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Comment by pinche2 | Hacker News Reader

SE/SO reminds me more and more of how a cult is run. It's no secret that they are ideologically driven, although they kept it under lid until 2015 when they then flipped finger to their own rules and abused the platform for political causes.

Since that time it has been going downhill - not that it hasn't had problem before that. But I noticed a significant change in the "vibe" of the community from that point on.

The problem is that this can not be easily fixed as it require change of convictions. It's not about community anymore, but political wars intertwined with international agendas (which includes Y Combinator too btw).

Personally, I passed the 100k milestone, got my mug and t-shirt and deleted my account.

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All of this seems to be some weird Meta bubble that doesn't affect or concern regular users in the slightest.

What users care about is not getting downvoted for reasonable questions, not seeing everything closed as duplicate even though the other answer is 10 years old and contains only/mostly outdated and bad answers, ...

This is what is is actually hurting SO.

The things you describe are all things that volunteer moderators affect.

Do you think that moderators just chat on meta? That users do not know about how moderators work doesnt mean that they do not work.

Remove the moderators, or downgrade them to some automated process and the user experience will change. Moderators do not only talk on meta with each other.

Really? wouldn’t other people happy to accept the CoC step in to become moderators and life goes on There are a few billions on this planet

I'd argue that people should stop providing volunteer labor to a for-profit company.

If SO wants more control over moderation practices, it should start paying moderators.

Incidentally I also think that a better/smarter voting system combined with less moderation could be good for the platform (note: not no moderation) .

„ It's no secret that they are ideologically driven, although they kept it under lid until 2015 when they then flipped finger to their own rules and abused the platform for political causes.“

Anil Dash?

I'm not particular aware of Anil Dash's role in this, but what I had in mind was the following:

This is the post Joel Spolsky posted, breaking the user rules that stated among other things that political posts where not allowed:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/297859/can-stack-ov...

Then, a couple of years later -

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-take...

at the same time Sam Altman posted his (since I mentioned Y Combinator, but in fairness, at his own blog):

https://blog.samaltman.com/time-to-take-a-stand

These are political, ideological driven posts. Not everyone agrees with the political content; the point being, whether you do or not, this doesn't belong on a site such as SO.

And the international agenda I am refering to is in particular United Nations' agenda 2030 which is also rooted in ideology, and is what these companies are working with, directly or indirectly:

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...

> the user rules that stated among other things that political posts where not allowed

Where were these rules? I've never seen such prohibition.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170608065329/https://stackover...

> "Bigotry of any kind. Language likely to offend or alienate individuals or groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. will not be tolerated. At all. (Those are just a few examples; when in doubt, just don't.)"

"etc." => politics, in this case back-ref "Language likely to offend or alienate individuals or groups" as not everyone agrees with the political message(s) posted, and the use of the platform users signed up on for entirely different purposes.

That's not politics. That's basically just saying don't be a jerk and say something hurtful regardless of the reason. You seem to be making a leap of judgement that etc means don't post politics at all instead of don't attack someone for their political opinion and then you're mad that on a completely different personal site he says he's against some actions and that companies need to not be okay with this. He gives no actions he's planning on taking just says that they should discuss it. He doesn't demonize someone for how they voted or their political party and even cites people from the opposing party with whom he agrees. Your position comes soon appearing like you're chomping at the bit to make anything you disagree with somehow some evil conspiracy plot where a certain segment of the population you disagree with us out to get you. You're allowed say different things at home than at work. I doubt heavily his opinions at home are solely made into policy at work in a vacuum.

There are many things that are hurtful that are true.

There's literally a politics.stackexchange now. Perhaps the real "loss of innocence" was the establishment of religion stackexchanges (possibly Judaism was first?), making politics and clashes inevitable.

> international agenda I am referring to is in particular United Nations' agenda 2030

This is conspiracist nonsense, attributing a bottom-up progressive movement to a top-down international organisation that actually isn't progressive at all (and is in fact dangerous to certain activists).

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