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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

#321
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.

You know, maybe removing a whole site from the "Hot Network Questions" list is the easiest thing to do technically , if the goal is to stop certain questions from that site from showing up in that list right now ? Mods should have cooler heads than this, I think.

And then they removed "Hot Network Questions" altogether (replaced them with "Network Questions, Manually Featured by Moderators"). And then all of moderators left. Wow.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

look, I get that you're not used to being called out on being hopelessly wrong. rephrasing the statement to be an empty tautology so you can be right is a waste of both of our times and only serves to protect your ego

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

#323

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 top…

I think the issue is not just moderator vs rest of the community, but also SE company (well, its employees) vs the moderator vs the rest of the community, with all groups having different purposes and goal (and even the moderators and community have more sub-groups, around openness, quality, governance and so on). It's not just the case of mods having too much power.

And one could even add more fault lines, between SO's community and mods and the rest of the sites of SE, since the rest of the sites don't have the same issues as SO, for example regarding discrimination, inclusivness, welcoming..., but rules are made and applied by the SE company on all the sites, creating even more issues.

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

look, I get that you're not used to being called out on being hopelessly wrong. rephrasing the statement to be an empty tautology so you can be right is a waste of both of our times and only serves to protect your ego

Whoa, please don't break the site guidelines like that!

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#325
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look, I get that you're not used to being called out on being hopelessly wrong. rephrasing the statement to be an empty tautology so you can be right is a waste of both of our times and only serves to protect your ego

Whoa, please don't break the site guidelines like that! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

?

Or is it the snarky one, because I’m 100% genuine

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imposing speech codes is most definitely an issue. It goes to the core of deeply held values. It replaces tolerance with intolerance as the value to be upheld. Those imposing the CoC are getting exactly what they want - driving anyone who disagrees from the field.

Driving transphobia out of society is a good and noble goal.

Don't label anything you disagree with as a phobia.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

And the far left doesn't even realize what they're doing.

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

#328
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, please don't break the site guidelines like that! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. ? Or is it the snarky one, because I’m 100% genuine

How about Be kind?

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

#329
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a perpetual tension between those who want SE to be helping everyone, and those who want to curate a helpful resource. People involved with community moderation aspects tend to fall into the latter group. For the last half decade or so SE has progressively abandoned this latter group, leading to a lot of pent-up frustration. Some changes SE has made are sensible (e.g. striving to be more welcoming and more i…

>> There is a perpetual tension between those who want SE to be helping everyone, and those who want to curate a helpful resource. I never understood this. Why have one or the other instead of both. All questions funnel in on a "everyone" area for a particular type of question. (Junior people can moderate those to gain experience if the senior mods don't want to. This will give them experience, insight, etc.) Even th…

I've seen proposals along these lines made many times. SE (the company) apparently isn't interested in that tho.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't force or even ask someone to be a role model because than that's not being a role model. Much like telling someone to volunteer makes them "not a volunteer".
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