“We make a huge difference in people’s lives, and it’s not to be underestimated.” – Prashanth Chandrasekar
Last week the Stack Overflow podcast crew sat down with our new CEO to chat about his background in computer science and his vision for the company’s future. What follows is a lightly edited selection of that conversation. To hear the full thing, you can listen to the podcast here. Don’t forget to subscribe for future episodes!
Ben Popper:
Welcome to the Stack Overflow podcast for the week of October 15th I’m here with my co hosts. Say hi everybody. …
@RobertHarvey 'cause I don't wanna clutter the comments too much. And @JourneymanGeek 'cause you're here too. This isn't a witch hunt, it's just a very anomalous post and I'm trying to figure out the community's take on it.
@Trasiva That's... quite mild? :P My dad once sent over a 100 or something really big, and the account was blocked/banned/disabled because the provider thought he was spamming.
Tomorrow should be fun... getting up early, heading into the forest and riding MTB with a friend for a few hours, and then we're going running. Then I have to go make some maintenance rounds I've been pushing off... should be busy.
I got forced into learning bike. As a kid I was a bit slow when it came to acquire the good reflexes. I was so ashamed not to manage, I did not learn how to bike until I was around 20
my brother and sister weren't exactly the supportive kind
they thought mocking me was going to motivate me. It didn't
one of the saddest story I had as a child. I never understood people missing their childhood. Being in your 20s or 30s sounds a lot better
Please leave any feedback or questions about this process on [this other post].
From time to time, moderators will step down or be removed from their positions — they may have expressed their wish to step down due to time constraints or they may have had behaviors unfitting of a moderator ...
This question does not appear to seek input and discussion from the community. If you have encountered a problem on one of our sites, please describe it in detail. See also: What is "meta"? How does it work?. — Robert Columbia43 secs ago
Please leave any feedback or questions about these processes on this other post.
This post lists two process by which formal complaints against moderators are handled by the Community Management Team.
[The Moderator Action Review Process] is a process for allowing a team of moderators to ...
Please accept my apologies for raising a close reason. I have reviewed the question and agree that it should not be closed. I retracted my close vote. — Robert Columbia18 secs ago
> Special note: You can't delete your own post using the Android app. You can, however, delete your post by using the app's option to open the question in a Web browser and deleting it from there, provided none of the below apply.
I can see nothing changed from the moderator removal process since I resigned. It’s still reverse engineered for the outcome of removal instead of justice and fairness.
@GeorgeStocker what seems to be missing is where and how past cases are being compared, valued in new rulings. Of plan-do-check-act there seems to be plan-do written down, annotation is maybe check but act is missing.
My test is two fold: 1) would any stack exchange employee want to follow this process to have themselves removed as an employee? Would they consider this a fair process for them to go through to get fired? And 2) does the process itself show that there is an fair chance (as in coin flip) that the process won’t result in removal?
@GeorgeStocker is it realistic for us to expect the same scrutiny in handling mods as with handling employees? That assumes a lot more investment in the community than what I've been seeing
I wonder. Does SE have to fire a larger amount of mods or employees? I know firing employees is common, about 20% in 2017. But I get the feeling that it is rare to fire mods.
If the process is solely there to check boxes and to make everything “look” transparent and fair, you’ll see that just as soon as you hit your first case.
If it’s a sham process, it’ll stand out.
Where’s the presumption of innocence? Where’s the bar for removal? Where’s the ability for the moderator to engage in their defense or to conduct their own cross examination of the “facts”? Where is the impartiality?
CMs can be told “this person needs to go”. That’s what happened with Monica.
@user58 Ok, so both are very rare. Hence both are worthy of about the same amount of scrutiny. Unless they suddenly become more common a high level of scrutiny is not going to drain resources.
@GeorgeStocker The process was always entirely up to SE, and it required us to trust SE to act in a reasonable way. This went well as long as SE didn't abuse their power, and lost that trust. I don't think there is an option for a process that actually puts any power into someone that isn't an SE employee, so the only way to fix this that remains is for SE to regain that trust, which is certainly not easy
@user58 I'm pretty sure we don't know about all cases, SE used to be very discreet in handling those
@MadScientist you’re right, it’s not. The way I see it SE Inc only has one way to restore trust overall, and it’ll take a pretty strong action by their leadership to do it
@GeorgeStocker I think they can't create a process that puts power outside of SE given the constraints they imposed on themselves. There are some mentions of handling information even outside the CMs, that level of confidentiality is impossible to keep with that kind of process. It's also incompatible with typical implementation of "due process".
@MadScientist to be clear, they have the ability to issue NDAs and rotate having moderators a part of the process. But I don’t think that’s enough if they don’t restore trust, and I only see one way for them to restore trust
GM4 basically broke backward compatibilty so a lot of scripts no longer work and some features you need as a script author were removed without an alternative.
@MadScientist There are plenty of ways, for example giving the PM and other random mods the possibility of reviewing the evidence and giving their non-binding, public, assessment
This would increase trust
There should be no instances in which the PM is not allowed a defense or access to all evidence
There should be no decisions which are undoable
And no "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" situations because obviously there is no incentive in finding mistakes in your own work
These are four concrete doable things that should be in straight away
but even a more in depth read of this process gives interesting (and pathetic) fruit, like "a mod demodded on N sites needs to use the /contact form N times"
> I guess maybe, as an initial matter, appellant must demonstrate the ability to copy and paste to be considered for reinstatement. It is the Stack Overflow way, after all.
@Sklivvz Well, there are egregious cases I can think of. If the evidence has been given in confidence, or there is good reason to think a user can be put in danger if all information is shared with the PM, it's reasonable not to give them access to all the evidence.
And if there is clear evidence of foul play (you've been a mod long enough to have seen some really ugly stuff pulled by users) then I could understand no defense (but that really would require incontrovertible evidence and something truly ugly).
Anyway, there are some cases. The problem is that there seems to be no indication that the mod will get the chance to defend themselves in the normal cases either. That is indeed an issue.
No. it just codifies it. The one good thing I see is that at least it may force SE to slow down. If only to give the involved heads some time to cool down a bit.
Having some sort of official procedure is a bit better than having none.
@Sklivvz That was always the case, to be honest. It's in the mod agreement. It's happened before, although in every such case I remember, many or most of us were in agreement with SE and it has never been done so publicly.
@Sklivvz That is very understandable. Can't say it changes my feelings much one way or the other. I just think it's a tiny step but broadly speaking in a good direction.
With the exception that the 2 cases I'm aware of were clear cut cases of violations with evidence which was widely shared (or at least, people know exactly why they hapeened)
one was a case of PII being shared (admitted by the mod iirc)
the other was a mod using their name being arrested (thus available on news sites)
It's not only a matter of trust but also a matter of knowing the ins and outs of the various communities. We have mods with 10 years experience and many of our CMs have nowhere near similar experience. Involving the community would effectively raise the quality of the overall process
Sorry for being honest, but people today think being "safe" means not hearing other's people opinions that contradict their own. Usually that eventually creates more violence, like you can see on campuses with "safe spaces" just one example.
You can argue that this whole discussion and mess ab...
> If CM1 determines a CoC or mod agreement violation occurred, they will contact the moderator about whom the complaint was raised and inform them of the ongoing process, prompting them for their perspective/context/reasoning, and add this to the documentation to be reviewed in the Confirmation Phase.
No. But "Yo, Sklivvz, we're about to demod you because a, b, c and d. We'd like to hear your take on this, when would you be available for a chat" sounds decent.
Well, the "we're about to demod you" doesn't sound perfect, but on the other hand, if they haven't decided there's a problem, why contact you at all? You did nothing wrong and it was a false alarm.
you realize that the cited paragraph 1) requires reaching a conclusion 2) does not require giving any evidence 3) merely asks for a formal defense against a verdict of guilty
Please leave any feedback or questions about this process on [this other post].
From time to time, moderators will step down or be removed from their positions — they may have expressed their wish to step down due to time constraints or they may have had behaviors unfitting of a moderator ...
Sorry for being honest, but people today think being "safe" means not hearing other's people opinions that contradict their own. Usually that eventually creates more violence, like you can see on campuses with "safe spaces" just one example.
You can argue that this whole discussion and mess ab...
