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Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

dearstackexchange.com

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Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#71

Post by anon12345690 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #59
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 viol…

no its not basic respect, stop making it so dramatic

theyre not talking about any specific person are they? no, they want to change all the examples to be gender neutral. why? when people hear Bob they think He. they dont ask "well what if bob is trans?"

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#72

Post by anon12345690 »

damnyou wrote: post #67
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.

basic respect? you realize these are code examples that sometimes talk about people and use normal pronouns that everyone understands just fine?

if theres a example with bob and alice and we say he and she, whats the problem? do we really need to be extra careful in case Bob in the example is trans?

Like thats really a problem? this doesnt have anything to do with basic respect. its just people who want to control everyone else

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#73

Post by olingern »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #51
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 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.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#74

Post by anon12345690 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #49
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.

Right? Like, just accept people and call them what they ask to be called? Why make a big deal out of someone who prefers they or xe or he or she or whatever?

literally not the problem here

more like people cant use Bob in an example and say He because "what if Bob is trans" comes up. cant even say "they" to be neutral because apparently "singular they" is offensive.

this is dumb. its not a real problem for the site. the rest of us dont need to deal with all that because some people have nothing better to do.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#75

Post by parsimo2010 »

hisnameismanuel wrote: post #44
parsimo2010 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 100%, and some are angry that society is moving in one direction and they can't be openly bigoted anymore.

However, if you're looking at it from a policy perspective, rolling back the CoC or not can be viewed as a signal, which every person is free to interpret as they wish. This is probably going to be dependent on whether you like the changes or not (some LGBTQ+ people have spoken up and said that the changes to the CoC are actually harmful). My interpretation: rolling back the CoC signals that SO wants to go back to a point when the mods were happier, work things out with the mods from there (there are several other complaints the mods have), and that the LGBTQ+ issues take a backseat. Not rolling things back signals that SO wants the LGBTQ+ community to feel valued and included, but tells the mods that their complaints won't be dealt with the way that they want. I don't think it's possible for SO to send the message that everyone is valued equally- even if they say it their actions won't reflect it.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#76

Post by MrStonedOne »

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…

Just because quit is an option doesn't mean some can't or shouldn't choose to try and make a final ditch effort to save something they care about.

Sure, to somebody who doesn't care, its easy judge the fact that they care, telling them to just stop caring. Unfortunately people don't work that way and if you ask somebody who has volunteered at a food shelter or drop in center for 5 years if they would walk away the moment they stopped liking the direction it was going, its not hard to see why some would have a hard time saying yes

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#77

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#78

Post by roenxi »

Pfhreak wrote: post #59
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 viol…

> All they are asking for is the same basic level of respect and politeness that anyone else gets.

Well no, that is the entire reason the situation isn't an open-and-shut-nothing-to-see-here non-controversy.

The other 97-99% of people go through life without ever particularly asserting that a specific personal pronoun needs to be used for them. They'll get antsy if someone is trying to insult them, but it looks a lot like the insult matters more than the pronoun. That 99-97% of people don't really control their public identity; have you ever seen someone trying to shake a nickname they don't particularly like? An identity is in the hands of the community. Asserting control is actually highly unusual, transexual or otherwise, and goes beyond the bounds of routine politeness.

The issue is that there is an activist minority (who may or may not be part of the trans community) who want to force people to talk in a certain way. That is not basic politeness and respect. It is complicated and context specific - especially once people start getting sacked and excluded over it.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#79

Post by parsimo2010 »

decebalus1 wrote: post #60
parsimo2010 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'?

Mods are volunteers, but most mods on SO take their responsibilities very seriously. The terminology that has been used during the last few days has been "firing" rather than "removal of moderation privileges," so I stuck with that.

Monica mentioned in her post that she was the second choice candidate for a community manager position, which is an actual job at SO, but I'm not clear on whether she was actually offered a job and if she accepted. Either way, this indicates she was a fairly active mod if she was being considered for a job.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#80

Post by jurassic »

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…

I've been trying to sort out all these recent posts today and I think your summary is a pretty good one.

At the risk of being downvoted, as a cisgender same-sex attracted member of the "LGBTQ+ community", I suspect only a relatively small number of outspoken transgender activists would have a problem with revisiting this policy change with the aim of restoring goodwill in the community. We are so often lumped together by broader society as LGBTQ+ (and variations) that many people outside the world of gender and sexual minorities don't realize how much conflict there is between the LGB people and the T people.

It seems ludicrous to me that anybody should care about the pronouns of anonymous question-askers on the internet. But then again I also don't see much sense in performing tons of free moderation labor for StackExchange.

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