And if they don't want to share, that's their call. I wouldn't want to make the details of why I had to leave my job public either, probably.

I bet there's a dozen lawyers behind the firees not saying anything (I mean perhaps they couldn't even if they wanted to)

@terdon oh, that is granted. I only specified what users want to know, not implying they are entitled in any way.

But you know, when a community is in the "conditions" our this one is right now, I am not surprised if people want to know

I think it's our community still. What it isn't is theirs anymore.

@AndrasDeak I do know some people still feel like it's theirs. If I didn't, I'd be gone too.

perhaps there's some ambiguity; when I said "theirs" I meant the company, and "ours" as in the community

@AndrasDeak OK, now there's more ambiguity :) Both 'theirs' and 'ours' refer to the same thing?

Hmm? No, it's a typical us vs them dichotomy, where them is the company

@AndrasDeak So, where do employees fall? Because I know some of those still feel like this is their community too.

@terdon As I was saying users want to know if Shog was at least given some time to prepare or was toss away with little warning, that is something you can't avoid when you dragged the community to nothing. And in the meantime obviously anyone is entitled in deciding what "suddenly" means for them.

@Tinkeringbell OK, I see what you meant then. They are probably aligned along the usual kill meta/keep meta lines

@Tinkeringbell they seem to be outnumbered and in a company-politically poor position, from what I can gather

@AndrasDeak oh wow, never mind. I completely misread the last community there as company.

@AndrasDeak Ah, where did you get official confirmation meta would be killed?

@terdon explains a lot :P

compare this 2 persons "layoff" with the much larger one from 2017 (? could not remember exact date), compare the reactions and the post that the staff made back then.

And also his tweet: "I suddenly find myself in need of work." (emphasis mine).

this new SE is disgusting and corporate

like disgusting soulless corporations are

... seems the name change didn't reach here yet

@Hitodama there's more than that

or at least, it behaves like one.

@JourneymanGeek I just mean that in 2017 no one thought that the fired ones were fired because they "annoyed" someone.

I spent some time reading the latest glassdoor reviews SE got. It seems like the board/investors brought in a whole new line of top management to "fix" the company before the whole kerfuffle started

makes sense that a new CEO with a history of mergers and acquisitions at a bank (the most corporate kind of environment you can imagine) would lead a change like this.

@JourneymanGeek And since you are a mod, I think you have seen plenty of what users say about this layoff instead. Says a lot about what the relationship between users and company is right now.

@Tinkeringbell nothing official beside Shog explaining that he's one of the few people appreciating meta around here when hot meta questions were killed. My impression from that time was that it was only thanks to the CMs that meta prevailed.

my impression probably had to do with meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/387546/…

> I can’t, with good conscience, force anyone to participate in Meta Stack Exchange that causes that type of psychological damage at work. The CMs feel this is something that can be remedied, and I believe them. However, until then, I can’t sleep at night knowing that we are forcing people to participate here as part of their jobs.

Hmm.

now that "the CMs" are taken care of there's no reason to keep meta

You haven't convinced me yet.

also friendly reminder:

Yeah, well... that makes sense.

@Tinkeringbell I don't have to, nor want to.

@AndrasDeak Loathe as I am to agree with Ms Chipps, I have to say she's absolutely right on this. The way we have treated employees who have brought us bad news in the past has been absolutely awful. And that is 100% on us and not on the company.

I do hope that user eventually stays and explains to us if/what we can do to prevent that kind of image... but it's hard to reach out.

The people that are on IPS Meta are the people that know the site isn't 'the gossip corner'.

@terdon I disagree. Heat is a natural part of any public relations job

meta is a fickle beast and kinda poisonous, but that is 100% the fault of the company through their actions

@Magisch The people posting on meta used to be devs, not public relations people. We made sure they never wanted to come back again. And no, even for PR folks, there is no call for the level of foaming at the mouth vitriol that has become the norm on meta.

@terdon firstly, they'be been crapping on the community for years so no surprise if they're unwelcome with the next batch of crap. Secondly, unkindness could be moderated. Do we shut down SO due to all the spam and vandalism? We don't, it would be ridiculous.

All hope is lost friends

the meta community (or the general community) isn't organized enough to effect change from within. What it looks like is a direct result of the systems SE puts in place interacting with human nature, and nothing else.

And there's also the very valid point also made by Ms Chipps back with her first blog post: even polite feedback feels incredibly unpleasant if there are several dozen people putting you down.

@terdon which is something they have to be able to manage if they work with a community

right, but taking that feedback and fighting back the urge to ignore it is a crucial part of a public facing job

@AndrasDeak No, sorry. This goes back before that. When they first announced the new top bar, for instance. Or any other UI change. The way we, the community, treated poor Joe Friend for example was horrible.

I don't think I was here for most of that

@terdon Without trying to justify the rude stuff that was said, I still state one central point: either you use personal accounts to post corporate-made content and then you should take no moral blame for how the users react OR if you can't dissociate your persona then it is probably better to use a "glass mask", a fake identity to post Corporate communications under.

@AndrasDeak No, it's something we should bloody well manage ourselves if we want to have the incredible and unique privilege of having access to the people actually making decisions and those writing the code instead of just having empty PR heads to talk to.

I disagree that anyone gets to hide from their responsibilities because it's unpleasant. If they want to fix the resultant symptom (meta being toxic as hell) then they have to fix the cause (site systems engendering that frustration, to continual ignorance by the company)

@terdon It's not supposed to be a privilege in such a 100% community-driven endeavour.

Mind you, I don't mean that [empolyee name here] should be personally attacked because they posted something someone higher in the chain told them to post.

...which they make it out to be

tbh on a site like this, having volunteers is a privilege on the part of the company

Oh but I know who should be attacked

@Hitodama most people get that, see the comments under Juan's post

@Hitodama We can't have our cake and eat it too. We demand that the real people post, and we hate it when they give us corporate speak. Yet, when the real people do post, they know they will have to wade through several dozen comments, most of which are saying the same thing, and all of which are putting them down.

@AndrasDeak Name one other place that does this.

That was one of the things that made SE special, it was a privilege and we abused it.

@terdon uniqueness doesn't imply privilege on our part. Symbiosis is not a privilege to either parties.

Hell, it isn't limited to employees anyway. Most users are afraid of main meta.

I would stay away from it as much as possible myself.

I've said it before, this is a problem only the company can work to fix. Even if everyone who ever visited this here room made a firm commitment to make it happen, we wouldn't make a blip on the radar

@AndrasDeak and as I was just going to say But we also shouldn't have to justify ourselves every time we downvote something just because [employee name here] was the unlucky one who got the short stick and had to post it.

And I am far from an inexperienced user.

oh, cache catch up.

Goodbye Hitodama

Welcome BlueSoul.

yeah, your name change confused me there for a second

Who are we?

@Magisch That's too simplistic. Yes, the company has made things worse, absolutely. But the toxicity of meta predates the community's problems with the company. It's been that way for as long as I've been on SE which is what 7 or 8 years now.

@rene just us.

Fair

What meta is is the result of symptoms and systems put in place by SE. They made their bed over years, and we can't stop them from having to sleep in it, no matter how hard we try. I don't like going to MSO these days, because it's a cesspit. But it's their cesspit

and... a pity that I didn't think to call me what the blue soul represents instead.

Seriously, the reaction of the user base to the new profile pages and the new top bar was inexcusable.

We acted like assholes, not the company.

@BlueSoul Okay but downvotes aside... no one ever silently downvotes. I've seen the crap I deleted from underneath the agreement post for example: There's apparently plenty people out there thick enough to not see that as what it is, and holding the person that posted it accountable.

We have a lot of valid complaints against SE, but we should also remember that we're not angels either.

And really "you should learn to take shit from us because that's your job" is never a good argument.

Most certainly not when talking about devs since it isn't even remotely their job.

Taking shit wasn't the job to begin with, for all of them it probably stops at gathering feedback ;)

Look at @YaakovEllis for example! He's still here, still trying his best, still answering questions, still active on meta. He doesn't need to be, he's a developer. We should appreciate that and treat him with the respect and kindness he deserves even when he's telling us things we don't want to hear.

And that goes for everyone, including those we're angry with.

@terdon There are fundamental issues with the redesign of the top bar and the sidebar, but the way people attacked Joe Friend back then was kinda disgusting. At some point I think it could have been still fixable with more moderation on meta, but that only works as long as there is a generally positive relationship between the company and the community

@terdon as I said, that is not what I mean clearly. Rude is rude and that's it

@DisappointedinSE Exactly. I'm not saying there weren't issues, but the way the community reacted was absolutely awful.

So if Ms Chipps then says that she cannot "with good conscience, force anyone to participate in Meta Stack Exchange that causes that type of psychological damage at work", well I don't have an answer to that. She's right.

The one thing you can't really fix is the effect a lot of constructive feedback has in aggregate, it will pretty much always seem hostile to some extent due to the volume

Yeah, that too. And that's a big problem.

@terdon And that's something a lot of people didn't get

@terdon 👍

@JourneymanGeek yep

@YaakovEllis bows

@terdon Why are you absolving the employees of their responsibility in this?

Quite frankly, people like @YaakovEllis are why I didn't immediately hand over my badge

@DisappointedinSE I think even there, people can often do a bit better in not writing duplicate answers...

@Magisch Anger needs to be directed, used in the right way...

@terdon But if your post gets 1k downvotes it means that the content was downvoted, not you. It is kinda what THEY had up from the start Downvote content, not users. So, if you then tell me that people who downvoted something should do serious introspection and personal growth.... welll... I can only say I will remember that for a long time.

@Magisch Oh, I am not! I just refuse to absolve us of our responsibility in this.

not talking about yaakov, who seems to be doing an amazing job, but in general

@BlueSoul having that kind of grace is hard

@BlueSoul Ugh, still on about that? It's deleted for a reason.

Hmmm

convert upvotes/downvotes*100. Show a percentage

@terdon He doesn't really get involved in the politics, though

and people with that kinda attitude... wouldn't get into those situations ;)

@terdon we're volunteers. Not organized, not standing to profit from any of this, not even paid or compensated. Why is this in any way shape or form the fault of anyone but the company in entirety?

@BlueSoul Downvotes are the least of it. I am talking about answers and comments attacking the employee personally. They were extremely common.

even 0% agreement feels better than 3000 DV's

@terdon and we tried our best to handle that. But... it gets harder to say "Lets not call for $unpopular_employee to be fired" when they fired people who have always had our back

@Magisch Because we control the tone we use to communicate. And when we act like spoiled, entitled, self-important brats, as we so often have done, then we need to accept that we share some of the blame.

@Tinkeringbell A tree felt in a forest is still there even if no one sees it. Now, if the woodcutter said they were sorry....

But there is certainly also the part where SE has made plenty of bad decisions that deserve negative feedback. There is no solution to that except making better decisions

@djsmiley2kindarkness that's not a percentage though ;) how would 100 upvotes 0 downvotes show?

Do you really think we (as in everyone you're talking to right now) could have done anything to make this better? I've been on MSO for a long time, I even have a gold badge there. It is my personal asessment that I could have changed absolutely bupkis

@BlueSoul They did?

As far as I remember.

Employees used to be on meta because it was a pleasant experience for them. It was never something they had to do, it was by choice.

@JAD :D

@Magisch No - but it would have made it harder to spin

@Magisch Yes, of course. Um. Do you not remember how aggressive your style used to be a while back?

@user1306322 Thank you! Fixed.

And I'm sure I've been guilty of the same thing myself.

@terdon and doing that again was a goal of ours

The only thing I'm actually pretty sure of is that communities of the fashion you're looking at here are entirely guided by incentives and systems

but...

It gets harder.

I'm raising a gofundme for Shog9. I hope you'll join me. gf.me/u/xcmzn4

I'm sure JMG or tink could find a screenshot of the comments under some of Joe Friend's old posts which would show exactly how horrible we were to him.

@GeorgeStocker Do you have reason to believe it is needed?

@terdon Yeah, my early writing on meta was quite abrasive. That (and what changed after) is a product of the people and sentiment around me

@terdon that annoyed me

humans tend to blend in where they're at

@terdon Yes.

@GeorgeStocker Well, shit. Thank you!

That is why leadership is so important

@terdon I'm not sure which posts to even start looking at? That sounds from before my time...

@Magisch By the way, and since I brought it up, we haven't interacted all that much, but we've interacted enough and I've read enough of your posts to see that change. It is very impressive! Seriously, well done and thank you! It is not easy to change oneself.

the broken windows analogy is actually really on point. When you're just idly contributing to a place you'll acclimatize to the general tone of it.

@Tinkeringbell It will only depress you anyway...

I actually credit most of that to TAS and this room

@terdon the next PM will have it worse

i'm not special in any way, being around people who are better tends to make you a better person yourself. This works in both directions, though

@Tinkeringbell Unless I didn't had the luck to see it, only thing I remember is an user posting an angry "Really?" in the chat and a reply that basically was "yes. Really".

At some point I think the best parts of our community will leave

@terdon Yeah, I don't need more of that.

@Tinkeringbell it was pretty bad

And Joe kinda got dropped in after a period of benign neglect so...

lots of moved cheese

@BlueSoul The conversation went on after that.

either it went on days afters, or I remember it to be pretty closed on positions on both sides.

Well we're apparently still talking about it so days after is probably correct...

Honestly anyone can have a bad day.

I had this exact discussion with @GeorgeStocker about MSO at some point, where we were talking about the quality of comments on there. I think that the only way situations like this can actually change is strong leadership

@Magisch so...

last month

I reviewed and deleted ... over a thousand comments

Of course, it didn't end up happening, but they were on a good path there for a while. Of course people trashed and screamed as they were dragged into the light, but you started to see some results

But strong leadership can also be bad when they're misaligned with the goals of actually having a constructive, cohesive debate

@Tinkeringbell very apropiate reply, considering my new avatar. That said, that was just a well know example. The core is that I am perfectly fine with moderating any personal attack to anyone, but the staff should also stop with the "you are downvoting this into oblivion because you despise us"

we mass-downvote if we despise the content, not the users.

@BlueSoul I haven't seen that anywhere. The one you were talking about just now wasn't even a staff post!

@JourneymanGeek And if you hadn't done it, we'd probably be at 4chan levels of discourse on MSO right now

Likely of interest to many here: gofundme.com/f/thanking-josh-heyer-for-shaping-stack-overflow

@Magisch for... nothing

@Tinkeringbell are we talking about the same thing then??

@MarkAmery George already dropped it here...

Ah!

Apologies :P

No worries :)

@BlueSoul Judging from what you said the remark said... yes.

It won't let me donate for some reason. Grrrr

I've not done much active moderation in the last few days

@JourneymanGeek you've done something though

@Magisch Did I?

you'll never know just how hard and brutally MSE could have fallen apart

It's still open, people are still posting to it. The level of discourse and tone is ... not great, but it's better then it otherwise would be

@Magisch Its probably going to hit worse now

I ...

you may be right. All we can do is not partake in the downfall

We're in shock. It took a lot of work to handle the worst of it

and those folks will be back

our little island of the tavern got through it somehow

will we get through this? no idea

Well, chat is ours

I hopefully have some nice little and not-so-little features ready for y'all in the next couple of days

@YaakovEllis :D

@Magisch If enough people want to, yes.

Corporate hasn't cared much for chat for ... ages.

@terdon I'm sorry for the earlier rant. It was probably pretty exhausting to listen to. That you took time to engage anyways does you credit.

@Magisch I'd be damned if I let here and RA fail

@rene I'll see what I can do

Someone else may turn off the lights some day, but I'm disinclined to let folks take these spaces from me.

@YaakovEllis thanks! I'm a bit biased as 4 of those are mine ;)

@Magisch rant? Here? If that was a rant, I didn't even realize! :)

I's a hot-blooded Mediterranean type, my threshold for "rant" is relatively high :P

@Magisch constructive ranting is good for the soul

I think @terdon has heard me actually rant :D

(I'd have to suspend myself)

heh

@terdon It's very easy to get carried away. I was on the edge if not over getting there. I have to catch myself when that happens because when it does, it usually hurts people. You're right, a crowd might have an excuse. I don't.

I've seen you rant, at least once in the past, @Magisch. This didn't even register on the scale. You seem like a whole different person.

@Magisch On the other hand

Anger is a human reaction to injustice

There's no need to be ashamed of it

Hmm. I managed to donate, but I can't get it to show my name. Dunno if it's caching or what (I changed it). Can anyone confirm that they see a $50 donation as "anonymous" or do you see terdon? gofundme.com/f/thanking-josh-heyer-for-shaping-stack-overflow

I do, from 6 minutes ago

that ^

@JourneymanGeek ranting is healthy and I do it readily. It's just if you actually post it or not that is of relevance. words do have power, and it is everyone's own responsibility which effect their words have

@terdon It's there. I am logged in and see it

Thank you, @terdon

@terdon It's there. I am logged in and see it

@Magisch and part of that power is catharsis, and healing

I'll make a contribution when I get home

Yes, it updated now. Caching, always caching.

Thanks for checking.

lol, only a geek would donate 2^7!

love it

lol

Wish I had thought of that

@terdon You do realize each of us can just open the Gofundme and see who that was? :P

of course, but I saw no reason to mention the name.

shrugs

same

well .... he is still pingable here ... despite his inability to respond to any of that. We could add 2^32-1 messages in his inbox ... for science ...

It will be interesting to compare this to the other Fundraiser, which raised less than a third of this goal for an arguably more severe cause...

@Tinkeringbell sorry. All I see is a passive aggressive reply about the "request account deletion" page. If that thing ever got an apologize you can find anywhere, please send me the link even privately for I would love to see some turning back.

Meh.

I'm not going to trawl through transcript for something pretty insignificant to me, if you don't mind.

That's fine for me, don't worry.

I would rather if you didn't, to be honest

@JourneymanGeek It's not for nothing. You did that for you and for us, not for them. Fighting to keep something from destroying itself is not a worthless task (though thankless in this case). The writing may be on the wall but the future isn't set in stone. You have and are doing the right thing as you see it at the time and that is awesome.

(this applies generally to all you MSE mods)

there's a hot thread on reddit about recent events, fyi

@user1306322 I see this....

> Less and less interesting questions and answers are being written on SO due to a hostile and weirdly structured system

reddit has its own biases and drama engines, so use grains of salt :p

@user1306322 I suggest salt circles and crystals ;)

:8172764 you can write on your own blog like a lot of devs do

or find a better site and share there

been thinking about that.

Suggesting any form of self-restraint and order on the internet is 'hostile'. I wouldn't count on outsiders' perspectives on this, or anything else.

And it doesn't change the magnitude of what happened the last few months anyway.

> It's the darkside of gamification: some people get obsessed with "helping" via specific vectors and take it to unhelpful levels. "Oh, I can help with closing duplicates and it must be good because I get points for it." Then "when you have a new hammer, everything looks like a nail" sets in and you default to closed-as-duplicate or opinion-based, etc.

did I by any chance suggested you do the same? I only stated I can see truth in that reddit message since I too don't see much reason to spend my time posting here with no "effect".

"Who do you think you are, Kant?"

@BlueSoul No we're good, I'm just randomly rambling

well, my takeaway from all this (there's been a looooot of things but still, to distill it to just one thought) is that if I want something as grand and ambitious as helping the worldwide community of developers without major hassle like some management from above telling me what I can and can't do, is to have no such management above, and as an example find a similar place which is governed in a much more free fashion, kinda like wikimedia

the trouble begins where the users of the site and the owners have different goals

if users were the owners, we'd have no difference of opinion (probably, no guarantee)

we'll see what happens when such sites launch

I'm aware of only 2 prominent communities like that for now, but there's going to be more, I'm sure

@It'sOver Shows a great understanding of the system... because unless all those people are voting to close as a dupe of their own questions... it doesn't earn them points. It's a thankless job ;)

The other day, there were these social media chat thingies for relatives and friends, and I suggested each chat would serve its purpose better if random chit-chat wasn't going on on every chat simultaneously. I was immediately conveniently labelled a bureaucrat, and I might be, but my point is if you suggest order online, you're being hostile.

@It'sOver only that cjat was always meant to be for random chitchat

But that's one of those things - that its the one proper social aspect of the network, isn't something folks always were aware on

@It'sOver Well then we won't 'suggest' order. We'll enforce it ;)

create it?

propose it

Anyway, I guess I'm back to my odd apathetic Zen mode

and invite others to join the room if they agree to the rules

But thankfully, at least our stance is now much clearer.

let the main chat rooms do as they like, but offer other options elsewhere

Be diverse! Yeeeeah

Okay... that's not apathetic.

it's always easier to rebuild and offer something new, instead of trying to change something old and rusty

I lost me

What are we talking about again

I'm talking nonsense

Join the club

I just managed to finally make it so that the WebApplication just works from a template and can now begin developing it

Ah. Then it's now my turn to enforce order.

Nooooo u hostile ಠ_ಠ

mom said it's my turn to enforce order >.<

Well, sure. I don't want to argue with your mom.

Ooh, "Goodhart's law"

Another good TIL law. I can sound slightly smarter in debate.

@It'sOver that's a form of the overjustification effect, imo

@It'sOver I have often ridiculed various "laws" named after random people, but now I've graduated to mentioning random name laws and people are thinking I'm smarter than I am coz they think they just don't know those yet

not that moderation work gives you gamified rewards outside of badges, but still. Numbers in and of itself are a subject to that

I dunno what it is, but my quote afterwards means the whole deep philosophical thing falls apart

imma google what debates are real quick

I know roboreviewers are a pain, but how significant is their effect, for example?

> It is a formal type of discussion, often with a moderator and an audience, in addition to the debate participants.

we've been in a debate room all along!

@user1306322 Dee-buh-tess. Greek Philosopher

@user1306322 exactly

ye so debates are for figuring out what to do OR for educational and recreational purposes

It takes time to show people you're smart, so a shortcut was offered by William Goodman. Goodman's law. You don't know it.

@user1306322 Nah they're just a form of anger management

I feel like a lot of the times I see debates in the wild people are just finding an excuse to say things just for the sake of talking

I like solving actual problems

If you want to feel profound while letting out steam, debates are the perfect option

there are much better forms of entertainment for me than debates

@It'sOver John Goodman is a pretty cool actor in that one movie Cloverfield Lane

@user1306322 I object with thine proposal that the ramifications of formal enunciation are incongruous with said applied circumstances

that... first... sentence

the dark side is that I had work to do today and instead I spent like 3 hours browsing meta and being distracted with word definition lookups

SIR