Tavern on the Meta

Rubén

12:02 AM

Mostly to comment, chat and post on metas, no flag / edits, upvote (I can't downvote and do other mod actions anyway).

Mithical

1:05 AM

@ShadowTheSpringWizard there's no built-in support for that

@ShadowTheSpringWizard correct, that's fine

Big Joe

2:01 AM

Stackoverflow is always busy. everything i got to filter questions from stackexchange.com 99% of the time its from stackoverflow. looks like they aren't going out of business anytime soon

Meta Andrew T.

2:17 AM

@Starshipisgoforlaunch You can change your username to indicate that you're on strike, use your "About me" to express yourself, post questions and/or answers on the main site to get your username noticed.

Journeyman Geek

3:37 AM

@BigJoe By some reports, SO seeing a large dip in traffic is why they are freaking out

bobble

3:54 AM

[dropping in to say that I've signed the open letter in spirit but not on "paper" (pixels?) since I refuse to make an SO account]

Meta Andrew T.

4:06 AM

MSE: Moderator strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers

16

Big Joe

@JourneymanGeek I've seen lots of videos of SO mistreating n00bs that just sign up. its very hostile. meta is very nice. just do your research then ask your question.

M.A.R.

4:21 AM

@BigJoe lots of . . . Videos? People actually post videos of their SO posts on YouTube or something?

Big Joe

@M.A.R. yea i don't know if they are satire or whatever but yea. look up stack overflow on youtube and you will see some. they are from programmers

M.A.R.

Cripes

Half of the internet is redundant

Andreas detests censorship

@bobble I don’t think you need an SO account. Your SE account should suffice. If not, please bring it to the attention under the MSE post, and stress the importance of having it fixed.

bobble

@Andreasdetestscensorship Clicking to sign redirects me to create an SO account, so yes, SO is required

And which MSE post? There are many

Andreas detests censorship

27 mins ago, by Meta Andrew T.

MSE: Moderator strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers

@bobble That’s certainly not how it should be.

bobble

4:37 AM

> You are about to create a new account on Stack Overflow using a login from Stack Exchange (bobble.puzzling@gmail.com)

We will automatically link this account with your accounts on other Stack Exchange sites.

Elements in Space

5:26 AM

Strike! Strike! Strike!

Peter Kolosov

Strike-Bobble!

LET'S GO

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

5:42 AM

I forgot to mention when Philippe was hired, but back when he was employed at the Wikimedia Foundation he was involved in a controversy where the organization enforced the opposite consensus to a request for comment, breaking with its charter that it serve the community.

4

In summary: the community came to a consensus that a certain beta feature should be disabled. WMF didn't participate in the discussion, but after it was closed with that consensus, responded with a "recommendation" that it continue to be enabled. A volunteer administrator then edited an interface page to disable the feature.

(The response was from a different staff member, not Philippe)

This identical situation occurred on both the English and German Wikipedias. Both interface page edits were reverted by staff and both administrators were threatened with having their admin rights revoked as a "WMF action" - at that point, the only written reason for having admin rights revoked by the WMF was in cases where it would put them at legal risk.

In the German Wikipedia case, this went a step further - the WMF immediately pushed a code change allowing for a protection level ("superprotect") that only allowed staff to edit pages, then immediately used it on the interface page in question.

Relevant pages:

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media Viewer RfC

Case opened on 03:26, 18 July 2014 (UTC) Case Suspended by motion on 23:56, 31 August 2014 (UTC) Case closed on 00:16, 5 November 2014 (UTC) Do not edit this page unless you are an arbitrator or clerk, or you are adding yourself as a party to this case. Statements on this page are copies of the statements submitted in the original request to arbitrate this dispute, and serve as verbatim copies; therefore, they may not be edited or removed. (However, lengthy statements may be truncated – in which case the full statement will be copied to the talk page. Statements by uninvolved editors during the...

User:Eat me, I'm an azuki/Why I'm against superprotect: Wikipedia and the WMF

While I respect all that the WMF has done, there are points of friction between the Foundation and the community. The essay will show why I am, or was, against superprotect. == "Reserve powers" of the Foundation == "Limits to configuration changes" states that: Rarely, a local community consensus will emerge for a particular wiki configuration change that is technically feasible to implement, but is rejected by the [WMF's] system administrators. Arguably this is a demonstration of a technocracy, or a necessity to preserve the founding principles and our mission. The WMF has used the "reserve...

> On August 10, 2014, a group of German Wikipedia administrators attempted to disable MediaViewer on the German Wikipedia as per a community poll. However, the WMF exercised its "reserve powers" and did not approve the change. The German Wikipedia administrators then edited the local MediaWiki page to force through the change, but they were reverted by Foundation staff and warned. However, the admins persisted with making the changes. The WMF then applied what is known as "superprotect" to the page, which means only Foundation staff can edit it.

Mithical

6:32 AM

A case from nine years ago isn't necessarily relevant today; people do learn from their (and others') mistakes and improve.

We're not here to dig up dirt on Philippe or any other employee. Our goal is to stop the harm to our sites and communities.

2

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@Mithical Sorry if I wasn't clear. The point I was trying to make was that Philippe has direct experience with this type of situation, so it remains an open question as to why he's not employing it here. Also, a quick click of the pages here would reveal that he wasn't involved directly in those cases.

3

Also, another point is that SE can learn from how the WMF cleaned up their actions. Especially the part where they undeployed the superprotect feature even though they never actually used it later on.

mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_product_development_process/2015-11-05

starball

6:52 AM

@ElementsinSpace oh hey I can use a new word I learned

Elements in Space

@starball epizeuxis epizeuxis epizeuxis?

starball

@ElementsinSpace yes yes yes

Meta Andrew T.

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog mentioning Wikipedia reminds me of Does Fram's ban on Wikipedia seem similar to recent events? What can Stack Exchange learn from it?...

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

7:38 AM

@Mithical Suggestion: change the title to "Stack Overflow Co.". This way, it's obvious to others that you deliberately wrote the company name that way and it's not a mis-name. I was about to edit it until I read your footnote 1.

Mithical

This has been debated for around a week at this point. I left the title to match what's written in the letter.

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@Mithical If it was in private moderator space, I wasn't aware of it. Did "Stack Overflow Co." come up in the discussion at any point, or was it solely a discussion between "Stack Exchange, Inc.", "Stack Overflow", and the current name?

Mithical

There were a few options discussed, including "Stack Overflow LTD". A poll resulted in "Stack Overflow, Inc." being chosen.

It wasn't only in mod spaces, it was primarily on Discord.

SPArcheon

@MetaAndrewT. joining you folks. I see spam, but I won't flag or delete.

@ShadowTheSpringWizard you meant "don't post guidance comments". "Feedback" comments about how we feel should still be left on that "announcement" post....

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