That banner is really huge.

So fresh

@ShadowWizardWearingMask.

@Ollie what's wrong with being huge?

:P

Nothin'

@Tinkeringbell i was in university and had just spent a couple of units in game design classes the year prior and had heard about this game dev Q&A site

:D

Comes online

Sees @Sha commenting about hugeness

@M.A.R don't look up

There's something huge up there

Too late

noooo

You're too young

@doppelgreener ah hah!

@Aibobot oh, yeah, on that, I remember Tim Post(?) talking about how Stack Exchange early on decided to work out a means of ensuring candidate pools were diverse for hiring

So basically they got a half dozen folks to basically develop new communities

I don't know how effective it is though. The CM team is not that diverse for example I think????

none of them were really from SE proper and they were good

Or at least seems to be missing some dimensions of diversity

@doppelgreener In 2011 I was just starting my second year, so it would've been more general world archaeology classes, ecology II, paleoclimatology, and some MesoAmerican archaeology. And statistics, I think. I started learning how to program in 2016, made a first post on IPS in 2017... Even that seems long ago!

@doppelgreener hard to get diversity in 4 people :D

@Aibobot Yeah that's a point

@Rob I know!

@doppelgreener and if I got hired, would I be considered "diverse" as a singaporean based indian cis-male? :D

@Aibobot One woman, three men, I think? Spread over the world a bit... seems diverse to me ;)

Probably different backgrounds on how they came to be a CM as well.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Dirty.

@Tinkeringbell yes :D

@Aibobot sure, i believe so

"noooo, You're too young"

@doppelgreener even though most people would assume I'm a dog white dude if I didn't tell them... :D

@Ollie Does your mother know?

@doppelgreener on the other hand, I'm also kinda on the "mainstream" of SE, I do actually like aspects of the status quo

and that does sometimes need to be politely but firmly questioned

@Tinkeringbell I would hope not.

@Ollie no, I took a shower in the morning, still clean.

sniff self

Eyeroll.

Well... almost.

:D

:P

Okay, can we get back to the serious one now? :P

/me walks up to @ShadowWizardWearingMask lifts a leg and leaks oil.

Y'all are uncouth.

Go play in the Den for a while.

@Ollie use @Νеvеrꭑoꭇе's image

@Tinkeringbell only bots in there, less fun :D

anyway

@doppelgreener that's what I kinda mean there :D

Both as a mod, and as a member of the community, its damned useful for someone who sees things I miss

sdc tea Tinkeringbell

@Ollie brews a cup of lemon tea for @Tinkeringbell

@SmokeDetector will you take the cup to the sink?

sdc oil Aibobot

@ShadowWizardWearingMask No such command 'oil'.

:(

@Ollie lemon tea is best tea

@Rubiksmoose lol... true

@ShadowWizardWearingMask :D

though sadly the bottled stuff I used to get went "healthy" by adding more water ._.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask pushes @ShadowWizardWearingMask down the Slip n' Slide.

🍋☕💚

Covered in coconut oil.

@Aibobot what stuff?

@Aibobot :(

@Ollie eww too much details

:D

👀

The Slip n' Slide is covered in oil!

@ShadowWizardWearingMask fairprice.com.sg/product/…

@Ollie ohh but I don't have my swimming suit on me

Erm...

It's deep in the closet

(didn't use it for... long time)

Swift kick

@ShadowWizardWearingMask: AAAAARGH!! Sh**!

Let the kids enjoy, they don't need me. :P

We recently made one out of old rolls of plastic, a garden hose, and coconut oil for more speed :D

It worked nearly as well as my way of wrapping Christmas presents.

@Aibobot oh nice.... here it's considered better than soft drinks, less sugar, but still far from being "health product". :)

@ShadowWizardWearingMask That looks like it's gonna chafe bad when the slide ends in rubbing on the grass

@ShadowWizardWearingMask oh

@Ollie looking nice from the outside, falling apart on first use? ;)

No.

lol

Like this:

Literally place the present on the paper.

Literally scrunch the paper around the present.

Literally put some tape on it.

Literally nail the whole thing together.

Well that's the definition of wrapping... :D

Done.

And it didn't literally take four hours :D

How can it get wrong?

no "nail the whole thing together"

I'm reminded of that Tom & Jerry short

._.

Oh...

Well...

it looks like this afterward:

wraps @Ollie... to the ceiling

@M.A.R. meh, who cares? They have fun until then. :D

@Aibobot oy.

@Ollie like what? Like a question mark? ;)

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Said every child-oriented market ever

I couldn't find a decent image.

:(

!!/tea Shadow

@Ollie brews a cup of mint tea for @Shadow

@Ollie what about this one?

needs nails

Not enough nails.

lol

And it needs flames coming out the top.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Have you seen the version by the company "Slide the City"?:

@Ollie Gift of Satan?

:D

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Yep.

@M.A.R excellent.

No doctor.

He's thirty miles away drinking tequila.

Bad boy.

Phd only

COVID only

I get it that he's been sawn in the middle, but does he have the virus?

I have mask, COVID is out

Need eyewear too

@Rob nope

@Aibobot I wanna tug on this for a sec, because the discussion surrounding it is one that has been had internally numerous times, and... I think the concept of empathy is key to a lot of misunderstanding.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask my mask is better:

@Rob me? I have.

@Shog9 please do :D

The Eye of Shog.

grabs popcorn and moves aside to let @Shog and @Aibo talk

Steals @Shadow's popcorn.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask 1000 feet long

@Shog9 in theory you can run a community as a total sociopath, but connecting to the people you work with seems to ease a few things

It dosen't make hard decisions easier...

and to some extent, it might colour how you do a few things

Ok. See... Don't confuse a lack of empathy with sociopathy. Who & where you can empathize is ... extremely variable. Never universal. Depending on it as a predicate to serving a community puts you at risk of being completely blind or callous to concerns simply because you lack the background to be able to empathize.

To be clear: I think it is extremely important to have CMs who can empathize with their communities. But, they will never be able to empathize with every individual in those communities.

Well, no

This is where drawing candidates from those communities is useful: they start out with a healthy level of empathy for those communities because of that shared background.

You can't... Fake that. You can't synthesize it.

Drawing in outsiders is useful too, but not for empathy - it's useful for the other skills that they can bring.

In theory, a big enough team could possess a broad enough set of backgrounds and experiences to be able to not only empathize with each community, but with a large majority of people within those communities. But that is not a viable goal for SO - they'll be lucky to triple the size of the team, and what I'm talking about would require an order of magnitude increase if not more.

This conversation is so vague I don't know if you two are agreeing or disagreeing.