A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies • Hacker News Board

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#41

Post by rusk » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:02 PM UTC

MrStonedOne wrote: post #29

This is natural selection at work. Stack Exchange has become a frustrating site to use. "Closed as duplicate: different and unrelated question" reopen further explaining the question and how its not related "Closed as duplicate: the first question that was immediately closed with no replies" OR! Google around, find SE link on issue, everybody is arguing about why the user wants to do it that why, convinces them to do…

Ah yes, the good old "X/Y Problem" [0]

Doesn't matter if Y is non-negotiable, or if I've purposely constrained Y, to get a specific answer for a specific technology.

How infuriating for a "Questions and Answers" site, to be told when you're asking a question, that the question you're asking is wrong, and that "you should instead have asked ..."

I swear to god, the SO mods are the dumbest, most priggish, humourless beaureucrats in existence.

[0] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-x...

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#42

Post by _Codemonkeyism » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:03 PM UTC

hos234 wrote: post #32

scarejunba wrote: post #11

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…

Misguided yet understandable conclusion. People enjoy doing things for others. It's a deep Need people have. If mass violence and wars, natural disasters of all kinds through the ages, have not been able to make us more selfish and wipe out that need, internet drama is not going to either. The process is messy sure, and if you are experiencing it for the first time it can be confusing, repulsive and misleading. It's…

People enjoy power over other people. The benefit of closing questions or moderation on Stack Overflow is questionable.

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#43

Post by MrStonedOne » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:03 PM UTC

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #37

MrStonedOne wrote: post #29

This is natural selection at work. Stack Exchange has become a frustrating site to use. "Closed as duplicate: different and unrelated question" reopen further explaining the question and how its not related "Closed as duplicate: the first question that was immediately closed with no replies" OR! Google around, find SE link on issue, everybody is arguing about why the user wants to do it that why, convinces them to do…

What you are describing is human nature. The same things happen on Quora and other Q&A sites. As long as human nature doesn't change, the same patterns will emerge.

As long as there isn't a push to fix it and prevent it and stop it, and coach around it, the issue doesn't get solved.

That sounds like defeatist attitude.

Stack Exchange could add a rule forbidding asking why or adding answers that have caveats the question asker already said in op were unacceptable and deal with part of the issue

They could also add a system to review, rate, and appeal moderator actions, and penalize people who's moderator actions aren't proper.

They could also add a regular segment to their blog or meta that is just about showcasing improper moderator actions in the light of this is why they thought that was the proper action, this is what they missed, this is how we can avoid that kind of mistake in the future.

But all of this really has to be built in from the ground up, as no existing mod community with go along with that being added after the fact.

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#44

Post by caymanjim » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:05 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #12

There is no detail of the actual argument, just loads of people claiming to be in the know and indicating toxic behaviour and dramatic battles behind the scenes. There's a lot of flouncing resignations and "we need to talk" style essays also revealing little of substance. Considering the passion involved some people have clearly been hurt, but perhaps that's due to the amount of time they have invested in somebody el…

I was going to write essentially this. Obvious there was a disagreement, obviously there are at least two sides to the story, but after reading a number of meta posts (and responses to the meta posts), including from the person whose firing apparently started it all, I haven't seen a single statement about what the actual issue was. I don't see any value in publicly complaining about treatment without providing details about what actually occurred.

All I see is a handful of people saying "I liked that person and I don't think they should have been fired". I'm not sure what the larger community is supposed to do with this information.

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#45

Post by sireat » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:09 PM UTC

What I am curious why haven't we seen a quality mashup of a SE site? Some sort of interesting curation/filters etc.

Even the new CC-share-alike allows commercial mixins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ .

So being that SE started with SO and thus heavy programming emphasis there should be a plethora of interesting mashups.

Instead the only SE content derived sites have been banal copies.

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#46

Post by LeoNatan25 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:16 PM UTC

MrStonedOne wrote: post #43

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is human nature. The same things happen on Quora and other Q&A sites. As long as human nature doesn't change, the same patterns will emerge.

As long as there isn't a push to fix it and prevent it and stop it, and coach around it, the issue doesn't get solved. That sounds like defeatist attitude. Stack Exchange could add a rule forbidding asking why or adding answers that have caveats the question asker already said in op were unacceptable and deal with part of the issue They could also add a system to review, rate, and appeal moderator actions, and penali…

> Stack Exchange could add a rule forbidding asking why or adding answers that have caveats the question asker already said in op were unacceptable and deal with part of the issue

Any such answer I see, I flag as not an answer to the question, and those answers are often converted to comments or deleted. It seems you are not really familiar with all the tools in your disposal on SO.

> They could also add a system to review, rate, and appeal moderator actions, and penalize people who's moderator actions aren't proper. These tools already exists, sans the penalizing. The whole idea is not to penalize anyone. Just as users are not penalized for asking bad questions, likewise users are not penalized for potentially bad votes.

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#47

Post by aedron » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:17 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #33

perlgeek wrote: post #22

Do Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky still a say in how SE is run? If yes, now would be the perfect time to step in and moderate the discussion.

In the linked post Jeff Atwood is in the comments moaning about the title.

I believe it was also Jeff Atwood who, for the longest time, could not fathom why people did not like being forced to use OpenID to log into Stack Overflow. Like, he could literally not fathom it and agonized in blog posts over his own inability to understand people (he was quite honest about it). Even though they caved on this point, to this day Stack Overflow actively fights new users trying to get in and participate on the platform (I have long since given up).

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#48

Post by thrownaway954 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:18 PM UTC

In order for a community to succeed, there must be a continual rotation of the people in power so that no one can be corrupted by it. Moderators to me are the same as a dictatorship. There shouldn't be any moderators on SE, the community should be voting on what is valid question and upvoting the best answers as it has always done. There is no need for a single person to police each community. If something is off topic then the community can vote on removing or moving the topic or answer.

The issue with SE is the fact that they have allowed moderators to have too much power and too control over the communities. In changing their policies it has caused a removal of the moderators so that communities are force to come together to survive then I feel that this was a good step for SE as a whole. Though there will be some hard times at first I think that SE will become the site that it founders actually envisioned.

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#49

Post by LeoNatan25 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:18 PM UTC

Avamander wrote: post #40

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Questions are rarely deleted by moderators. The community, through voting, is very often the one to delete through voting directly, or through severe downvoting, in which case a bot removes bad questions. And if you have higher score, you can still see these deleted questions and answers.

Moderators are part of the community that can vote and high-ranked people that vote have access to mod tools - they're basically moderators - just without the diamond. I can see quite a lot, not everything though, and I don't want to grind reputation asking inane questions to get access to more, to keep my detailed questions from being closed without explanation and then deleted. These kafkaesque trials are ridiculou…

> Moderators are part of the community that can vote and high-ranked people that vote have access to mod tools - they're basically moderators - just without the diamond.

Yes, I know, which puts the entire outcry here (from likely low-score users) in a very comical light. "Ban mods"—what they really are asking for is "ban high-score users who do not like my low-quality questions".

Re: A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

#50

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 12:19 PM UTC

rusk wrote: post #41

MrStonedOne wrote: post #29

This is natural selection at work. Stack Exchange has become a frustrating site to use. "Closed as duplicate: different and unrelated question" reopen further explaining the question and how its not related "Closed as duplicate: the first question that was immediately closed with no replies" OR! Google around, find SE link on issue, everybody is arguing about why the user wants to do it that why, convinces them to do…

Ah yes, the good old "X/Y Problem" [0] Doesn't matter if Y is non-negotiable, or if I've purposely constrained Y, to get a specific answer for a specific technology. How infuriating for a "Questions and Answers" site, to be told when you're asking a question, that the question you're asking is wrong, and that "you should instead have asked ..." I swear to god, the SO mods are the dumbest, most priggish, humourless be…

About 90% of the time it is an XY problem, though. A couple clarifying questions and it turns out the OP really needed something much simpler.

For example, people who insist they can’t use a Laravel package because of “performance”, but it turns out they just don’t know how the composer autoloader works.