@Undo Timeline says the user was destroyed

@ArtOfCode Deleted and destroyed mean two different things.

But yeah, since 1. the post was positively scored, and 2. the post was on meta, where no posts are auto-deleted as a result of normal deletion, it makes sense.

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog This isn’t technically meta though

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog user is deleted, not user was deleted. If we're being pedantic.

So, I realize there are fires everywhere and moderators are stretched thin, but any idea on when we're going to get caught up on flags?

Is all activity by the Community account automated or is it used on behalf of people?

I totally get that it might be a while. Just trying to see where we're at.

They nukes the account that asked the question about the podcast? Interesting

@duplode thanks, that's helpful to know

@GeorgeStocker That account did look rather like a special-purpose sockpuppet, though I don't truly know what are the customary practices for dealing with such situations.

Anyway, that question has been undeleted, which is not so bad after all. At least it has a reasonable, non-conspiratorial answer to go along with it.

Made me think about this whole situation, don't know why.

@ArtOfCode If deleted is treated as a past tense verb rather than an adjective, it's correct. (If we're being more pedantic.)

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog that's... literally what I was saying.

@Undo Meta Stack Exchange was also affected by the change to not delete negatively-scored posts upon normal user deletion on meta sites.

The Tavern: Home to the every day pedantic party. 🎉

Is that... Techmoan's puppet?

Every time a pedant says something, you're being given an opportunity to avoid embarrassment in the future.

!/report meta.stackexchange.com/a/336680/377214

🍺

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/16965853/cindy8559

Great, another instance...

@DeNovo hopefully eventually but flags are likely coming fast and furious

Things need to get sorted and calm first

@Undo That sounds horrible. However, as someone who has had/still has those types of groups regularly threaten his life: I agree on the post - there was bad things posted. They were deleted. The user removed. The post itself is not invalid so should be restored.

(fyi, I've been trying to ignore meta but got a ping and then saw "Nazi" listed in a feed & that worries me enough I needed to check)

@Shadow Belated congratulations on your full dupehammer abilities!

morning

hai

→ 24 messages moved to Chimney

@rene kaboom

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog thanks!

I've just realized I've beena bit of a traitor to my own kind by posting pics of kittens, so here's some red wolf pups to compensate:

@Cerbrus it said in the news that we need to leave the young wolves alone, as they do start to explore new territory, coming from Germany. And keep your dog on the leash as they are prey. Which I found kind of funny.

there's an ongoing conservation effort for wolves in germany

they want to bring them back into the woods

The wolves breed with loose Huskies.

@rene They're quite vulnerable yea

@user58 what's the result? Loose wolves?

A crossbreed

It was an issue here at some point, I think

Someone let loose a bunch of Huskies and they bred with the (sparse population of) wolves

@mag same here. Your conservation effort is so successful that a few wolves migrate to the Veluwe.

@user58 here as in your area, I guess?

Yeah

@rene thats a good thing I think?

it is new so it has both sides. Farmers want already compenstaion

morning

morning

morning

@Tinkeringbell Were you by chance able to look at the flag I raised?

@SPArchaeologist-様 I did... I also asked a CM as you were right that that was not one for me to handle ;)

morning @glor

morning

... it isn't the time of day for that.

Of course it is, it's always a good time for ice cream!

Fun fact: there is currently 90,909 not deleted questions on MSE *-*

Call me when it's 99999

The one posting the 100000th question will get 100000 rep bonus.

To post a "We got 100k questions on MSE!".

:D

@Nog do you still Shine? ;)

@rene I heard a bunch of sheep were killed last week

I mean, they're wolves

sheep are in their prey scheme

They should be taught to control their urges, like we humans do. :D

@Shadow Yes!!

@NogShine Good!!

@mag well, I found the article. It was 14 sheep. That's quite a lot for a single wolf (Afaik there are only 2 in the Netherlands)

2 wolves in whole country???

@Shadow There's some at the zoo too, for sure.

@Shadow they were extinct for a long time. A pair recently came in from Germany

Note that Dutch nature reserves are not that big and very fragmented. Combine that with it just being a small country and wolves requiring a large territory

Heh. Weird.

→ 21 messages moved to Chimney

@Shadow we've sort of already done that, those are called dogs

took some time though

(And for some, it still didn't work :P)

there was a dogfight in the street outside my house yesterday

dogs are definitely still part wolf

...I avoided going out until they were gone

our small office dog is the prime example of a dog that is no longer part wolf

I thought a dogfight was with airplanes?

doesn't bark, incredibly cuddly, non agressive towards anything (even cats and other dogs) and a huge scaredy cat

I didn't see that much outside yesterday. Came home, took a shower, had a loooong chat... fell asleep. There's definitely someone out here not cleaning up after their dog though, there's poop everywhere on one of the streets I have to walk home :(

People don't seem to get the idea of "leashes" or "picking up after your dog" in this town, so.... yeah.

You'd think after some kids got bitten that they'd crack down a bit, but nope.

And it's not like there aren't leash-free dog parks. :/

@mag heh. Ash once woke me up at 4 am, wanted to go for a long walk, and figured he could take on 5 feral dogs... at his age.

Most dogs are all a little wolf ;p

@JourneymanGeek He probably figured you could take on 5 feral dogs XD

@user58 even if you think your dog is well behaved.

@Tinkeringbell naw, he thinks I can't protect myself ;p

@JourneymanGeek mhm. our office dog is making the rounds this morning and just collecting pets from everyone

there was a business meeting where everyone stopped to pet the dog when he came by

@JourneymanGeek XD That's cute ;)

@Tinkeringbell terriers are... pocket badasses.

@JourneymanGeek Yep. Also, allergies... some people in my family are anaphylactic-level allergic to dogs...

They're small dogs bred to hunt down dug in badgers and rats and stuff.

@user58 I was thinking rogue PMD riders but that counts too.

If ash is not on a leash, he's carried ;p

@JourneymanGeek I know! We used to have a rabbit. And then some neighbour would come to visit with her terrier... terrified our rabbit...

@Tinkeringbell erf

that's just dumb

(Which people do not understand. They all think "it's okay, he's gentle" negates the allergies. >.<)

Yeah, we kinda forget Zoey was a prey animal :(

@JourneymanGeek that's reasonable

@user58 o.O

@user58 ash is off leash trained though

and that's pretty important if you have a dog

@Tinkeringbell One of my friends has a big dog. And a tiny goat. You can guess what happens all day.

@user58 the goat bullies the dog? ;p

Unfortunately not...

@user58 Cute picture opportunities?

Let's just say the goat gets a lot of exercise.

And that if you walk into their yard you're likely to get run over by a goat and then by a dog.

turns out by the way, the presence of the dog has significantly improved the mood in marketing, order processing and IT

because thats where he spends most of the day

How about in the DPO's office?

I dont have my own office, i'm in a corner in IT

I used to but the space was needed

welp

I can totally attest to office dogs reducing stress ;p

you are the office dog here

Exactly!

@JourneymanGeek previous place where I worked we also had on office dog (from the boss) ... didn't reduce stress one bit. You had to stop work every time because it peed and pooped everywhere, chewed on cables, had the most noisy toys ... not the dog's fault though.

@Bart then it was not the office dog. It was the Boss's pet

those are horrible no matter the species ;p

eyeballs-plz off topic - meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336702/…

that looks like a poorly-formed site-recommendation

...so my VTC was for Unclear

@user58 No, it refers to a tech stack, not a Stack Exchange site for tech.

*shrugs* not my field of expertise

people are scared of my avatar :O

Also hmmm my transparency didn't work :/

you need to use gravatar for transparency, I think

slow fridays are good fridays

nah, we're in the eye ....

@rene so the storm is about the continue in opposite direction?

The US hasn't woken up yet.

SE yelling at users?

all options are open.

Also, there seem to be more than enough users willing to post speculative questions to reignite the outrage.

Yeah :/

Yeah, we better remove reputation as well so we can have this free discussions in the future as well ....

Hopefully we can deal with some of the future speculative questions by closing as duplicates.

I actually thought a bit for posting an FR that would ask for closing MSE for anyone without an account and meta rep on any other site in the network. My expectation is that would go south quick.

@Raedwald Is that really a bad thing?

Do we want this to quietly go away?

we can't just do business as usual tbh

something has to give this time

or next time will be even worse

and there'll be a next time, there's always a next time, even if everyone involved is trying their best to avoid it

@rene I kinda did something along those lines

I would like to see rate limits on comments on mse

@rene It needs to be open to everyone if it is supposed to be the network meta site. And, like all meta sites, it shouldn't have its own rep system.

maybe staggered by reputation like shog once suggested

would be an excellent time to remove some momentum

Podcast question is back (minus the more off-topic stuff).

But the last thing we should want is for everything to go quiet.

@terdon SE culture includes reducing duplication by design. At some point, further expressions of outrage, disappointment and calls for specific actions contribute nothing. Just upvote the existing protests or suggestions.

@terdon erf. There's no really good way to do that though

@terdon there are some similar "threads" to needs resolution. I think I closed a new question y'day as a dupe without it being contested. Once we reach the state that new questions can be closed against existing ones I would say we reached normal state.

we're not there yet, agree on that

@Raedwald SE culture also used to include treating your users with respect. I really, really don't want to allow SE to bury this under duplicates.

There's no parent site like other sites

And SO is so much bigger

@JourneymanGeek Sure there is: cancel all meta reputation tomorrow and replace it with network rep.

@Raedwald this isn't an event that fits into an existing site paradigm

2/3 of the questions relating to this are strictly speaking off topic

nobody cares

@rene But is that a good thing?

@terdon But mah rep

@terdon see 'SO is so much bigger'

How can we be normal while SE is behaving as they are? Why would we want to be normal?

A lot of folks in smaller sites would be disadvantaged

@JourneymanGeek I don't see why that's a problem. So SO people will have more rep. Big deal. Rep shouldn't mean anything on meta anyway.

@JourneymanGeek Why disadvantaged?

@terdon I elaborated this elsewhere but in the complex web of effects and causes they probably have no choice then to press on

@mag That's... really not good enough.

@TimStone has a script that adds network rep to MSE posts.

Although it's never quite worked for me.

@terdon rep reflects expertise and trust.

Aza also mentioned this but this is quickly turning into a gamergate like situation where outside forces are latching onto the outrage to gain new supporters. It's not tenable for the company to give in to that in any way

And I don't see why we, the community, should allow them to move on and just sweep their behavior under the rug.

@mag Give in?

To the uninitiated, this might look like the collective equivalent of a child throwing a tantrum because his parents won't pay attention to him and screaming ever louder.

@mag that's a natural reaction to disrupting the status quo then letting it happen

Actually it probably looks like that even to the initiated.

@JourneymanGeek I'm not absolving SE of any blame here, i'm saying they have no way out anymore

not now, it's too late for that

@mag I don't see why they cannot offer an official apology to monica and a retractoin/correction of the register article.

@mag so There are actually two sets of issues

I don't want them to roll back the CoC.

Monica is a shorter term thing.

@terdon There is at least one MSE question that deals with that.

@terdon because that will be seen and percieved in influential circles as supporting transphobia (they dug themselves deep with that press comment) and it will be seen as validating and giving into alt right influence

The longer term thing is community trust as a whole

The new FAQ is great and something I can happily live with. But I do not want to be giving any help or support to a company that treats its user that way.

@Raedwald I know. And I would be happy to see dozens.

the dynamic is bigger then just us right now

If they can get Monica on board, she's probably got enough influence to quell most of the CoC naysayers.

Hopefully someone can just make a phone call and resolve all this.

@DavidA That would require someone to pick up the phone...

@mag How can "we misrepresented what actually happened and, in any case, we should never have gone to the press" be seen as supporting transphobia?

Especially since nobody really accuses Monica of being transphobic.

Except SE, that is.

@terdon think a little further, do you have to ask that question?

@mag Yes. Yes, I do.

This is supposed to be an ethical company. If it isn't, why would we help it in any way?

@terdon The most convincing explanation I've seen is that, as both SE and Monica are USAian, an apologu would be taken as an admission of guilt that could be used to sue them

I'm not saying that's true in any way, but that's how it'll come across

in a similar way to the gamergate fiasco poisoning any form of ethics debate for years to come

@mag I don't see that at all. That would make sense if they backtracked on the CoC changes, not if they admitted that they shouldn't have spoken to the press and took steps to mitigate the real harm being caused to one of their users.

we have the context, the broader public has soundbytes

and the people on the alt right who'll spin this as their victory will also just use soundbytes

@Raedwald I find that very hard to believe, to be honest. I mean that a lawyer can't help them find wording that's vague enough not to be an admission of guilt. But, even so, if this is a company that's fine with throwing a user to the dogs and won't even try to mitigate that for fear of being sued, is that really a company we want to be associated with?

whatever they do needs to be devilishly well planned out

@mag I don't buy that. I've read what Aza has written, but I can't help see it as a strawman. In any case, that's about the CoC, not about the harm they caused to Monica.

there are a lot of moving parts to this whole mess now, and simple answers no longer exist

@mag That is true and would be a first!

@mag Also true. But I think it is important that we, the community, keep up the pressure and don't allow SE to go back to normal unless something is done.

I'm not an expert so I don't know how close my analysis is to the truth, but I'm almost certain we need to lower our expectations for what they'll give us

Because it really looks like they just hope it will all go away

@terdon Just... be careful with that. Not forgetting about this is fine, but too much pressure will burn people out, will hurt... and might impede any work being done on progress further.

@mag I basically want an olive branch, personally. Something that can allow me to continue to help people on this site without feeling that I am supporting a company with no ethics.

this has been your daily dose of debbie downer mag (tm) and i'll go back to lavishing our office dog with praise

I've mentioned the Rorschach Blot Test before. As most people who are engaged in this can't access the facts about Minca's case, its a perfect situation in which people can be driven by their preconceptions. The mishandling of the Welcome Wagon set up many of those preconceptions.

@Raedwald Well, the relevant facts are known to all: SE broke their own rules and discussed issues of moderation publicly, not only on the network but in the press.

@mag I'm not sure thats an appropriate term to use for a junior member of staff ;-)

The details are irrelevant. Whether they were right to demod Monica or not is irrelevant.

@Tinkeringbell Also, some of the current pressure is pressure in the wrong places. And is harmful and detrimental to moving forwards. Make sure you're pressuring the right things.

^ That too, times 1000

I don't care if Monica were some sort of neo-Nazi extremist spewing bigotry everywhere she went, that would still not excuse their behavior. So none of the private information seems relevant.

'cause a lot of the outrage isn't actually doing anything to make the company realize how they mishandled it. It's just making things worse for those who the company was trying to protect... but mishandled rather badly.

The only other way forward I can see is that we all agree to ignore SE as much as possible. That they have as much relationship with us as Amazon does with someone hosting a service there. We no longer expect anything from them, we do not evangelize their products to our friends, we stay on our sites and ignore anything the company does.

@terdon That's not going to be acceptable to a lot of the old-timey users and most of the moderators.

@user58 I'm both :)

@terdon Talking to the press happened only after the outrage had become so loud that the press noticed and were interested. SE applying a foot gun at that point was stupid, yes. But it was already a crisis before then.

@terdon I'm well aware :P

@Raedwald I'm talking about an actual havanese terrier dog

@terdon that's a longer term problem I hope gets fixed actually

@Raedwald So? And remember that Ms Chipps already made the public claim that "a moderator was misgendering another moderator" long before that.

@terdon That's probably referring to the... N. incident.

That was bad.

@JourneymanGeek I'm serious: if SE do not do something to mitigate their screwup in going public, I do not want to be associate with them. I love my communities and I will then consider that a mod's job is to shield them as much as possible from the company.

@user58 I don't care what it was referring to, it should not have been discussed in public. You could have said "a user", why specify a mod? And I doubt it was that incident, that was a long time ago.

@terdon I'm kinda hoping we have more functional and less overtaxed community relations

@JourneymanGeek With a company that behaves as they have? I don't want to have any relations. They make the product, we use it, end of conversation.

@terdon and that's part of the dysfunction right now

Anything else would be an endorsement of the company's behavior.

@JourneymanGeek I think the disconnect comes from our expecting more from them. If we just accept that they're nothing more but the latest Evil Tech Company, we would have no expectations.

@terdon if we want to analyse or influence what SE does next, the key component is understanding their motives

@terdon then I'm probably gone

@JourneymanGeek Yep. Me too

I'd say you have a pretty good understanding of their motives. Do you have any idea for a way to exert pressure that isn't likely to lead to stonewalling or ignoring?

What folks were doing before this blew up

did any of that work

Small scale / specific pressure

@mag I don't really have much hope that we can influence them any more. You can only be influenced by those whose opinions and well-being you care about. If, as is becoming harder and harder not to believe, SE doesn't give a hoot about public Q&A and only cares about shareholders, there is nothing we can do.

Hm. A little? It's a circus now

we went from somewhat healthy but dysfunctional relationship to being ignored because we're meanies to toxic people they want to get rid of

If I knew what to do I would

At the same time I don't really want to burn bridges just yet

and sure, a part of that is true. MSE is pretty toxic as of late. But people are a product of their environment

treat them with disrespect, they'll lash out

MSE has been toxic for years, in various ways, if we're being honest.

never as overtly though

@mag the recent events drew it brought that out

@terdon the extent to which MSE was toxic always came from neglect in a sense though

Anyway, all I'm saying is that I think it is counter productive to advocate for everything going back to normal. We should absolutely advocate for calm and civil discourse, yes. But not for silence and back to Q&A as usual.

I don't see a path forward tbh except back to normal

if any real change comes out of this, it can't be seen to have come out of this

back to normal was calm and civil, IIRC.

and needs to go through backchannels in the months ahead, unconnected to this whole mess

@mag Not really. I felt it was toxic long before that. As soon as you had meta-specific rep, that means that a tiny group of people could control all discussion.

@mag months?

s/months/years

While we know that a user, a member of three marginalized groups, is under constant threat and harassment? That ain't good enough.

@terdon that was something folks were working on, with I hope a little success before it blew up

And you don't need rep to be toxic