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Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

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Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#21

Post by klez »

dx87 wrote: post #18
Zamicol wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that just drive you nuts? Cabbages just sneak up on you like that. I've had plenty of genuinely unique questions marked as "duplicate".

Most annoying to me is when I find someone asking a question that's exactly what I'm looking for, but it's locked and says "This question is too specific and is unlikely to be useful to anyone else." Last time that happened was with gdb, and looking through the code wasn't helpful because all it said was "unless you're a gdb developer, these header files are unlikely to be useful".

FWIW that reason for closing has been removed for a long while, so new questions asking those lines should get answers (if the question itself is answerable).

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#22

Post by sosodev »

dancek wrote: post #10

For those unaware of the context, StackExchange fired a (volunteer) moderator in September causing a wave of moderator resignations. Now in January they fired two Community Managers (ie. employees) and a third CM resigned. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-commu...

I’m not sure how I feel about the ethics of volunteers massively contributing to the growth of a for-profit company.

StackExchange wouldn’t be anywhere near as big as they are without its volunteers and yet they only care about their bottom line.

Are there any non-profit alternatives?

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#23

Post by fourthark »

Buried the lede.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, we created a large task force made up of passionate community advocates from across the company to propose solutions to this core problem. The team’s mission is to improve our feedback loop and working relationship with our community. We added a member of our Community team to our leadership team and restructured the organization to invest in Product leadership to build Community-centric features. We are also forming a moderator council, which will include a group of users with diverse experience levels and backgrounds who can help guide our processes. We’re making hard choices and treating no assumptions as sacred in considering ways to evolve the community.

... We want to serve all of the millions of people who use Stack Overflow, not just those who know the most about how the site has worked in the past. To be clear, this does not mean channels like Meta will go away, but they need to grow to ensure that users are heard and responded to in a timely fashion.

We’ve completed the process of defining how our moderator council will be structured, shared an internal framework for asking coworkers tough community questions, defined the important functions that would be best served by more scalable solutions than Meta, and built outlines of our new moderator training modules. By the end of this quarter, all of these initiatives will be shared publicly with you, our users.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#24

Post by thrower123 »

tmpz22 wrote: post #9
fabian2k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company took VC money, growing in a sensible and sustainable way isn't an option. They're targeting an IPO according to the former CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky, which means they need to grow 10X in the near future. They're making around 70 million a year now, 44 million from the job platform, 16 million from ads and the rest from the private SO Teams/Enterprise software (28 large corporations are paying 1 mill…

I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?

People said the same about expertsexchange until SO did it.

If they make it suck badly enough, something else will gain momentum and replace it. Get the Jon Skeets of the world onboard and you're most of the way there.

Quora had the right idea initially, by subsidizing quality answerers, but they went too broad, and it devolved to Yahoo Answers quality.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#25

Post by dlivingston »

sosodev wrote: post #22
dancek wrote: post #10

For those unaware of the context, StackExchange fired a (volunteer) moderator in September causing a wave of moderator resignations. Now in January they fired two Community Managers (ie. employees) and a third CM resigned. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-commu...

I’m not sure how I feel about the ethics of volunteers massively contributing to the growth of a for-profit company. StackExchange wouldn’t be anywhere near as big as they are without its volunteers and yet they only care about their bottom line. Are there any non-profit alternatives?

Tesla owners once famously banded together to help Tesla through 'delivery hell' [0]. They did this for the love of the company and the company mission, despite not being paid and their actions only benefiting Tesla's bottom line.

Is it not fair to say that volunteers have autonomy, and that we should respect that autonomy? In other words, if they don't feel they are being exploited, then why should it bother us? Why should we create an issue out of X when those who are actually involved don't see X as an issue?

[0]: https://www.autonews.com/article/20181008/RETAIL01/181009775...

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#26

Post by m463 »

iamaelephant wrote: post #4

The first half of the article contains a huge amount of gloating about the size and reach of Stack Overflow. Then the second half of the article has gems like > in order to continue to fuel our growth Why does it have to be this way? SO is an immensely useful resource and a sustainable business. Why does every company need to continue to grow until they lose the essence of what made them good? Why can't companies be…

I've often thought "What happened to companies that just make and sell things"

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#27

Post by manicdee »

dlivingston wrote: post #25
sosodev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ethics of volunteers massively contributing to the growth of a for-profit company. StackExchange wouldn’t be anywhere near as big as they are without its volunteers and yet they only care about their bottom line. Are there any non-profit alternatives?

Tesla owners once famously banded together to help Tesla through 'delivery hell' [0]. They did this for the love of the company and the company mission, despite not being paid and their actions only benefiting Tesla's bottom line. Is it not fair to say that volunteers have autonomy, and that we should respect that autonomy? In other words, if they don't feel they are being exploited, then why should it bother us? Why…

In some cases (helping a favoured enterprise grow) the inevitable outcome of the effort is the desired result (Tesla increases revenue, remains solvent).

In other cases the inevitable outcome is not desired (cddb sold to private interest, required subscription for continued use, no recognition of contributions by volunteers).

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#29

Post by crispinb »

What a pitiful congeries of overweening, delusional, self-important absurdities. I often wonder if I can come to loathe the tech sector any more than I do, and it consistently meets my challenge.

A desire to acquire shitloads of overconsumption rights is broadly functional within the mythological system of capitalism, but it is not a grand mission, however blogged up.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#30

Post by dang »

fourthark wrote: post #23

Buried the lede. In the fourth quarter of 2019, we created a large task force made up of passionate community advocates from across the company to propose solutions to this core problem. The team’s mission is to improve our feedback loop and working relationship with our community. We added a member of our Community team to our leadership team and restructured the organization to invest in Product leadership to build…

We're generally happy to replace bland corporate press release titles, which always bury the lede, with something that gets to the point. But who knows what the point is? "Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council", maybe? Let's try that. It can't be worse than "Scripting the Future of Stack Overflow".

Suggestions for better titles are welcome. Try to use representative language from the article if you can find it.

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