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Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

dearstackexchange.com

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Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#61

Post by zonidjan »

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…

> Maybe don't volunteer there. StackExchange isn't even a charity, it's a private for-profit company.

This. Stop giving your time for the profit of people who don't care about you. You want to help the community? You want to be respected? Great! Find some like-minded people, start a new site, maybe even make it a non-profit or at least democratic. But above all, stop making rich people richer off your labor

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#62

Post by sesuximo »

onetime0001 wrote: post #32

I don’t understand why gender/pronouns is even being discussed. Someone’s personal feelings don’t really have any place in a question/answers site. It’s fine to respect a persons feelings and such when talking to a person but when answering a question or asking the question. The gender/pronoun is irrelevant.

Regardless of what SE should do with pronouns, a mod shouldn't get fired for clarifying

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#63

Post by morpheuskafka »

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…

Maybe they should and maybe they will move on--but that will be to the serious loss of both StackExchange and StackExchange Inc.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#64

Post by didibus »

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…

What is being fired in this context? Are these moderators employed by SE? Or do we mean she was banned as a moderator?

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#65

Post by garmaine »

sqldba wrote: post #28

Shouldn’t the CTO fire the person who was directly responsible for firing Monica? Why isn’t that part of it?

Because if you read the apology, he's actually backing her up. The "apology" is a lot better written than the terrible thing that was posted a day or so ago, but it is STILL essentially "We're sorry that you are upset."

It's not an apology. AFAICT the facts of the matter haven't changed here at all.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#66

Post by zonidjan »

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 one side of the story. I'm quite certain there's another side to it, as with anything. (In fact, I'm quite certain there's many more sides to it, with all the people who have jumped on.)

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#67

Post by damnyou »

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?

If a community destroys itself over showing basic respect to a marginalized group, it probably shouldn't have existed at all.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#68

Post by schappim »

thanatropism wrote: post #31
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.

“Keeping your identity small” has certainly gone out of fashion.

PG Essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#69

Post by labster »

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…

That's what a lot of them are doing, something else with their valuable time. They're just letting Stack Overflow know why on their way out.

The problem is perhaps the extent to which people invest time and effort into other people's private corporations. The Wikimedia Foundation, for all of its flaws, actually does try to listen to its users and build a public good. But when you play around in a corporate sandbox where you are just a commodity to be sold to advertisers, you don't have any rights.

I think it's a flaw in human nature really -- we expect to be recognized and given status for building community and providing value. But when you do that for a for-profit company like Stack Overflow or my own experience with TV Tropes wiki, you may find out one day that your value is only in your imagination, and you can be shut out of your community. This is not how it happened in tribal societies, or in small cities, but the information age has enabled even more detachment from empathy than the industrial age did. Now you can take away someone's community from them on their holy day from a chair a thousand miles away.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#70

Post by ALittleLight »

sytelus wrote: post #34
ldigas wrote: post #22

While, in the beginning, a very active user, I've long now given up on that network. I can't remember when was the last time I asked a question without being forced to defend it for a period of at least a few hours, why it shouldn't be closed as a duplicate, offtopic or ... It used to be an excellent network, but nowadays it's just script-kiddies-playing-admins/editors playground. It is no longer a productive technic…

I don't understand this cry against moderators. These people are volunteerily giving their time to keep quality bar high without any payment. If these people weren't there then SO will be full of duplicates, off-topic and opinion based Q&A just like Quora. A general tendency I have seen is just to ask (often poorly stated) questions without doing simple search to see if it is already answered. Someone needs to respec…

I don't understand why people would volunteer to do work for a for profit entity. Especially one that will, apparently, fire you on a whim.
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