A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

Every one of these community groups inevitably has some sort of internal political strife of some sort. I've never found any meaning in attempting to engage their politics in any more than the most basic sense.

The groups always exaggerate the impact of actions upon the rest of us when it's usually a no-op as far as we're concerned.

E.g. Reddit iama had this massive controversy around a Reddit facilitator being fired and everyone predicted insta failure or whatever. Lots of time passed and the product is still pretty damned successful (Bill Gates was on it within the last year). I'm sure Wikipedia has had "I'm stepping down" posts and whatnot.

Perhaps the learning is that it isn't a worthwhile way to seek meaning in your life to give away volunteer hours moderating sites unless they're your own or you're paid for it. It is a pointless place to put your self-worth because disagreements will occur and they will be enforced as the site owner desires. Your hours earn you no power.

Its bittersweet to see Stack Overflow continue its downward spiral. Given all that is happening there, I'd give it about 12 months before they start implementing a paywall there of some description.

There is a perpetual tension between those who want SE to be helping everyone, and those who want to curate a helpful resource. People involved with community moderation aspects tend to fall into the latter group.

For the last half decade or so SE has progressively abandoned this latter group, leading to a lot of pent-up frustration. Some changes SE has made are sensible (e.g. striving to be more welcoming and more inclusive), but the volunteer work of curators has only become more difficult. SE refuses to implement new tools to aid moderation, so that e.g. spam fighting is mostly done by volunteer projects.

That only sets the general scene. Since the last year or so SE has stopped engaging the community on Meta, mostly just announcing changes top-down. Tweets by third parties have larger impact on SE policy than long-standing complaints by the community. This has led to a further deterioration of the relationship. The illegal changes to the content license a month ago are a perfect example of this top-down, uncooperative approach.

Now the actual drama starts: in a closed moderator chat, there was some kind of discussion or disagreement. I'm not privy to the details. Not all of this is nice, e.g. it seems that SE is unwilling to protect trans moderators from vitriol by other mods. But to everyone's confusion, Monica Cellio was suddenly removed as a volunteer moderator. She is known as being extremely reasonable, experienced, and sincere. While she might have tried to discuss sincere questions, it is beyond belief that she would attack another moderator.

So moderators and other engaged users are deeply frustrated, see a company that no longer engages with the community, does stupid decisions, and has now fired one of the best volunteer moderators in a despicable manner. For a lot of people, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. E.g. one mod I know decided to resign because they now see themselves completely unable to achieve any positive change on the site. And if Monica isn't a good-enough mod, how can they hope to be remotely adequate?

Disclosure: I wrote the linked Meta.SE question. It is my belief that SE the company and SE the community need to cooperate for both to be successful. Yes, the community can sometimes be toxic. But the company seems to have given up completely on engaging with the community, and that does not bode well.

I think it's worth pointing out that there is also a commercial imperative involved in the tension you cite.

In fact, it is that - not "the community" - that is the ultimate decision maker here, though naturally the community being part of the USP, the commercial enterprise undermines it at it's peril.

As you disclose, you are seeing this from a particular point of view - the mods (whether or not you are one yourself).

It is worth bearing in mind that is a minority - if heavily invested - point of view.

Most users probably have little interest in the politics you describe, and the business only in so far as it affects returns.