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5:50 AM

This question was tagged mod-agreement-policy 10 hours ago. These posts can only be edited by staff members. Yet, 10 minutes ago a suggested edit was accepted on it. Is it possible the tag is broken? @JNat

A: New [mod-agreement-policy] tag has an incorrect description

6:29 AM

0

There's no technical implementation. The posts have to be manually locked. The information is in the tag wiki excerpt because it is a defining trait of items in that tag but we don't have a way of applying it automatically. The other thing to consider is that the policies are often the answers, n...

Also, as the answer states, it's intentional that the questions are unlocked.

@SonictheMaskedWerehog Thanks.

@SonictheMaskedWerehog That's not what the tag description says though.

But the answer explains it.

Doesn't make the description less wrong, but ok.

Thanks.

Catija

Well, the tag description isn't locked. Feel free to suggest an edit. :P

I wrote the description in 2 minutes on Tuesday and I wasn't thinking of caveats like answers instead of questions.

Or is it... I'm not actually sure if y'all can suggest edits to mod tag excerpts now that I think about it...

One more thing to add to my list of things to do when it's not 1:30 am.

@Catija You can. I've edited the descriptions for the status tags quite a few times, even back before I had 20k+ rep.

I've edited it to make it more clear.

7:16 AM

hehe Sir @Glorfindel :)

@Catija I think of changing it to "Answers to these posts should be edited only by Stack Exchange staff", since "can only be edited" is misleading until the answers are locked, which can take hours/days/etc so people will keep posting bug reports "Hey, I edited the answer while the tag wiki says I can't!!1!!". What do you think?

Then when someone edits such answer before it's locked we can point them to the wiki asking to not edit it in the future.

7:56 AM

@ShadowWizardWearingMask I think what happened here is more of an edge case. When new questions with that tag are introduced, I'd expect them to lock them immediately.

@SonictheMaskedWerehog no, each answer should be locked on its own, locking the question with the policy lock won't lock future answers.

And looks like the one posting the Q&A isn't locking, only other staff members, later on.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask the answers*

If it's always a single self answer then you might have a point, but still, the OP might forget.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Yeah, good point, if a non-mod staff member posts something with the tag, they can't lock it by themselves.

@SonictheMaskedWerehog are you sure? The staff bit doesn't suffice?

(e.g. they can put mod-only tags with it.)

I was more under the impression those who post aren't always aware of the policy lock.

8:03 AM

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Nope, locking in any form requires mod privileges.

That said, I've improved the excerpt again.

Thanks.

8:34 AM

Weee. Our polling station is going up

8:47 AM

@SonictheMaskedWerehog Much better, thank you.

'ello

Q: The new moderator agreement is now live for moderators to accept across the network

9:28 AM

@Magisch Tag!

24

Today, we’re announcing that the new moderator agreement is live and the existing moderators are being asked to accept it. This has been a great collaboration to get from a draft in November 2019 to the final agreement in July 2020. It’s gone through several phases of review internally, including...

Why has this been contentious? +36/-12?

Good thing I'm not a mod so this doesn't have to concern me

Is it because of the 60-day notice, or is there something I'm missing?

@Magisch You might not have the broom but you have the dust pan

@M.A.R. There's been several answers that came in on the 'accept guidance', I think? And one that was about not getting a voice in the agreement feedback as a user...

@JourneymanGeek What are they pollinating?

@DarkCygnus: I always thought the users were my bosses, not the company. It follows that it is their business what commitments I make to the company regarding my role as a moderator. — Scortchi - Reinstate Monica 12 hours ago

Can we drop this hyperbolic crap please.

its true though

I mean, whatever

9:35 AM

@Magisch genau, "whatever".

whatever to the whole thing

Sometimes you take a metaphor and forget it's a metaphor

That the community is your 'boss' can never be literal, so don't treat it that way.

Im not gonna get into this I stopped getting involved in these for a reason

@Tinkeringbell still can't see anything controversial though. The -8 answer has some upvotes so might explain some downvotes

Some of the mistrust still lingers on. Can't blame 'em.

BBL lunch

@M.A.R. Trust is one of the hardest things to rebuild. Asked a question about it on IPS a long time ago, didn't really get a satisfactory answer...

(like most questions :/)

9:40 AM

@Tinkeringbell Honest? Never coming back

the trust, that is

Gotta live with the new reality that the relationship with the core community is now deeply adversarial. Will remain that way. Maybe it lessens a bit, maybe not. Never like it was before

2

Nothing they can do, even if they really wanted to

@Magisch Difference perhaps between optimists and pessimists?

@DavidPostill Maybe? I'm a pessimist then. I don't think there's a salvage option here

Thats why I'm just around from time to time to say hi to old friends

@Magisch You don't salvage trust, that's true. It's... also not really the difference between optimists and pessimist, I think... probably more naive vs jaded? ;)

I still hope new trust can be built, instead of the old one salvaged :/

Spam

Gone

I was just working my way through the queue ;)

9:53 AM

@Tinkeringbell maybe. maybe not. Will be interesting to check in every now and then and see what happens

@Magisch Yeah, I guess observing from a bit more distance might be more informational than being in the middle of things with your own opinions on everything muddying all the things.

@M.A.R. What's the saying again? Trust comes afoot and goes a horse, or something.

Yep.

one thing that I noticed though is that the new mod council is super weak sauce

?

9:57 AM

It seems to me the same effect could be achieved by sampling any 10 mods at random and asking them about their opinion whenever you need one, it's not like they have any power, responsibility or ability to fix any issues that arise

Well, we basically are 10 mods at random XD

What was needed was a powerful instance that can check potential company misdeeds, with real teeth

what happened was advisory only

Though in this case it's 11 random mods that nominated + are elected to do that kinda stuff.

What stops SE the next time they decide to misbehave?

@Magisch Without getting a ton of legal paperwork signed and stuff, what makes you think a council ever could?

10:01 AM

@Magisch Well that isn't going to happen. The only entity that can force a company to do something is a court of law.

2

@Tinkeringbell nothing, I just meant we would have needed that, including the paperwork

a way the community can tell SE "no" in a way that they'll have to accept - legally binding

@Magisch Mweh. We just talked about rebuilding trust, and how I hoped new ones could be built. Legal paperwork, laws, etc... they don't build trust. They build a system that people can use because they don't trust each other.

@Magisch The company lawyers would never allow that to happen.

I understand that you said you don't think it will ever happen, so that probably also explains why you want the legal things...

wanna rebuild trust? start with trusting your community with the tools they need to reign you in

2

10:06 AM

@Magisch Can you name even one public or privately owned company that allows it's community to veto anything it doesn't like?

wikipedia does

the community has 2 seats on the board of directors

that means if even the CEO severely misbehaves they can be called to account

@Magisch Wikipedia is a foundation not a company. It is both non profit and a charity. They have different rules.

That sounds like a job, not something for a bunch of volunteers...

@DavidPostill SE is more like wikipedia then it is like other tech companies

in the ways that count, anyways

both depend heavily on goodwill and volunteer work to get anywhere

@Magisch That was never the intent of the mod council. The idea for the council was to improve communication between company and mods, we were never supposed to have any kind of power or teeth.

10:09 AM

I'm not saying it was. I'm saying that would have been needed

@Magisch Well that's just it: in the way that counts, SE is absolutely not like wikipedia. It is a for profit, run as a for profit.

something to make SE management scared to lose their jobs if they defy the community

if that is the case then you can make a case that you can trust SE again ... somewhat

@Magisch That was never an option.

@Magisch Nah, then you're still not trusting SE, you're trusting a process.

maybe you're right

10:11 AM

If this is the level of control you want (and I can completely understand that, it's what I want too), then you should look to codidact. It will never happen when there's a for-profit company running the site.

I'd need a detailed account of who messed up in the monica situation including staff consequences for what happened to find any semblance of trust for whoever runs the place at the moment

2

something they'd never be willing to make public

@Magisch We know it was a decision by David Fullerton (this has been made public in another forum) and David is no longer here.

@Magisch Bunch of that ended up on Twitter though, I guess enough to make up some part of a mind.

For what it's worth, we had a video chat with some of the mods on the council and some employees including Teresa last week. I have to say I was really impressed by Teresa. She cam across as pleasant, and most importantly, as someone with a very low tolerance for bullshit.

I guess what I ultimately want is an assurance that they'll never pull anything like this again

10:14 AM

Which is confirmed by her public actions on MSE and the network in general since she started.

So that's something.

@Magisch And what form would that assurance take? I mean, anything they say or promise will be (correctly) dismissed as so many words.

Something that really hurts the company to put out

The only way you can be sure that a company isn't bullshitting you is when what they're saying is demonstrably and really bad for their image. so in this case a full writeup of exactly who failed and why, and what consequences have been taken, and why

The only thing I can think of that would help is having the company act like a half-way decent, ethical beast for the next several years. Long enough to rebuild trust and give us reason to believe that acting ethically is an important part of the company's culture. As we used to feel.

@terdon SE lives on advertisement, Wikipedia on donations.

Can't compare the two.

Like i said, something anyone in a company would never do

Hell, I wouldnt

@Mast It... kinda doesn't. It lives off of Teams, Enterprise and Jobs, with ads being a distant 4th (AFAIK).

10:16 AM

I can completely understand why what I want is unreasonable and why I'll never get it

@terdon That actually makes the difference even bigger.

OHAI @YaakovEllis

which brings us back to that I don't think there's a salvage option

@Mast Yes. I don't see how Wikipedia is a useful comparison to SE.

@Magisch Yep. Only the long term one I mentioned above: years of their consistently acting in good faith.

@Mast 🙏

Hey yaakov :)

10:18 AM

And they have been making some very welcome changes. A great example of these changes is Yaakov, in fact: that they have understood that Yaakov and the other old-time employees who have the community's trust are an important asset and they seem to have given Yaakov more agency to get shit done with the community.

Maybe if they keep doing this for 3 years or so with no slip ups

To me, that's a pretty clear sign that they're listening. At least starting to reverse the awful trend that all employees we respect are either fired, quit or move to positions with no community contact.

@Magisch Or more. Yes. Trust takes a long time to rebuild. On the bright side, I am honestly convinced that they really do want to try.

@Magisch impossible to have no slip ups. I will settle more for trying to learn from each slip up and not repeat it again

3

@Magisch Which brings us back to pessimist vs optimist. In this case a pessimist has no hope that trust will return (and leaves) and an optimist believes that trust will return (and stays). If you are somewhere in the middle you might decide to hang around and see what happens.

with slip up I don't mean mistakes, rather no declarations of ill intent

10:20 AM

@Magisch You want a company ran by machines?

@YaakovEllis No slip up doesn't mean "I will never screw up". It means "When I screw up, I will deal with it in a good way".

2

that is something that we are trying to do

Teresa promised me "no more BS". And I believe she means it. That's all we really need, I think.

@YaakovEllis yep, it certainly seems that way.

I reckon the heat of the moment back then blinded me a bit to just how much the way monica was treated rubbed me the wrong way back then

2

I find myself still annoyed and upset even though it didnt happen to me and was months ago

@Magisch That's... not unusual given that it still comes up regularly.

10:22 AM

might take another longer while to let go of that resentment

@Magisch A lot of people feel that way, but are still determined to move forward.

a loud and obnoxious part of my mind still wants to see someone suffer for what they did to her

and yes that's a really gross impulse

@Magisch The person responsible has left the company. I don't know how, or why, or if there was "suffering" involved (frankly, I hope there wasn't), but they're gone. That's... something.

@Magisch It's fine if you think that way, but I'm not sure it's appropriate to put that in chat this long after the incidents.

you might be right

10:25 AM

@Mast Meh. It came with an admittance that even he knows it's not exactly a correct thought ;)

Though talking about thoughts as correct is kinda stupid too.

I mean, it's not wrong to have this impulse. It's wrong to follow it

retribution is a game where everyone loses most of the time

Yep

@Mast He's posted the same link twice in answers to 2 different questions. The link doesn't answer wither of them.

@DavidPostill Yes, with a third one incoming.

Definitely spam.

@Magisch something about an eye for an eye....

I'd rather healing but that's hard too

10:37 AM

Heh

Angry and Vindictive Magisch is thankfully not in charge in my head

So what I can do, right now, all the time is help people put things in place so it is difficult for stuff like that to happen again

@JourneymanGeek You're doing great.

@Mast I screw up a lot too :D

@JourneymanGeek no one notices, because of your cute puppy

as for weaksauce mod councils - I think there's a certain undercurrent where people want us to seize the authority of the position, where we have people who would rather use the influence of it to encourage people to do the right thing.

It will be very easy for me to sit down, and dictate what I want people to do

and people will listen

but I'll lose interest some day, or drop dead or...

(sic transit gloria mundi and all :D )

10:43 AM

@YaakovEllis I wonder if ash knows that he's a big part of a soft power structure in an internet community

So I'd rather a situation where people generally are in a culture of the right thing

@Magisch uhhh

I wonder further if he cares, since he is a dog :P

at the risk of revieling mod council secrets...

@Magisch Secretly, it's the dog typing.

I think at the tail end of the mod council meeting, people asked to see him

10:44 AM

@Magisch cute puppies are above silly things like that

He was not amused at being woken up :D

@YaakovEllis lol. he's 15. I'm not sure if that makes him a teenager or a grumpy geriatric.

@YaakovEllis if I recall correctly ash is a senior

@JourneymanGeek There is no justice in history ;)

@Tinkeringbell Well, also that I have a slight agenda here.

@JourneymanGeek Kinda the point of that quote.

10:47 AM

I want an active, empowered CM team that's on our side - whether or not I get hired as one.

Whatever is right/justice right now will be obsolete in a few years, just like there's no justice in history ;)

@Tinkeringbell well and people come and go

culture changes but tends to be a little more sticky

@JourneymanGeek "at the tail end" hahahahaha

thinking on the previous a bit more

Culture is ... not sticky at all, it's constantly changing.

10:48 AM

I dont know what exactly I want

@DavidPostill no pun intended :D

right now I don't want ... to stay here still

@Magisch I know exactly what I want in this situation

maybe after some time has passed

but it might not be perfect or the best.

10:49 AM

I generally don't react to moral injury by putting up a fight

I usually just leave

@JourneymanGeek Working on getting promoted?

@Mast as the old joke goes

@Magisch Well I'm glad you're still here to chat to ;)

"If I don't apply, people will nag me to"

if you become cm I'll return just to haunt you with serial voting

;)

10:52 AM

@Magisch funny thing is I come from a culture of people who are either cronically nice or machavallian.

Sometimes both.

So I'm willing to take the long view - though stuff would be better addressed early on.

@Magisch though realistically - I've applied twice already and didn't get to the interviews

@JourneymanGeek It's not worth a thing, but you got my vote.

they hired excellent people so no complaints

(other than my current job sucks, and they're going to fire me, and replace me with me. For reasons.)

Well one complaint. there's less of them than when I applied, and a lot of people I looked forward to working with arn't there.

(math was never my strong point. One many?)

see the thing is I always reacted by going someplace else

stay until given a reason not to, and then move on

Yeah, finding a good place to go next is hard :)

@Magisch I've tended to just ghost

10:57 AM

here is a bit stickier. Even though I didnt have much else to do at the time I had no hard feelings dropping minecraftforums like a stone when their admins showed some true colors

resigned, never talked to any of the staff again, havent logged into my account in like 4 years

I've been in a community with much closer links than this, and I lost track of almost everyone, including super super close friends

So far, I've really dropped only 1 I think, which was around a game I no longer play. But I've been looking for great alternatives to Ravelry, for example, and it's just not there. I can make it work a little by not going to their homepage, for now, though.

Oh, and I've dropped a lot of Facebook groups because of bad moderation.

But I don't think those really count as 'communities', because you usually just dump your stuff into a void.

lol

@Tinkeringbell it was literally community built/run

but there's always those people who want to own it all or else

If they want to own it, they better pony up the money.

@JourneymanGeek brb, apparently it's time for food

11:03 AM

@Mast well it was more "Lets throw away a unique useful platform for a forum"

Someone built what was essentially a forum/social-networking tool for a small community

so you could find people in the same country, with similar interests

or other countries with similar interests

It was a horrible spegetti hack

but it worked really well as a community tool

New management didn't want any devs, wouldn't pick a better/more secure/free platform...

essentailly wouldn't let the community help if it meant any chance of losing their power

Nihil aeternum est

11:21 AM

@Mast no

11:37 AM

@JourneymanGeek Ah, yeah... that's sounding familiar ;)

@Tinkeringbell everything has happened before.

It dosen't need to happen the same away again :D

I don't think things ever happen in exactly the same way twice anyways.

k

@Tinkeringbell well ... I've seen it soooo

maybe

11:55 AM

@JourneymanGeek exactly the same way? Or just similar?

well eventually exactly :D

time is a flat circle

@Magisch I think some physicists would disagree with that :)

12:16 PM

@Magisch Time is one of those things that originated in the human imagination, like stock markets ;)

Improving performance with SIMD intrinsics in three use cases

12:44 PM

🎉 A technical programming post on the blog:

Ryan Donovan on July 08, 2020

Many developers write software that’s performance sensitive. After all, that’s one of the major reasons why we still pick C or C++ language these days. When done right, supplementing C or C++ code with vector intrinsics is exceptionally good for performance.

1:07 PM

@Tinkeringbell You'd think people learn from history. Turns out not all people do.

Very, very similar is effectively same.

@Mast Yeah, learning from history is hard.

> "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

@Rob Even those who remember the past are doomed to repeat the past, because that memory is selective ;)

Remember how we're all remembering that it's bad to have certain jobs be only for men or women? Yet we had the human rights council have to make a decision last week that a university over here can't accept only applications from women for certain jobs ...

Things go full circle eventually, even though people will say it's different ;)

@Tinkeringbell General election.

1:23 PM

Woah, that one was delayed, that reply came straight from history ;)

@Tinkeringbell lol. long night shift

@JourneymanGeek Blegh, night shifts :P

tonight should be good

Tommrrow is a public holiday, so no need for the full reports for the daily meeting

@JourneymanGeek Nice :D

Tomorrow is my last day of vacation again already :(

Rubiksmoose

@Magisch I mean the mod council is also still in it's infancy. It's self-defining of its role and powers is still in information-gathering stages. It is quite possible for it to be teethier in the future theoretically. But yeah, I don't really see any way it could be organized that would force the company to do anything it really doesn't want to. Open for suggestions though

user400654

1:48 PM

facade

2:07 PM

@user400654 front of a building

lol

@Tinkeringbell True. Results from these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration_of_future_consequences en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

2:24 PM

@user400654 Reflective Smile - Moody Blues

2:46 PM

@Rob Ooh, they made their pop up more obnoxious!

@Tinkeringbell What popup? :)

@DavidPostill The one begging for money. It's not really a popup, it used to be a banner...

3:05 PM

Ah. I see that at work but not on my browser at home :)

3:16 PM

I think different areas get a different campaign.

That too.

4:11 PM

@Tinkeringbell They're asking, not begging. And if anyone has a right to ask for my money, it's Wikipedia!

I hadn't realized just how often I use it until I had to spend a working day in Turkey once, where they block it.

4:28 PM

@Tinkeringbell It changes every so often. The obnoxity levels go up and down.

Have you really ever seen it obnoxious? I've only ever seen it very polite and subdued. Considering what an absolutely world-changing, incredible thing Wikipedia is and how completely it has changed the way we handle information, asking for a bit of cash every now and then to keep their non-profit afloat seems more than fair.

@terdon While the dictionary definition of beg does include the word ask for both definitions Google gives, I stick with beg. It's begging, as it's asking for charity.

@terdon They ask for cash half the time I go there. I'm surprised it still works.

And yeah, this one is definitely more obnoxious than the one they used to have

Given the size those notices get every so often (including now), yes, obnoxious.

4:38 PM

@Tinkeringbell As you wish. But there is an important difference between "asking" and "begging". The latter has strong negative associations.

It is negative.

Wow. I admit I find this attitude surprising. WP is an incredible resource, run as a non-profit, and one you all benefit from pretty much every day.

Mithical

@terdon Yeah. It's like once a year they run a thing asking for donations? I'd chip in if I was able.

I don't go there, not enough sourced articles and too many people thinking it's a source instead of a summary of sources.

The Dutch version is absolutely awful at times.

They had a good thing going, but screwed it up royally.

My spellchecker is malfunctioning so excuse any mistakes.

Mithical

While I'm tempted to go around adding [citation-needed] to everything sometimes, the sourcing is generally fairly good on the English version.

4:41 PM

@Mithical I know that temptation all too well, exactly why I don't go there :-)

I remember the internet before wikipedia. It was a much uglier place.

@terdon Which is kinda the point given that it's done using a more obnoxious banner ;)

I guess we have very different standards for obnoxious, or the one I see here in the UK is different. All I saw yesterday (gone today) was a small, polite and non-pushy banner.

@terdon Anything that avoids the adblocker is obnoxious, here.

2

I admit I find that a bit on the extreme side. If it were a for-profit, OK. But for a free resource run as a non-profit organization, I feel they get to ask me for money.

5:59 PM

@YaakovEllis Just add a warning beforehand, like "slippery ground" or something like that

Hmph, that oddly reminds me of the prayer clap buttons. Hint, hint

6:41 PM

@Magisch I've seen such an account, and devoted a substantial amount of time to its creation... And I hate to tell you this, but... I don't think it would help.

I had the same hope - that if I finally drag the truth out, I'll be able to separate fact from fiction, I'll know what to trust, I'll be able to move forward.

But... It was so, so, so much worse than I expected.

Look... To understand why things like this Mod Agreement that Cat announced are such a big deal, why Yaakov & Teresa posting on meta are such a big deal, why even the complete and abject failure to properly launch the reactions experiment is such a big deal...

JNat

@πάνταῥεῖ gone

...You gotta first understand just how completely and utterly lost the SO company was at the end of last year.

2

JNat

ohai @Shog9! :)

waves

JNat

@SonictheMaskedWerehog gone