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Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

dearstackexchange.com

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Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#51

Post by brian-armstrong »

dangus wrote: post #26

I'm totally out of the loop about what this drama is about, and I'll stay that way. These are unpaid community moderators. They are essentially volunteers doing this work because they want to. So let's ponder to ourselves and relate this to our own lives, what kind of relationship do we have with the organizations and people we do volunteer work with? If you're at a point where you're so dissatisfied that you're writ…

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 satisfactory resolution.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#52

Post by sesuximo »

ben174 wrote: post #15

It's incredible that pronouns can bring down an entire community. Pick you battles please, we're losing good things because of this silly conflict.

IMO the real issue here is not pronouns per se but rather it is SO's behavior in response (firing, ghosting, inconsistency).

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#53

Post by fenwick67 »

xibalba wrote: post #17
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"

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 to home) Stallman's resignation can be explained in a couple of sentences.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#54

Post by yezr »

dangus wrote: post #26

I'm totally out of the loop about what this drama is about, and I'll stay that way. These are unpaid community moderators. They are essentially volunteers doing this work because they want to. So let's ponder to ourselves and relate this to our own lives, what kind of relationship do we have with the organizations and people we do volunteer work with? If you're at a point where you're so dissatisfied that you're writ…

I think you should invest the time to read what happened, the moderator the letter was written to support has her detailed write-up here [0].

[0] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias...

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#55

Post by xvector »

dangus wrote: post #26

I'm totally out of the loop about what this drama is about, and I'll stay that way. These are unpaid community moderators. They are essentially volunteers doing this work because they want to. So let's ponder to ourselves and relate this to our own lives, what kind of relationship do we have with the organizations and people we do volunteer work with? If you're at a point where you're so dissatisfied that you're writ…

> going as far as buying a domain and setting up a website to publicize how upset you are, just to complain to a place that you volunteer at, you know, maybe it's time to just let it go.

This is a terribly shortsighted interpretation. Stack Exchange is a community like any other. Volunteers tend to care about the communities they take part in.

It is entirely reasonable to complain if you volunteer in a community and see the organizers of the community take action that cause it to deteriorate.

Telling people that participate in a community to shut up and go elsewhere solves no problems. It doesn’t improve the community. It doesn’t even necessarily help other communities.

Honestly? Your comment is so devoid of empathy that I am not sure if you are intentionally trolling or not.

> The users don't actually implicitly value what the moderators do.

You have no proof for this statement, just like most of your other statements.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#56

Post by sysbin »

ben174 wrote: post #15

It's incredible that pronouns can bring down an entire community. Pick you battles please, we're losing good things because of this silly conflict.

The other side can view it similar to past bigotry in history. It's unfortunate when people in society don't blend in for the correct pronouns to be used automatically and even more distasteful when other people dismiss the effort of an unfortunate person in trying to liv life without being reminded by others showing no care in the world for the person. In any case I doubt stack exchange will be hurt by this conflict.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#58

Post by ALittleLight »

moneywoes wrote: post #25
xibalba wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is there a TLDR of what happened anywhere?

Seems like there was a disagreement regarding the use of gender pronouns that resulted in 73 moderators getting "fired" or leaving.

The author of that summary mentioned one thing I found especially egregious, which is a policy that stated avoiding using pronouns was out of alignment. If I understand correctly, when she asked how they would know if she was avoiding pronouns or just naturally not writing them, she was fired. I may have this wrong as I just skimmed the summary. Also it seems she had multiple disagreements on this front before.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#59

Post by Pfhreak »

anon12345690 wrote: post #48

yea these pronouns affect like 0.01% of people but go ahead and worry about them instead of everyone else and youll ruin every community when are people gonna figure out that you cant make everyone happy and the people who whine about pronouns wont ever stop nice downvotes lol, cant handle the truth?

Pronouns affect most people. Most people use them. If you are talking about trans people, it's estimated to be about 1-3% of people. That's roughly one in thirty to one in a hundred people.

That puts it at about the roughly same numbers as the number of redheads. It's uncommon, sure, but it's not totally minuscule.

Trans folks are also one of the most likely (if not the most likely) minorities to suffer physical violence just for who they are. All they are asking for is the same basic level of respect and politeness that anyone else gets.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#60

Post by decebalus1 »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #23
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"

If you're not aware of the drama, then it really isn't meant for you. The following threads have some background (and dang has linked a few more threads leading up to these): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21175225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176712 The tl;dr (but still pretty long) is that Stack Overflow instituted a new Code of Conduct that required the use of a person's [preferred] pronouns. This…

> fired with basically no due process

> mods will be getting their jobs back

Are mods paid for their work? Is it a formal 'job'?

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