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Comment by mellosouls | Hacker News Reader

There is no detail of the actual argument, just loads of people claiming to be in the know and indicating toxic behaviour and dramatic battles behind the scenes.

There's a lot of flouncing resignations and "we need to talk" style essays also revealing little of substance.

Considering the passion involved some people have clearly been hurt, but perhaps that's due to the amount of time they have invested in somebody else's commercial enterprise ("our community") while believing it's something more.

Perhaps what they are trying to say is the "something more" (presumably the voluntary contributions) is being undermined by paid staff. It's not clear.

At the moment it all reads a bit like a tin pot Game of Thrones though.

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I was going to write essentially this. Obvious there was a disagreement, obviously there are at least two sides to the story, but after reading a number of meta posts (and responses to the meta posts), including from the person whose firing apparently started it all, I haven't seen a single statement about what the actual issue was. I don't see any value in publicly complaining about treatment without providing details about what actually occurred.

All I see is a handful of people saying "I liked that person and I don't think they should have been fired". I'm not sure what the larger community is supposed to do with this information.

> There's a lot of flouncing resignations and "we need to talk" style essays also revealing little of substance.

I feel similarly, I've read all of Monica Cellio's posts and still have no real idea what is going on. Lot's of talk of DMs and messages and emails, but nothing concrete posted, just he said / she said, all while alleging personal innocence and purity.

If there is some concrete evidence and examples, put up or shut up. This is the internet, your word isn't worth much.

Well, they were internally discussing a proposed Code of Conduct. I imagine mods are bound by an NDA, and management are choosing not to share.

Ah. Very frustrating to read complaints that omit key info. Would have been nice if they explained that they're under an NDA.

I agree it should have been clarified, but the initial intended audience was meta users who would be familiar. Elected moderators need to accept the https://stackoverflow.com/legal/moderator-agreement agreement before they're giving their privileges, and they have to agree not to disclose any information that they get obtain using their mod access, such as the private discussions between moderators and staff here.

It might not be legally binding, but Stack Overflow could plausibly delete their account as punishment.

> perhaps that's due to the amount of time they have invested in somebody else's commercial enterprise ("our community") while believing it's something more.

> Perhaps what they are trying to say is the "something more" (presumably the voluntary contributions) is being undermined by paid staff. It's not clear.

You have it right, this matches sentiments I've read by long-term contributors. For many of them, contributing to "our community" and improving SO as a knowledge base are sufficient motivation to donate vast amounts of free time. If SO no longer cares to at least pretend they are more than a corporate entity that extracts money from voluntary unpaid labor, those contributions will likely dwindle.

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