Spotted this on the hot question list, totally out of the loop on the latest SE drama, can somebody fill me in?
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 inclusive), but the volunteer work of curators has only become more difficult. SE refuses to implement new tools to aid moderation, so that e.g. spam fighting is mostly done by volunteer projects.
That only sets the general scene. Since the last year or so SE has stopped engaging the community on Meta, mostly just announcing changes top-down. Tweets by third parties have larger impact on SE policy than long-standing complaints by the community. This has led to a further deterioration of the relationship. The illegal changes to the content license a month ago are a perfect example of this top-down, uncooperative approach.
Now the actual drama starts: in a closed moderator chat, there was some kind of discussion or disagreement. I'm not privy to the details. Not all of this is nice, e.g. it seems that SE is unwilling to protect trans moderators from vitriol by other mods. But to everyone's confusion, Monica Cellio was suddenly removed as a volunteer moderator. She is known as being extremely reasonable, experienced, and sincere. While she might have tried to discuss sincere questions, it is beyond belief that she would attack another moderator.
So moderators and other engaged users are deeply frustrated, see a company that no longer engages with the community, does stupid decisions, and has now fired one of the best volunteer moderators in a despicable manner. For a lot of people, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. E.g. one mod I know decided to resign because they now see themselves completely unable to achieve any positive change on the site. And if Monica isn't a good-enough mod, how can they hope to be remotely adequate?
Disclosure: I wrote the linked Meta.SE question. It is my belief that SE the company and SE the community need to cooperate for both to be successful. Yes, the community can sometimes be toxic. But the company seems to have given up completely on engaging with the community, and that does not bode well.
In fact, it is that - not "the community" - that is the ultimate decision maker here, though naturally the community being part of the USP, the commercial enterprise undermines it at it's peril.
As you disclose, you are seeing this from a particular point of view - the mods (whether or not you are one yourself).
It is worth bearing in mind that is a minority - if heavily invested - point of view.
Most users probably have little interest in the politics you describe, and the business only in so far as it affects returns.
I would browse Workplace SE quite a bit (it seems to feature on the 'Hot Questions' list regularly) and Monica Cellio has always come across as decent/smart/sincere, so yeah, that's pretty bizarre.
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 the most repetitive and/or superficial homework question can be answered and not closed as duplicate. (Or at least pointed to the duplicates but not closed until the questioner has accepted a duplicate as an acceptable answer.)
When "good quality" appear or new/unique questions and answers appear they can be refined and moved over into a curated persistent section for future reference. The senior mods can take over at this point to make sure the reference Q&A are as they like.
I always hated that "closed as duplicate" reply especially if I'd already seen the supposed duplicates and didn't think they applied. This approach would allow those to be answered by new people or ignored if nobody wanted to answer.
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 the most repetitive and/or superficial homework question can be answered and not closed as duplicate. (Or at least pointed to the duplicates but not closed until the questioner has accepted a duplicate as an acceptable answer.)
When "good quality" appear or new/unique questions and answers appear they can be refined and moved over into a curated persistent section for future reference. The senior mods can take over at this point to make sure the reference Q&A are as they like.
I always hated that "closed as duplicate" reply especially if I'd already seen the supposed duplicates and didn't think they applied. This approach would allow those to be answered by new people or ignored if nobody wanted to answer.
> There is a perpetual tension between those who want SE to be helping everyone, and those who want to curate a helpful resource. ...
The thing is the "curator" people feel really strongly about what they're doing. Obviously, I am on the side of at least trying to help everyone even if that means "the rules" get bent.
Let's not blow this out of proportion. It's NOT "a firing" No one lost their livelihood.
Stack Exchange is not really any different than visiting a stranger's home. SE has its own set of rules and customs. It takes effort to sit back, listen, and understand them without questioning them. Just accepting them for what they are without any judgment.
Stack Exchange has high standards for what it considers to be an acceptable question as well as an acceptable answer. These standards are quite different than nearly all other forums that came before it. It was their site and they created the rules. It's our job to play their game.
If I don't like the rules of the game that they've laid out, then I can play a different game. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of other forums where you can ask questions and get answers with less standards and barriers to entry than Stack Exchange.
One of the reasons SE emerged as the leading Q&A site is that they imposed these strict set of rules. They provided a very structured way to both ask a question (minimally sufficient reproducible example) and to produce an answer. Another goal was to limit discussion.
Packaging all these ideas together along with points and badges lead to its tremendous success. Getting answers to programming questions before SE wasn't nearly as easy. But their gamification with explicit rules worked better than that came before it.
If the first Q&A volunteers from SE did not adhere to these rules of the game and if they were not strictly enforced, then it wouldn't exist today. It exists precisely because these rules exist and were adhered to.
As a human being who uses emotional-based reasoning, it can hurt whenever an interaction on SE is met without the expected conclusion. When someone posts a question on SE, the expectation is that it is answered. Getting a question downvoted or closed does hurt, but it's very likely that these actions are just the rules of the game playing itself out.
This really isn't different than playing Monopoly and landing on the 'Go to Jail' square. It doesn't help meeting your goal for the game and can sting in that moment. Eliminating the Go to Jail square from Monopoly fundamentally changes the game. You can imagine more 'negative' rules from Monopoly being eliminated such that the game wouldn't even resemble itself anymore. And if such a game were invented, it likely would never have been successful. If I don't like Monopoly's rules, I can play another game.
SE is successful because there are a strict set of rules that restrict the set of content that can be posted. It is these rules that have lead to its success.
This doesn't absolve SE from criticism just like it doesn't absolve Monopoly from criticism. You are free to dislike any of its set of rules. But at the end of the day, you still have to play by the rules or find a different site.
This also doesn't absolve any of the people moderating, asking or answering questions, or commenting. It's possible to break the rules or code of conduct. SE has guidelines for this as well. As humans, there is going to be some failure to maintain civilized discussion. But, enforcing a rule correctly as a moderator that someone else might perceive as negative (going to jail) is just part of the SE game.
> SE is successful because there are a strict set of rules that restrict the set of content that can be posted. It is these rules that have lead to its success.
The sites have never been even remotely consistent in their enforcement of the rules, so it is really not possible to make the claim that "strictness" is what has made stackexchange a success. Many of the things that the strict people abhor are some of the best things on the sites-- like comments, open-ended questions, answers that question the question. This is especially true in stackexchanges like "The Workplace".
It remains to be seen what really caused Monica to get ousted (not "fired") as a moderator. I expect it to be something quite ugly relating to the upcoming guidelines that most people haven't seen yet.
This is a "You maniacs; you blew it up!" moment. What just happened??
> it seems that SE is unwilling to protect trans moderators from vitriol by other mods.
Reading Monica's post made me pretty sure this was trans related. I'm sad that I was right.
> [From Monica's Post] unlike the rest of the CoC, this rule mandates specific, positive actions.
This is something I've heard many times from anti-trans activists in order to justify their purposeful, and intentional misgendering and dead-naming of trans individuals. I'm not saying that is what Monica is advocating, but my spidey-sense is definitely tingling.
> [From Monica's Post] chastising me for raising issues and saying my values were out of alignment.
Again this is something I hear from anti-trans activists. We saw similar rhetoric from homophobic individuals back in the 90s. That their religion and values dictated that gay people were bad therefore they couldn't <insert action here>.
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Without knowing more it is hard to say, but even if this isn't about trans people Monica's arguments aren't inherently right. One person's religious beliefs don't justify the disregard for others. A very extreme example would be that many KKK member's religion states that black people are inherently inferior, and we don't give that belief consideration.
If you know more, please do share, because right now it seems like one sides arguments are valid, but they can quickly fall apart depending upon the specifics.
Anti-trans and anti-CoC sentiment are certainly part of the issue at hand, but likely not by Monica. Some of the resignations may be partially motivated by hate, many of the responses definitely are. However, there are many other aspects of the firing that are problematic by themselves, regardless of the reason for the firing.
It doesn't matter what Monica believes, only how she acts and speaks. It is my understanding (based on hearsay) that at no point in this incident did she make statements that would be considered transphobic by a reasonable person. While she was uncomfortable with upcoming CoC changes, she was also asking for clarification and guidance in good faith. Definitely not in that “I'm just asking a question!” trolling style. Asking sincere questions would be the sign of a potential ally, it is illogical to shut those down. However, some of the relevant correspondence is in personal emails, so we'll never know the truth.
I'm confident that she didn't say or do anything that would violate the current or upcoming SE CoC, but that the director firing her felt that Monica's questions were evidence that she would not uphold the upcoming CoC. This is silly: if a mod feels they are unable to fulfil their position they can just resign, no need to boot them in advance. I dislike the “thoughtcrime” meme, but here it might actually fit.
There's also an aspect that I find more troubling, which is the legitimacy of CoCs. They only protect the community when violations are investigated fairly. Normally the problem is that the CoC is not enforced enough. Here, a CoC was enforced without there being a violation, and that gives ammunition to the idiots who think the sole purpose of a CoC is to silence insufficiently progressive speech.
Edit 1: the first resignation is in that explicitly lists the CoC as reason for resignation [1]. The CoC will apparently require that correct pronouns are used.
Edit 2: the new CoC will allegedly require pronouns, i.e. will not allow the avoidance of pronouns. As a person who prefers non-standard pronouns, such a requirement is counterproductive because it requires some people to act against their conscience, whereas avoiding pronouns still avoids misgendering and lets everyone save face.
[1]: https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/b...
Also “write neutrally” tends to not actually be written neutrally. “Guys” being one of the common examples, it is used neutrally but inherently has a male biases. This can be frustrating to many women, trans or cis. Invisible Women has a lot in it about this problem and knock on effects of it.
Why are you using the word transsexual? It is largely a medical term at this point referring to the someone who has undergone full SRS. As it is generally considered quite rude to talk about people’s genital configuration the LGBT community has largely moved on from this term to transgender.
The other threads show that there has never been a complaint about misgendering anyone on purpose but the new CoC lays out bunch of very difficult to characterize commandments.
The biology has to do with it that no matter what we decide how to speak in society, it doesn't inherently change the fact sex has very much biological meaning and words don't change that. That is the belief consideration we give a lot of power even though we should not.
You can change your sex but not your gender.