@MonicaCellio it was made clear in Meta answer that SE staff got direct and firm order from their "legal department" to stay silent about anything related to your case. I'm not happy about it, but it also makes me realize they don't just try to sweep things under the rug because they don't care.
@ShadowThePrincessWizard I know they can't support me and are probably under orders to not even talk with me. I was hoping I could at least get "not undermining except under direct orders". To me, things that boil down to "let's move on" feel like "you don't matter", even if what's meant is "we can't fix it". I don't want things to burn but I don't want to be forgotten on the trash heap either.
@MonicaCellio I happened to stumble on this John Oliver Last Week Tonight, not exactly matching your case but it kind of shows, at least to me, not familiar with US practice, that this will not be solved in 6 to 8 weeks ...
@Catija Independant arbitration comission chosen from the community needs to have final say in mod removals or at least veto power and review
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You can't expect people to trust a process that is fully internal and private to produce just results when you have previously shown exactly the same type of process not doing that
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The cat for that is forever out of the bag, I think
@mag I'd rather not. Imagine someone really complains about me, and SE decides to take it seriously... I don't want random/independant people from the community to know what all the hubbub is about. You've seen what happens when people do get to know that.
if SE really believes a mod should be de-modded then the evidence and process needs to be public. Mods should be accountable to their constituencies, and that is their users, not SE
'trial' doesn't mean much if there's only one side. So what if a moderator chose to have things in public? SE isn't really the one 'defending' there, as it's acting on other people's complaints. Should those people be dragged into things as well?
I would be considerably more cool with letting SE have this power if they hadn't shown their willingness to abusively use it whenever they felt like it
Regardless what I think about the issue over which Monica was fired, the firing itself was more than clumsy. All procedures were bypassed over an issue that didn't warrant it.
Their refusal to fix their mess belies the true motives. we all know monica isn't a money grabbing litigant. The fact that they've not fixed it means they think they did the right thing, in all of this. Apologies aside, words are cheap, actions count
How are we supposed to believe they'll be better from here on out? They haven't even undone what they could have easily undone. They've given absolutely nothing but empty promises
@SQB The point is there weren't any procedures. The ones that were there are for site mods having a problem with another mod on their team. Not for SE/other moderators not on your team/users that have a problem with someone. There are procedures now.
An additional problem is that now, SE is damaging their own cause of being more welcoming to members of the Lavender community. Because a lot of users are voting down everything related to the new CoC as a way of protesting.
in fact, the way this all went down you can't even credibly believe they really wanted to help any marginalized people because they've done the polar opposite and left the tire fire to burn unchallenged
@Tinkeringbell sure does look like it from my non-mod point of view
@Tinkeringbell looks like we'll have to wait to see until monica subpoenas the chat logs and internal communications before we'll see what exactly happened
side note regarding the CoC. I really stop wish people would calling them "CoC." I liked SE's "be nice" policy because it was... friendly. "Code of conduct" just sounds cold and uncaring
@SQB For stuff like that, it's probably more helpful to think in terms of 'what can we do that will still allow us to moderate SO (close questions, clean them up) but also may make people feel more welcome than our current processes do' instead of just 'be nicer to noobs'.
@Tinkeringbell I agree, but that's pretty much how it came across. It seemed to put emphasis on not being mean to new users, were even just terse comments were deemed unfriendly and unwelcoming, while giving little alternatives for correcting clueless new users who refuse to RTF(ine)M.
I'm in one of the groups too, but I've never felt discriminated against on here. Sure there are people who think I'm an abomination (or worse), but they're everywhere and all about. It's not like it's worse here then it is elsewhere (in fact, it's better) and it's also not like prohibiting an opinion will make people not hold it
i started off thinking this was a massively messed up communication failure, but it seems like the management is just evil in its current incarnation and trying for some sort of purge of the extant community
@JAD i didn't finish my point. there is obviously a point that trolls should be thrown out, but most cases like that are obvious and don't really belong, especially here.
for the cases that aren't so obvious, well that's what moderators are for
@JourneymanGeek It's what I'm trying to say. In that interaction I described, having to start from a basis of assuming good intentions, means having to start from square one all over again.
When has management ever given you a reason to not assume the worst in the past 3 months or even 2 years? They haven't. They're not even the same people who earned the benefit of the doubt they've squandered over this time
with regards to other users on the site you have to assume some level of goodwill in the people you interact with. honestly, most interactions that are abusive on the site have always been flagged and removed or modified to be not so. it's... been part of the rules for longer than efforts to "be nice" or institute a focus-group mandated Code of Conduct(R) have existed
yeah there's gonna be trolls, but trolls don't tend to post on topic questions anyway
@justcool393 Ehh. Some do. Ones that are just borderline enough to make the community despair. Also... MSE is a bit of an odd-duck when it comes to 'on topic'
@mag Oh. Well, I was on my way out. Then I saw the kind of BS some users of IPS got poured over them, just because they dared speak up about not being cishet. I don't want to stand by while that happens.
it needs to get darkest right before dawn, you two can't stem the tide or fix the underlying issue, only SE can do that, and it's clear they won't until the effects become too big to ignore. It's a pure matter of time, you're only slowing it
the only people with the power and pull to fix this are SE management
even if every single user you know banded together to make a coordinated effort we wouldn't stop anything, just slow it down a bit more. The dynamic is messed up for as long as they let it be
honestly, i've made parallels earlier in the day, but it happens a bunch on Reddit too, where people will take it out on the moderators when it's actually Reddit and its administrators which are causing the turmoil
@justcool393 That's okay. In a sense, we're the gateway here... but I'm not going to blindly forward each 'I hate you' message. If there's something that's constructive, that focuses on stuff that can be done... I'm more than willing to pass stuff on :)
@mag and the question is, does SE Inc care about those metrics? Because if not, users might find themselves looking back after they have left, and see that they are not really missed.
@JAD I... the retweet was dumb from a business perspective. But I also wouldn't give it too much weight. I see dead things (deleted stuff), and if you get that much hate and spite aimed at you... well... after all it's a personal Twitter account where people post personal opinions and perhaps vent a bit too when there's times like these.
@Tinkeringbell eh, it's an example, but the stance in that retweet is a lot harsher than is needed for what I described. Retweet was "good riddance", "meh" is enough.
also recognizing this makes it easier to view the bigger picture. None of us have any influence on where this network is going, except in very small ways
@MonicaCellio I totally understand! But the order they got is not "Don't talk with Monica", it's "Don't talk about Monica" - there's a difference, which makes it somewhat less personal. At least the way I see it, and I promise I won't forget about what happened.
user602663
9:58 AM
Wait, what's wrong with a username similar to website in an answer?
I can only give you these few suggestions a) ask the registry to publish a new amend article and/or to edit out the name from the existing one. Regardless of what the company thinks now about the case, the existence of that article in its current form read as "This now fired SE Mod should not be hired because horrible person" - I doesn't seem that even you employees wanted it to read out like that. Isn't this the same user you appointed as a mod "automatically" last year because you trusted her? The cat is out of the bag now, but reaching out to the registry could be a first sign of "good …
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(Note: in the above message, Shog was mentioned only because by personal experience he is the one that seems to be more "present" in this room, often chatting with the user and sharing info, answering question and so on. No offense meant for anyone else, I just used the employee I see more often recently. That, and Shog.)
@Tinkeringbell didn't someone build an accurate replica of the Taj Mahal some year ago?
@Tinkeringbell problem is that when you stop talking with user A because user B punched you in the face, most of the time user A is left wondering what they has done and why you keep yelling them to stop punching people. Here, they kinda stopped interacting with a group because single members hurt them. And now the rest of the group is sad/angry, while the original "trolls" are probably laughing somewhere proud of the fights and grudge they started.
@Hitodama If I ever do that, it's because A's showing signs of being just like B in that regard. There's groups that hurt people, and those groups here are also the loudest in shouting that they should be allowed to hurt people... that's not good.
? I stop talking with user A because I'm frustrated B punched me in the face? Perhaps B punched hard enough to make talking hurt, but that doesn't mean I can't talk with A once the broken jaw has healed.
If people don't talk with A because B 'got them frustrated', they're not a great person. It's the point where you can try to assure A you're not like B, or get mad...
@Tinkeringbell that was just an example. There relevant part is the second one. The company has somehow shut down communication with all the comunity - or at the very best greatly reduced it - because some single voices in the community said/did bad things. And this alienated many other users from the rest said community that up to now were still supportive
@Hitodama "that up to now were still supportive" < if that's true, there's no need for fixing things then, as that part is no longer supportive anyways so it'd be a waste of time to treat them like they were.
@Tinkeringbell if that was the case the world would be a remarkably harmonius place. We're all to one extent or another directly or indirectly influenced by how we feel. Getting angry at people who don't control their emotions well is rather cruel, in my opinion. In general, responsibility flows up. The more power you have, the more restraint you're supposed to show.
I don't get this. On the one hand we're all in favor (rightly!) of protecting people from cruelty based on what they can't control. On the other hand, we're so eager to dismiss other people's emotions as "they should know better". Well, that seems rather arbitrary and cruel to me.
Okay. So emotions drive actions. Exceptional circumstances aside (such as medical reasons), you have control over how you let your emotions drive your actions. I'm not dismissing the emotions. I'm saying that if you let your emotions drive you to certain actions, I might let mine drive me to others.
If you chose 'get carried away' as your action... my response is not going to look favorably on that.
Especially not if people do so over and over and over.
@Tinkeringbell You're speaking as though there were "emotions" on the one hand, and "you" on the other hand, as if those were two totally separate things.
Emotions drive perceptions and perceptions drive actions. You can't control how emotions drive perceptions, and it's not feasible to prevent perceptions from driving your actions.
Oh, no... a you is way more than just emotions, that's part of the theory too... But that's why emotions alone are never an excuse. A 'you' makes choices, a you has a history that influences how they perceive things, a you has a set of beliefs and personal rules....
We were just talking about the emotion part driving actions though.
@TannerSwett Meh. Agree to disagree I guess, as I definitely can control emotions and how I let those influence my actions. The people around me can do so too.
If no-one could, there'd be a lot more crime in this world.
@Tinkeringbell Yeah I've heard various ideas. Nothing seemingly conclusive about what went wrong. But I generally just assume chat things are low priority :-/
