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Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

dearstackexchange.com

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Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#101

Post by hisnameismanuel »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #75
hisnameismanuel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your intention is positive, and I enjoyed the nuance of your post. As a member of the 'entire LGBTQ+ community', we're not monolithic, or even close to it. SO is the first mainstream website (at least in the circles I run in) that has even attempted this kind of thing. I'm willing to cut them a little slack as they navigate a topic which has been incredibly fraught.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that rolling back to the old CoC would make every LGBTQ+ person feel unvalued. Everyone, regardless of community membership or not (you can probably tell that I'm struggling for appropriate language here), has differing levels of sensitivity to any issue. Some people are glad when others make an effort to do the right thing, others won't be pleased unless their individual needs are met 1…

Sure, fair enough. Sorry to make you have to contort so much to provide a correct-seeming response.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#102

Post by 1shooner »

anon12345690 wrote: post #81
fenwick67 wrote: post #7

I would love a nice couple paragraphs that said "here's what happened", otherwise taking any side in this is just taking shots in the dark, I'm basically reading "certain events happened with a certain individual and that's not okay"

apparently anything on the site like a code example that talks about people like Bob and Alice cant use He and She - because it might offend the 0.01% of people who think that everyone needs to state their pronouns. apparently even saying They isnt enough. its what happens when you give in to the tiny minority that will always complain about something

When would a mod use pronouns anyway? It seems like an edge case of an edge case, in terms of gross count of incidents.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#103

Post by whatshisface »

peterwwillis wrote: post #57

Who else remembers the world before SE, when people just did exactly the same thing as SE, but on mailing lists, and we found answers via web search, and we didn't need all this moderation, categorization, voting, etc?

Stack exchange works a lot better for me than mailing lists did. Its greatest contribution is the near elimination of duplicate questions.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#104

Post by Buge »

fenwick67 wrote: post #53
xibalba wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As asked: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

That is helpful, but still far from a couple paragraphs. Nobody owes me anything on this, but I am not taking the energy to parse through this and then SO's responses and then reread TFA to get an actual factual sequence of events here, which ultimately ended in someone losing their moderation status on a Q&A website. This probably comes off as really callous but honestly, Watergate or the Bay of Pigs or (more close…

On a mod and employee chat group, they were discussing a new future code of conduct. One element said "You must use people's preferred pronouns if given". A mod (volunteer) (Monica) said "Is it OK if I never use any 3rd person singular pronouns?" She got no answer for a while and was then fired as a mod on Friday at 6pm less than 1 hour before before Shabbat and Rosh Hashana (she is Jewish and a mod of the Jewish Stack Exchange). Stack exchange published a note saying she broke the code of conduct. 73 other mods then either resigned or went inactive.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#105

Post by vunie »

fortran77 wrote: post #21
xibalba wrote: post #5

I suspect that the average user of SE will not care one bit about this whole drama. I do find it frustrating, puzzling, and sad how SE appears to have treated Monica Cellio. She provides an excellent summary (from her perspective) here: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

I suspect you're right. I stopped participating in SE years ago not for "political" reasons like this, but because it seemed to be dominated by power-happy mods and people whose main goal was to collect points and not to help others. This kerfuffle, and I only got a little summary of it, makes my eyes glaze over. I'm certainly not against treating people with respect, but I'm not willing to stick my neck out for some…

I'm in the same place as you are, but in relation to wikipedia rather than stack overflow.

I remember adding a [citation needed] tag to an inaccurate claim, and then discovering that my change has been reverted. The reason the moderator gave was that [citation needed] didn't look good on the page. How do you argue with people like that. I'm not going to spend hours reading on wikipedia's policies just make it better.

SE is bad, but at least I get something out of it. That and the fact that SE's meta game is easier to play than wikipedia's. You just need to make sure you word your question in a way that it can only be answered definitively (no opinion), and preempt duplicate-heads with a list of similar questions and why they don't answer your question.

I've yet to have a question of mine closed as a duplicate, though mods have treated me passive-aggressively for taking away their sticks :^)

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#106

Post by gizmo686 »

awinter-py wrote: post #94

the free & freemium web have an arbitration gap and it will get worse before it gets better stackexchange works because questions can get answered with relatively little money changing hands (AWS & advertisers mainly), but that means employees can't offer due process on disputes without erasing the company's margins. these companies can't offer centralized due process to everyone because it would open them to being D…

If only SE could somehow get a bunch of people to work as moderators without paying them. Except that is exactly what happened; but recently SE managed to piss off a large number of its volunteer moderators, who have (among other things) written the linked complaint.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#107

Post by whatshisface »

edoceo wrote: post #85
olingern wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Without these people the site could fall into a mess of bad answers or a self promotion answer driven platform like Quora.

Sounds like they are so important they should have been compensated. I mean, if they were so critical to the success.

Some of them rise up to community managers and are then compensated. The person who recently got steamrolled was getting very close to that position.

I think some sympathy is due for the working-for-free workers on stack exchange, at least from us, Hacker News' unpaid content authors.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#108

Post by godzillabrennus »

edoceo wrote: post #85
olingern wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Without these people the site could fall into a mess of bad answers or a self promotion answer driven platform like Quora.

Sounds like they are so important they should have been compensated. I mean, if they were so critical to the success.

They contribute to the community that is owned by the company that then profits from the community.

In return they get points.

Points allow for showing how important they are to the community.

Points that have zero cash value.

Disgruntled volunteers are not going to be easy to replace.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#109

Post by godzillabrennus »

p1esk wrote: post #92
mister_hn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've got compensated in visibility. I don't know any moderator with less than 20k points to date. And the more points you have, the upper you stay in the ranks and you can always embed their badge in your website. So, yes, they don't earn money, but they receive visibility

What does this visibility mean? Can it be converted to cash somehow?

Maybe create an ICO for these points?

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#110

Post by milquetoastaf »

olingern wrote: post #73
brian-armstrong wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a shockingly unempathetic way to view the situation. These people have poured lots of their time into making SO work, and they deserve to be heard. There's no way anybody could build this service without volunteers. These things don't just spring up from the ground on their own, and as someone who uses the SE properties for personal and professional reasons, I hope these moderators can find some sort of satis…

I agree. Without these people the site could fall into a mess of bad answers or a self promotion answer driven platform like Quora.

Oops engineers might have to work again!
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