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09:00
@JourneymanGeek Heh. I think I've said it before... forgiveness to me is supposed to be unconditional
I don't believe in unconditional forgiveness
@Tinkeringbell What's happened has happened. We don't remember to hold a grudge. We remember to keep it from happening again.
Conditional forgiveness is not forgiveness, it's negotiation. "I'll forgive you if you give me $100"
That way, we don't need to forgive, we can work together ;)
Its the "remember the time you walked into a streetsign?"
I hold no ill will to the streetsign...
All actions have consequences, some actions have consequences that can never be erased
everyone has done some things they'll never be forgiven for, it's just part of life
09:02
I however am a lot more careful than I was then ;)
@Magisch What would 'something like this' be? I think the people involved here have learned their lesson by now. But new people may make the same mistakes, just because they weren't aware of those mistakes being made by others in the past. (If they didn't, no-one by now would ever burn their fingers picking up a too hot slice of pizza, for example). Even people that have made a mistake may make a similar mistake again in a moment of unawareness. Doesn't that warrant forgiveness then?
@Magisch I think not forgiving hurts you more than others.
eh
lingering on any given issue will, but that's not what forgiving is
@Magisch I've always thought of forgiveness as taking the power a previous hurt has over you.
if at some point you threw me down a flight of stairs, you can make all the restitution you want and behave exemplary for the rest of the time I know you, you'll still be the person who kicked me down a flight of stairs
and should a similar situation come up again, that will be taken into account, in whatever way
09:05
@Tinkeringbell I do not think SE staff see what Adam did as mistake. Unless I missed some tweet/post/comment saying such a thing? On the contrary: Tim answer states that asking to change things on Twitter is totally legit and acceptable, and SE will do it ASAP if possible technically. (i.e. won't require developing new feature or code.)
2
@Magisch I've been that kid. Its the past. I've had people hurt me emotionally worse than SE ever could. I've let it go. I wouldn't get into the same situation again....
@ShadowWizard One of the things that I think we made very clear is something like this shouldn't ever happen again.
@JourneymanGeek you might have let it go, but you'll never forget
and it will color all interactions you have with these people going forward
@Magisch not cause I still hold a grudge
@JourneymanGeek well... "we" made it clear. Have any SE staff member confirmed even considering this?
Its not just cause I hurt, but so I won't hurt again
09:08
I'm not advocating holding a grudge
there's just no going back to before ever again
@ShadowWizard yeah, its kinda something that was talked about, and should be in the blog post
@JourneymanGeek what blog??
confused
@ShadowWizard the one that should be coming soon.
supposed to be one coming
said news I mentioned!
09:09
probably as a blog to prevent it from getting downvoted to -150 on meta on day 1
The only official reply from any SE staff is Tim's answer. Which just confirms that everything that happened was fine.
(ok that was mean)
@Magisch but potentially true
@ShadowWizard It wasn't fine.
sigh... let me copy&paste...
@ShadowWizard I can read it.
09:10
> So, use Twitter. Use email.
Tim saying clearly to use Twitter...
@ShadowWizard on the other hand, I think they should have realised using that to drive decisions is a mistake
> Use anything what you want
and:
> and there was something we could immediately do
Things happened the way they did this time because we positively had to do something about those titles being shown out of context they do explicitly validate the complaint too
So combine those to get "Use twitter and if there is something we can immediately do, we will do it". QED
09:12
so even now, even on our own meta, they're not defending the network
@ShadowWizard also
> e need to keep how open and responsive and transparent we are as we transition into being a more mature company with structure. Until we do that, it won't matter where you go.
@Magisch so - in the middle ground? They might have done the right thing, the wrong way.
and a lot more went wrong.
The communications with the mods broke down. The community was left confused
@JourneymanGeek I still did not see single SE staff say they did something wrong. And that's the whole problem. It's like a sinking ship where the captain doesn't even see it's sinking, or doesn't care when being told by the passengers.
@ShadowWizard well, would you throw your people to the wolves?
I think there were multiple apologies on the IPS meta
@JourneymanGeek from whom?
@JourneymanGeek I was expecting a clear and direct repudiation of the original complaint, and the following actions by SE employees. Kind of what monica said in her blog too
09:16
@JourneymanGeek of course not, but that's what SE is doing for now.
@Magisch I hope so too, eventually
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, pattern-matching website in answer (159): Would the concentration of oxygen around fire increase as we get close to the fire (from the outside) by CarlR on chemistry.SE
@JourneymanGeek Honest? If my employee did my customer base that dirty unprovoked, 5 minutes in the shame corner would be the least of their worries
but I'm not a ceo and that is probably one of the reasons why
6
A: What caused this site to be excluded from Hot Network Questions?

Tim PostI'll respond to this individually, but in a broad sense, we've been fixing issues with the hot network questions list with duct tape and regular expressions for years now. I just kicked off a discussion on MSE about why that's not working at scale, and why we need to revisit what we hope to get o...

No apology whatsoever as well, if that's what you meant? @Journeyman
@Magisch If I was SE's CEO, that alone would not be what I'm looking at
@ShadowWizard ugh, I'm half certain Adam posted somewhere
09:18
> Nobody did anything wrong
I don't really do IPS tbh
This kind of proves my point. ^^
@ShadowWizard well I said that, slightly differently
@JourneymanGeek sure, on Twitter.
we're all not in the business of demanding that people be fired but
some admission of fault is due, imo
09:19
@Magisch so, I actually think there's a systematic issue with how SE's grown.
adam has admitted his reaction was a mistake
ohhh
@EmC For what it's worth, I think the actual question/answer content on IPS is generally respectful and well-curated. What I was going for was that I agreed that the question titles screenshotted in the quoted tweet weren't a good look for Stack Overflow. In hindsight, if I were to do this again, I'd do two things: 1. choose less absolute wording on Twitter; 2. wait before pushing the change through to allow for more upfront communication here. I apologize for doing neither of those things; I should've known better. — Adam Lear ♦ Oct 18 at 19:12
They're kinda in the awkward teens.
I must commend SE for not taking the easy way out and just firing both of them, because that's what large companies would do
THey're kinda in between being that footloose and fancy free skater dude(tte), and "corporate" serious person
@Magisch I'd be unhappy with SE if it happened
09:21
me too
I still think its a mistake to think its about this incident.
it's one of the things I hate about large companies
So, as mods?
We need to do a better job, where possible, sanity checking folks.
I'm not sure how its going to work - its probably something we'd need to have as part of our dialog with CMs.
(and I've made a few noises about stuff I'd love to see. I'm not optimistic many of them will happen, but cross fingers)
Hmm... I just thought of something. @Catija you're now in a unique position. You are moderator of all sites in SE, but not working as a CM, officially. Can't decide if that's good or bad for you. What do you think? :)
Kind of "super mod" title.
lol
Leave the poor lass alone. She needs to mod a new spawned process ;)
09:25
Well she joined the room. ;)
"new spawned process"
@ShadowWizard I think that's a subfunction of being on mobile
Ya but lets not talk shop offically XD
it only periodically reconnects
shog had the same thing when he was still in here
@Magisch I reserve the right to geeky humour ;)
@Magisch for me it happens when I open Chrome app, it reloads all the active tabs. Still, it means she's somewhere... around... :D
09:26
@ShadowWizard interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3330/…. So yeah, we're not getting a 'we're sorry for taking you out of HNQ', but we did get a lot of 'we're sorry for taking you out of HNQ the way we did'
@Tinkeringbell well, only from the one who did it, not from the "boss upstairs", but yeah, better than nothing I guess. :)
> and I regret that this happened so suddenly without communication immediately following,
@ShadowWizard which comes back to "throwing your folks to the mob"
I think the role of management here is to handle the "big picture"
If Adam were fired because of this, then I'd surely stop participating SE...
"How we handle things going forward"
09:30
@Somewhat Heh. I'm sure no-one is going to get fired. Unless you mean someone is going to be forged in fire because of this ;)
@Somewhat no real risk of that. But if folks keep talking about it in those terms, he might feel unwelcome and quit :/
@Tinkeringbell OOH MAKE A REBAR DOG!
@JourneymanGeek Well, stuff like this makes a mod grow up fast XD
@Tinkeringbell or frozen with ice.... :P
@Tinkeringbell pfft
you're a real mod now
You got your first bit of main meta hate.
Get 10k and I'll show you mine ;)
@JourneymanGeek Heh. I think that wasn't the first... do we count twitter? :P
And I'm not really sure if it counts. It was too easy :P
09:33
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Pattern-matching website in body (98): What is Salesforce Technology? by ajay. chinna on softwarerecs.SE
Has to be meta
them's the rules ;)
@JourneymanGeek Oh. Yours didn't reach metasmoke? I win :P
@JourneymanGeek :D
@Tinkeringbell there might not have been meta smoke then
I wish they could've stopped it earlier
@JourneymanGeek That old huh... Some days I feel all grown up and then such a remark makes me feel like 'no, I'm definitely new here' :P
09:35
@Tinkeringbell I've been on SE 8 years, and been a mod about half of that
@OptimusPrime stopped what? And why you try to unsubscribe from spam??? lol
@OptimusPrime GDPR does help with that :) I only get interesting advertisements in my mailbox now.
It just proves to them the email is valid so they mark the email as "verified/active", spam even more often, and sell it to other spammers. It's... trivial. taken from Spammers 101 book @Optimus
@Tinkeringbell Same. I used my company paid training as DPO to put the fear of god into some advertising firms
@Tinkeringbell doubt GDPR stop spammers...
09:37
@ShadowWizard It actually fairly reliably did for me
ah @Tinkeringbell i.sstatic.net/eaXyq.png 2014?
I rarely ever get spam these days and I used to get tons before
I was a newbie mod ;)
So much love!
:P
member function meta.stackexchange.com/questions/317252/… @Bart @rene @Journeyman
You forgot "kaboom", @Journeyman. :D
Yes I did ;)
09:40
Thanks anyway!
@ShadowWizard that's a verified site which run programming contests pay comparatively high amount to winners often. I, once signed up on the site and it contain AI related stuff. I'm not interested in it. Since then, they're sending mails of contests every now and then
@JourneymanGeek No you didn't say the word! :D
Forget that is.
Kaboom
I blame the speed of sound
@OptimusPrime umm... it's still spammer like any other spammer. Spammer can be "verified site" as well.
I bet they sell their emails list to other spammers to get some money as well.
@Tinkeringbell I'm not sure how GDPR help in India
09:42
@JourneymanGeek lol @ the comment the user left on your answer
@JourneymanGeek Heh. That's an easy way to reach 10k :P
basically admitting to serial voting
@OptimusPrime Me neither. Just an attempt to make you jealous :P
@Tinkeringbell actually no
@JourneymanGeek (I mean, for me :P)
09:43
other than that that spurred me to hit 10k
ah lol
I don't need to reach 10k, people will send me screenshot anyways :P
true ;p
(also, the fact that I'm not a newbie mod is scary ;p)
especially when someone asks you what to do on their own site.
Why? You don't scare me easily :)
(or worse, a non mod asks you about something on another site, and you need to work out their intent)
@Tinkeringbell I mean for me ;p
Ohhh. like that. Just say 'go ask your own mod' :P
09:45
there is no heaven, only lavender town
@Tinkeringbell or let the mod know.
I've stuck my head in the hinduism meta a few times cause someone asked
@Tinkeringbell Go Ask Alice! ;)
lol
What about Bob?
@ShadowWizard I talk to Bob all the time
09:48
@ShadowWizard to be hones, that answer still fell MU to me. Aka, to use a more well-known term... NAA
And... morning.
@ShadowWizard Hmmm. I'm having trouble with uncle bob too. Question isn't really ready yet though.
@JourneymanGeek good!
Never has catching up been so heavy.
@Derpy did you flag?
@Tinkeringbell huh. Hope it will get better soon and Bob will treat you nicely! ;)
@Tinkeringbell well, if there's a new mod, you mentor them - sometimes you're the interface to the other mods and meta (me!), you're looking out for your community and sometimes others.
09:50
@Derpy sure it was, you just don't remember. :)
Human mind has a way to forget bad things.
In some cases you're also trying to figure out how to handle something outside your little site-bubble
@JourneymanGeek Oh sure, I really appreciate talking to most of you, and y'all helping out on meta/chat :)
again are we here, again discussing "empty" answers. I don't know what I can add that hasn't been said before, but since even @ShadowWizard today seems to be pretty badly hurt... so I think I will say this once more. Forgive me.
@Tinkeringbell and sometimes you go "Am I giving the right advice?" ;p
@JourneymanGeek Hey, I have uninformed opinions on lots of stuff XD
09:51
@Derpy I'm sure non of the RO's will ever censor discussion on this here, no matter how tiring it gets
And I think modding is a lot of 'go with your gut feeling' anyways.
@Magisch I think we're in the middle of it ;)
@Tinkeringbell and there's no one right way
@Tinkeringbell --> all mods immediately head to the bathroom
@Mithrandir Heh. Just get rid of the crap and you feel much better? :) That does sound like modding, yes :P
(heck, that's one of the pain points here XD)
09:53
I'm just tired reading the constructive rant about this incident almost every day on here, because it's a fact that it doesn't make the situation better ._.
@Somewhat I guess its an attempt at cathartis
@Somewhat Okay. We can talk about my lunch after I ate it ;) Brb! :D
until we get word.
I guess buckle up because this is rant on the meta now
Idk it's tiring yeah hopefully it'll reduce itself in frequency after the blog post
And that's one way to deal with frustration. Else I'd be what, complaining about the lack of success in matchmaking? ;p
09:55
I don't care if a feature requests was ignored until someone tweeted the same. I don't care if meta is ignored, closed or whatever. I don't care if this is the nth time we are ignored and a random tweet post saying the same things we did is immediately acted on. I don't care if SE has to avoid talking because the resources are few. There is only one thing I care now. Monica already said it, I will say it again.
> I want those employee tweets to be taken down and disavowed. Yeah, this many days later that won’t make a big difference, but it’s literally the least you can do to start fixing this, so at least do that.
I predict this not happening
oh, don't worry, I predict it too and without using a crystal ball either.
yeah, and I want to flag my own answer on "which sites are excluded from HNQ" requesting to clean-up the comment thread, but I guess it won't happen too.
I kind of want the one OT answer there to be moved to the other post so the question can serve as the FAQ-type thing I wanted it to be
couldn't agree more.
09:58
It's been stating that SE as a company will not be policing what their employees do with their private Twitter accounts; it's none of their business.
@Derpy Well, I'd be happy with "this never happening again cause there's checks in place" personally
@ShadowWizard all gone
@Mithrandir Weird is then that they are fine with someone using a "private Twitter account" to make promises about the company taking actions and at the same time threatening company given punishment to some network users
@JNat thanks!
status-eating-remaining-hot-hot-dogs-from-yesterday
@JourneymanGeek that's... not going to happen.
10:10
@ShadowWizard that is literally what this should be about
The damage is literally done. We can patch the damage but it's also essential to address why this keeps happening
@Mithrandir it is when the employees make changes on SE sites.
(As result of their private twitter accounts)
@ShadowWizard that's something that should be addressed as I understand
and as I keep saying.... "should" vs. "reality"
Tim's answer is huge step in the opposite direction of what they should be doing.
I mean, it's something that is in SE's radar
He essentially throw away any possible responsibility for any future events with "OK, the system is crappy, nothing we can do about it. All is fine". No?
10:18
@ShadowWizard well that's in the software development side - and well...
Meta hadn't scaled well there
The distance between what's written so far by staff and the "this never happening again cause there's checks in place" is more than the distance between Earth and the Sun... it's infinite.
Meh
I really would wait a little bit for the official response
Yeah, let's DM-spam Joel's Twitter /s
(ie. There's nothing convincing I can say for now)
But all in all... @Derpy what you're sorry about??? You did nothing wrong. Nobody here did. Well, nobody who talk at least. And I'm fine, I'm used to get hurt and Tim's answer just confirmed what I already knew. All good. :)
If any future blog post will take a different direction, guess Tim's Answer better be edited to only link to it in order to prevent conflict and confusion of users.
@JourneymanGeek you keep saying that, but Tim Post is the big boss of the CM team. His answer can't be more official. So I'm really confused.
And his answer is more than "Meta doesn't work".
10:23
@ShadowWizard well, as a bug / fr management system?
It kinda wasn't really ever meant as one
@JourneymanGeek it won't be, Tim clearly said they'll use something else in the future.
oh
@JourneymanGeek sure it was meant, back in the Old Days.
I do agree it's not ideal, but it worked. It helped fix thousands of bugs.
Now what would personally concern me is the ol 'we need to fix this. Be patient....'
@ShadowWizard Jeff thought it was a terrible idea
@JourneymanGeek so why did he create meta to begin with?
to discuss policy?
He could just leave the contact us form to report bugs and ask for new features.
10:27
Jeff was gone by the time I started here but my impression is that he meant the community-centric stuff, it wasn't just empty rhetoric
public bug & FR tracker is needed, but probably not meta
that's the main point
@Somewhat they have something internal, pretty sure of that.
user194636
user194636
unfortunate tag list
?
What site?
user194636
10:30
oh, weekly/monthly rep
yes, I remember they have Trello, but I see the disconnect between Meta and their internal tracker
hehe
Does the internal one have a twitter API?
user194636
I just clicked on the Users tab on my way to searching for anything Tim had posted recently
Push issues using emojis
10:35
@ShadowWizard cause the community asked for it
he used to have a uservoice
@JourneymanGeek on twitter? ;)
Meta is Murder: at some level, meta-discussion cuts into time you could be using to, y'know, BUILD STUFF and SOLVE PROBLEMS.
Jeff Atwood on June 28, 2009

What’s the first rule of Stack Overflow Club?

We have this policy not because we are jerks (or at least, not just because we are jerks) but because we believe meta-discussion kind of gets in the way. As the faq explains:

Also, try to refrain from asking questions about Stack Overflow itself unless you absolutely, positively have to. Most programmers don’t come here to learn about the intricacies of Stack Overflow; they come here to get answers to their programming questions. Let’s try to help them out by not cluttering up the system with navelgazing meta-discussion. If you want to suggest a feature or discuss how Stack Overflow works, visit our UserVoice site. …

Jeff who?
@AndrasDeak Get off my lawn please ;)
@JourneymanGeek The damage has not been patched though
10:40
@Magisch no, not yet
a blog post wont patch it either
So, I grew up around engineers.
Sometimes when something breaks, the temptation is to patch what's broken, and forget about it.
@AndrasDeak not Bezos
it could be the most amazing and heartfelt blog post of all time but it would be so much as empty noise on its own
No patching was done. Someone stuck their finger in the wound
10:40
Eventually, you end up with something like my zombie drier
@Magisch I disagree
Or you can realise that stuff's broken. Spend a little time trying to work out the best way to fix it...
But at this point, its going to be a process rather than a single event
@AndrasDeak eh. I think monica is right. Taking down and publicly repudiating the tweets is the least they can do to start fixing things
until that happens, everything else is a non starter
Yeah, but publicly admitting the screwup is more than halfway there
It's still short of the least they can do
10:43
@ShadowWizard to annoy everyone with the same words that have been said a thousand times already. And yet, even when I realize that, they find their way to the keyboard either way.
The problem is they won't even do that because no mistakes were made
@Magisch if you work with the assumption that they also have to pacify the offendeders there's not much they can do. A heartfelt apology is one of the things they can
Promising to do better next time is another
@Derpy smart words! But they don't annoy everyone, at least not me. :)
@AndrasDeak I don't work with that assumption. I work with the assumption that to start mending community relations they need to repudiate and make it known that the offenders have no standing
Same here ^^
@Magisch community relations is second (if anything) to public appearance $$$
That's a fact, and Tim finally admitted that at least
Has Nick Larsen apologize?
10:48
Nick who?
Who's that?
@Somewhat why should he apologize for being wrong?
that's, like, just his opinion, man
That's him not really speaking in any official capacity though
10:51
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, username similar to website in answer (111): VIdeo Converters for Ubuntu by youtube2video on askubuntu.com
Nobody expects apologies for views stated on meta, no matter how unpopular. We demand apologies for actions, actions which embody a huge dump taken on various communities
Demanding people delete tweets isn't going to fix the problem. They've been up, they've been read, they've been screenshotted... And why demand only one or two perons take down their parts of the thread? I've seen more SE people engage there, and as far as I'm aware every single person that got involved had good intentions.
Honestly, this is a bit scary.
I woke up on Wednesday having no clue what to do
@AndrasDeak I don't think that's particularly true
If I'd had picked the wrong thing to do, would y'all be so nasty to me too?
that's a fact^[as I see it] and Tim finally admitted that at least^[as I read it]
@Tinkeringbell would you have apologized?
10:53
@Tinkeringbell and that's the real problem everyone seems to miss
@Tinkeringbell It's symbolic
@AndrasDeak so, here's the thing. There's people on the spot making the decision.
@Somewhat why apologize?? Totally legit opinion, obviously his own personal opinion that does not and can't affect SE policy. If he was CEO or management, then we'll all have been in big problem. I did downvote of course, but that's not the point.
With the appropriate person, process and support, this might not have happened
10:54
The most public form of "I screwed up, it was wrong to do that and I will endeavour not to do it again"
@JourneymanGeek indeed
I can't second guess why adam did what he did.
A lot of things didn't go well, and that's something we can learn from.
@AndrasDeak Yes. But I e.g. wouldn't have purged the entire chat transcript?
@Tinkeringbell yeah, that's fine
10:55
I understand Magisch's point about it being a gesture, but I don't agree with it
public record is a useful thing
And as mods, we're probably going to want to work with the company to try to rebuild those bridges. That's on them to an extent, but its also on us.
@JourneymanGeek You might notice that I never said "they should go back in time and decide differently". People make mistakes. That's how it is. And when people make mistakes, they should own up to it. Fight cognitive dissonance and accept that they've done wrong (if they have), and rely on their backbone to admit it and apologize
@Tinkeringbell depends what wrong thing. Can't have one answer.
Thr frustrating thing is that people keep making it about the tweeter or the folks who reacted - when its really a more fundamental failing in our relationship with SE
To err is human but to admit it and try and do something about it takes a great person
10:56
Buddha? ^
@Tinkeringbell chat transcript is a different form of public record then twitter
@ShadowWizard I wish
also, if you had gone around actually insulting people I would have flagged your messages for deletion, as we do with these
@AndrasDeak but what I want to see, and someone else wants to see is different
@JourneymanGeek I don't know what you mean by that, but that's probably true for anything involving more than one human
10:57
I guess I'm just pissed off being on this room.
@JourneymanGeek way I see it, this time, it's 100% on them
@Magisch "this time"
@Somewhat come back in 6-8 days, surely things will calm down by then. ;)
ah, but I don't think its about this time.
they're now in the position of needing to convince the users to trust them again
10:58
@AndrasDeak Who is actually human here, though...?
@Somewhat I'm sorry. I guess I still have a lot of things to work through for myself in this aftermath, and talking about it with people here does help a little :)
@Magisch trust lost over a period of time.
So, hindsight is 20/20.
Maybe we could have gone "hey, y'all seem a lot more distant"
the tavern of misery
or "Hey, some of these things seem... at odd at what we hear from the community"

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