Hacker News Reader

Comment by wendyshu | Hacker News Reader

I suspect they've essentially decided on the new Code of Conduct and any solicitation of feedback will be perfunctory.

The CoC is almost certainly already written, but this quip is a cherry on top:

> We’ll be reaching out to her directly to apologize for the lack of process, privacy, and to discuss next steps. We’ll keep those discussions completely private unless we both agree to share any of it with the community.

So they're going to demand she stays hush about what they say to her unless they approve? Seems extremely dishonest and scummy to try and control someone you've already wronged.

It seems to say that StackOverflow -- as is only professional -- will not share anything unless the fired mod agrees.

> We’ll keep those discussions completely private unless we both agree to share

Reads to me as StackOverflow will not share anything if they feel revealing the conversation would hurt their PR.

The We in "We’ll keep those discussions completely private" is SE, not SE and Monica.

The "unless we both agree" bit implies they reserve a veto on her releasing anything.

Literally speaking, sure. Absolutely it could mean that or half a dozen different things.

In the context of an apology about being heavy-handed, I highly doubt it means they intent to suppress speech from a third party that they have no power over, implied or otherwise.

She mentioned in her post that she did not think it would be legal to release some of the conversations she has had with SO employees.

I think he's just trying to avoid suggesting that if they don't release it all, it's because she didn't agree to it. If he'd said, "We'll release it publicly as long as Monica's ok with that," it could easily be seen as pressuring her to do so.

The schedule is a dead giveaway that there are no plans to actually take significant action on feedback. The feedback process is likely only there so that they can say "We requested feedback," and to appease the type of person who thinks "there was a written process, therefore the outcome must be unassailable."

Some CoC have an explicit "we will not discuss ${issue}" they are basically retrofitting this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com