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A large number of Stack Exchange mods resigning over new policies

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

#311

Post by falsedan »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #300
falsedan wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SE does not profit from its community websites I don’t see how it’s my problem that their business model isn’t profitable. The board & C-suite still draw a salary, and the company value is built on unpaid labour.

And now we are contributing for free to Y Combinator! (True - there's not much direct revenue from this comment I'm typing here, but this is Hacker News, the place where the imorotantninfirmationnos and YC is in the center of it, don't you see how cool they are?)

uh HN is not the 'business' of YC. get back to work

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

#312

Post by charwalker »

damnyou wrote: post #310
lonelappde wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's StackEexchange. Pronouns don't matter. I've never seen a reason for this person pronouns to be used. No one's generalist are topic of conversation, and it's not a a gossip forum, so there is no reason to use third person pronouns to refer to users at all! If this is true, it's damning: > Now if I avoid pronouns altogether by sticking to proper names or disengaging from the individual, that's being considered an…

Moderators, as community leaders, need to go out of their way to signal inclusion for trans people. If they are unwilling to they should resign or be fired.

I think that connects with events like Princess Diana touching a patient with AIDS, Mr. Rogers inviting a black man to share the pool with him, etc. It's a top down change the role models (in this case moderators) can implement to improve equality and show humans as humans which in my experience goes a long way toward shutting down any *phobic type mentalities. It's never an easy or quick change but it's important.

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

#313

Post by Summoner »

lonelappde wrote: post #271
Jun8 wrote: post #56

My understanding is that the train of events that resulted in mod Monica Cellio’s demodding from SE started with a gender-related complaint tweet ( https://medium.com/@cellio/dear-stack-overflow-we-need-to-ta... ). Companies are now very sensitive to this pattern, esp. true for SE due to the ongoing changes there.

That Twitter kerfuffle was in 2018. Has there been ongoing train of events since then? Monica mentions "this rule mandates specific, positive actions." but not what the rule is, which I find disquieting. What is the rule, and if it's so bad, and also public (it's a new rule everyone has to know, right?), why is being kept secret?

There's been a steady breakdown of trust and goodwill between SO Employee's and moderators/power users over the last year. Part of why this blew up so fast is probably that there's no good will left between the two groups anymore; and people immediately assumed the worst and reacted in anger.

This is a decent (long) summary of what's been happening.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/331513/lets-take-a-...

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

#314

Post by oliwarner »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #133

I am legitimately curious—and concerned—about the relicensing of answers. It really seems as though they shouldn't be able to do that. And if they can , can they also change the license to "all rights reserved by SE"?

Like GPL, CCBYSA allows you —the licensee— to pick a future version of the same license. That is, if you receive a copy of work under v3, you can make it available under v4, no questions asked.

That's all SE has done here. Exercised a clause in the license. If you don't like that, don't submit content under licenses that allow it.

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

#315

Post by Wowfunhappy »

oliwarner wrote: post #314
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #133

I am legitimately curious—and concerned—about the relicensing of answers. It really seems as though they shouldn't be able to do that. And if they can , can they also change the license to "all rights reserved by SE"?

Like GPL, CCBYSA allows you —the licensee— to pick a future version of the same license. That is, if you receive a copy of work under v3, you can make it available under v4, no questions asked. That's all SE has done here. Exercised a clause in the license. If you don't like that, don't submit content under licenses that allow it.

I don't think that's true, see: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/4.0_upgrade_guidelines

> Original contributions remain under prior version unless express permission to upgrade is obtained.

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

#317

Post by doordonot »

wendyshu wrote: post #238
csande17 wrote: post #211

This resignation notice from a moderator on the Christianity Stack Exchange appears to provide the most detail about what's going on: https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/b...

Aha, the Jordan Peterson issue.

Yes, it's exactly the same issue; FORCING specific speech which is quite different than BANNING some speech (hate speech for instance).

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

#318

Post by oliwarner »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #315
oliwarner wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like GPL, CCBYSA allows you —the licensee— to pick a future version of the same license. That is, if you receive a copy of work under v3, you can make it available under v4, no questions asked. That's all SE has done here. Exercised a clause in the license. If you don't like that, don't submit content under licenses that allow it.

I don't think that's true, see: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/4.0_upgrade_guidelines > Original contributions remain under prior version unless express permission to upgrade is obtained.

Edit: I'm misreading the text[0]. Section 4, clause b:

> You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License ...

That only covers adaptations. Ignore me.

[0]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

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

#319

Post by johannes1234321 »

falsedan wrote: post #311
johannes1234321 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now we are contributing for free to Y Combinator! (True - there's not much direct revenue from this comment I'm typing here, but this is Hacker News, the place where the imorotantninfirmationnos and YC is in the center of it, don't you see how cool they are?)

uh HN is not the 'business' of YC. get back to work

It certainly is not the core business. But it is part of the business.

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

#320

Post by dragonwriter »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #304
lilyball wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you very conspicuously avoid using pronouns for someone, it’s pretty obvious what’s going on and that you’re deliberately avoiding gendering someone correctly. It’s not as bad as using the wrong pronouns, but it’s still very disrespectful.

I think we need to see this policy. Particularly on a Q&A site, avoiding gendered pronouns altogether strikes me as the _most_ practical policy. It's what I (try my best to remember to) do on Hacker News. I don't know what pronouns the GP prefers, and I can't very well ask them right now, so if I have to refer to them, I'll either say "they" or "the GP".

The specific complaint made by one of the mods is that avoiding pronouns for or disengaging from a specific person to avoid using is viewed as improper under the new CoC. That's not the same as avoiding pronouns generally, it's differential treatment of an individual for not conforming to your preferred gender expression.
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