I wasn’t planning on writing an answer, but the so-calledofficial response(copy one,copy two, all answers in the order I saw them, not the order in which they were posted – feels nice to be addressed personally, doesn’t it?) was the triggering event for this answer.
Magisch sums up this mess perfectly:
That is incredibly weak. It would have been better to say nothing at all. Taking pot shots at someone while depriving us all of the context necessary to judge their validity is a dirty bad faith move I would never have expected from a Stack Exchange employee. I hope none of this was intentional and a clarification is forthcoming, but I fear my hope will be in vain
Currently, we have the facts we’ve received from the mods.Some of it made me physically sick. Stack Exchange is refusing to reveal anything, and speaking for myself, I read that as admitting it. All the facts are out there, and they’re supported by highly respectable people – Stack Exchange is not denying it, nor are they talking further about it. At least I read that as admitting it without admitting it.
I ran for moderator on Stack Overflow. I think most candidates who don’t win are disappointed, but after reading that post, I was glad I didn’t. Not winning means I avoided being a pawn in whatever messed up game Stack Exchange is playing. Good intentions? Sure. But the execution is so awful I can’t think of a word to properly describe it. Stack Exchange has often been called unwelcoming, but I’m surprised the company is more unwelcoming than the community.
I’m personally tired of the abstract guessing games. There’s also been a rumor about a massive change coming, that’s currently being planned out in private without any canonical details mentioned, with a promised meta post “in a couple of weeks”. Yet, these are concerns that need to be addressed now. Off the top of my head, the network is now low on mods. Some sites areheavilyaffected by this, and have lost well over half their mods. Yet, the only response we get is yet another promiseof more details soon. Is a plain-text answer so much to ask for?
And the fun doesn’t end there –they’re violating their own principles, and as outlined in one of the linked questions, andfiring a moderator for reasons I can only classify as malicious and self-destructive.
The only way we’re going to get anywhere is if we pressure Stack Exchange – and I hate that I have to say that. They’ve made it abundantly clear through the licensing change and the removal of Hot Meta Posts that they have no intention of responding to legitimate concerns, and they’re not going to take any of the input. I’m not a mod, so this won’t have the biggest impact, but until this is resolved, I won’t moderate anything. Full stop. I’ve also gone off-site in an attempt to get more attention to these problems.
And like I said in a bounty notice the company later removed: ignoring these issues will not make anything better. Ignorance is bliss until it hits you in the face. I have no idea what you’re doing internally,but this needs to endnow, or you risk not having a network to push whatever changes you have planned. The longer you wait, the more people will go on a strike, and the more mods will step down, and the worse of a state Stack Exchange will be left in.
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