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An Update to Our Community and an Apology

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Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#41

Post by kjaftaedi »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #36

The title is misleading, this is not an apology. As a former operator of a (much smaller) community website, I understand the motives behind SE actions. They want to avoid discussions about gender-neutral pronouns and other contentious topics completely. There are only risks and no benefits for SE business in such discussions.They actually do not want discussions, just questions and answers. Jeff Atwood once wrote a…

Curious why you would remove moderator status from Monica?

From my understanding it appears that she was demoted for merely posing relevant questions.

As I don't believe SE has even made any specific claims backing up their decision, I'm curious as to why you suggest this is the correct decision to make.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#42

Post by sah2ed »

pjc50 wrote: post #40

This is sad, but I feel it was an inevitable consequence of allowing religion-orientated stackexchanges to be created in the first place. It's practically inviting a holy war. The people running them would likely be those who care deeply about doctrine, and the chances of a headlong collision over LGBT doctrine were always high.

Exactly.

Commingling under one umbrella, religion and sexual orientation, which are essentially identity-based communities [0], will invariably lead to a headlong collision as you say.

0: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#43

Post by sah2ed »

xupybd wrote: post #13
appleiigs wrote: post #8

I don’t know about who, what, where, when or why... but the “don't ship on Friday” comment in an apology statement regarding the handling of firing someone is completely brain dead / tone deaf. In the very few official statements I’ve worked on, they are reviewed by so many people (so many that even I had to vet it). Unbelievable that “don’t ship on Friday” got through.

Looks like the mod that made that post is a developer. No offence to other developers but my personal opinion is we developers are best to leave the delicate communications to the marketing team. There is every chance she is better equipped than most but I know my expertise do not extend very far into the realm. I've not met many devs that do have expertise in those sort of PR fronts. On that note, I'd suggest this i…

> Looks like the mod that made that post is a developer. No offence to other developers but my personal opinion is we developers are best to leave the delicate communications to the marketing team

Not correct. Perhaps she used to be a developer, but the poster is currently “Stack Exchange director of community Sara Chipps”, according to TheRegister article linked to in this thread.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#44

Post by luckylion »

DanBC wrote: post #35
chii wrote: post #32

is there a summary of events that occurred? There's lots of confusing accounts and it's impossible to piece together the facts.

It's a bit confusing because a mod was removed, and a bunch of other mods resigned in support, and then it came out that she'd been removed for refusing to use people's preferred pronouns. Stack Exchange is perceived by many people to be unwelcoming. There has been persistent concern that SE is even more unwelcoming to people with protected characteristics. SE have made considerable effort to fix this. Recently they'…

> it came out that she'd been removed for refusing to use people's preferred pronouns.

That's not true. She was removed for asking whether, after the not-yet-current CoC was made official (which asks to use preferred pronouns) it would be allowed to use third person pronouns to circumvent the issue. Neither was preferred pronoun-usage a rule, nor had she disobeyed that rule (yet).

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#46

Post by unionpivo »

luckylion wrote: post #21

I'm amazed by how professional PR/Community Management/marketing people can be so tone-deaf. Especially when they don't post this by themselves, but on behalf of, and most certainly with a lot of discussion in, the company.

There is no good way to post that. (They are essentially doing nothing, but had to say something)

That is why it's usually short, neutral and has little details.

Anything else just adds more fuel to the fire.

PS: I am not saying I agree with them.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#48

Post by sam_lowry_ »

kjaftaedi wrote: post #41
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #36

The title is misleading, this is not an apology. As a former operator of a (much smaller) community website, I understand the motives behind SE actions. They want to avoid discussions about gender-neutral pronouns and other contentious topics completely. There are only risks and no benefits for SE business in such discussions.They actually do not want discussions, just questions and answers. Jeff Atwood once wrote a…

Curious why you would remove moderator status from Monica? From my understanding it appears that she was demoted for merely posing relevant questions. As I don't believe SE has even made any specific claims backing up their decision, I'm curious as to why you suggest this is the correct decision to make.

To send the message to other users and moderators that such discussions are unwelcome.

SE has to balance between the need to expand into topics like judaism.stackexchange.com and islam.stackechange.com while remaining a q&a business, not a flamebait-generator business.

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