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1. Stack Exchange made an assumption we were using chatgpt detectors. Many of the flags were from folks using it to confirm their hunches. However we made the determination based on other factors like velocity of posting and writing style

2. Regions of the world that appear to be unjustly targeted by GPT detectors in use on our platform include southeast Asia, the Middle East, and most of Africa. Regions of the world unjustly benefited by GPT detectors include North America, Europe, and Oceania.

This makes a bit of a awkward situation. If folks there are using GPT more - they'd tend to be suspended more. Causation isn't correlation. I'd also note we also get a good chunk of our spam from literally 2-3 indian and pakistani metropolises. Would that mean they're unjustly targetted, or there's just more of it? There's various other tells that I believe the (informal?) folks looking at heuristics can shed light on, like a sudden velocity in decent quality posts and some unusual conjectures.That said this could be read as a potential accusation of racism.

3. Therefore, the only admissible evidence we can currently permit for GPT usage is self-admission by the author of the posts, freely given. Please note that “freely given” is important here: please do not, under any circumstances, try to trick users into admitting GPT usage, lure them into saying it, or otherwise coerce a response. Even a user saying they have used GPT in general may not count unless they specifically say they have used it here, or for this contribution.

Thats an impossibly high barrier. And I feel like this was known.

And somehow we're protecting random folks who could be causing the site harm, over trusting the moderation teams to protect their sites.

The attitude here is one of the reasons I'm striking

4. Next April I'll be moderating for a decade. Most moderators have a deep knowledge of their communities, and to an extent the subject material.

As a final reminder, suspensions should only be issued for real behavior, actually known to be malfeasance. We just can’t endorse kicking users off the platform on the basis of hunches, intuitions, guesses, or untested/untestable heuristics.

Quite a lot of moderation starts off on a hunch, and intuition built up over years. This literally smacks of a lack of trust. I try very hard not to tell community managers how to do their job - and I'd expect the trust to do what I do. And I'm open to being told when I'm wrong. Just... when, not if I might.

I'm not angry at this. I just don't think its a great way to work if we can't trust moderators - folks who're practically in positions of community leadership for their respective communities. It also shows (well one of the things that do) that there's a lack of understanding of what we do.

1. Stack Exchange made an assumption we were using ChatGPT detectors. Many of the flags were from folks using it to confirm their hunches. However we made the determination based on other factors like velocity of posting and writing style.

2. Regions of the world that appear to be unjustly targeted by GPT detectors in use on our platform include southeast Asia, the Middle East, and most of Africa. Regions of the world unjustly benefited by GPT detectors include North America, Europe, and Oceania.

   This makes a bit of a awkward situation. If folks there are using GPT more - they'd tend to be suspended more. Correlation isn't causation. I'd also note we also get a good chunk of our spam from literally 2-3 Indian and Pakistani metropoles. Would that mean they're unjustly targeted, or there's just more of it? There's various other tells that I believe the (informal?) folks looking at heuristics can shed light on, like a sudden velocity in decent quality posts and some unusual conjectures. That said, this could be read as a potential accusation of racism.

3. Therefore, the only admissible evidence we can currently permit for GPT usage is self-admission by the author of the posts, freely given. Please note that “freely given” is important here: please do not, under any circumstances, try to trick users into admitting GPT usage, lure them into saying it, or otherwise coerce a response. Even a user saying they have used GPT in general may not count unless they specifically say they have used it here, or for this contribution.

   That's an impossibly high barrier. And I feel like this was known.

   And somehow we're protecting random folks who could be causing the site harm, over trusting the moderation teams to protect their sites.

   The attitude here is one of the reasons I'm striking.

4. Next April I'll have been moderating for a decade. Most moderators have a deep knowledge of their communities, and to an extent the subject material.

   As a final reminder, suspensions should only be issued for real behavior, actually known to be malfeasance. We just can’t endorse kicking users off the platform on the basis of hunches, intuitions, guesses, or untested/untestable heuristics.

   Quite a lot of moderation starts off on a hunch, and intuition built up over years. This literally smacks of a lack of trust. I try very hard not to tell community managers how to do their job - and I'd expect the trust to do what I do. And I'm open to being told when I'm wrong. Just... when, not if I might.

   I'm not angry at this. I just don't think its a great way to work if we can't trust moderators - folks who're practically in positions of community leadership for their respective communities. It also shows (well one of the things that do) that there's a lack of understanding of what we do.

Well, in the interest of the historical record and hopefully leaving something educational for future readers - to me there's a few specifically problematic things.

Firstly - while there were clear attempts by the moderator communities to engage the company with respect to the problem of folks posting unverified GenAI answers at scale. We posted on meta, and based on the feedback provided to us at the time. That we ended up with a patchwork of per site policies, including up to a 1 year suspension, and we didn't get any communication until this. No consultation. No warning. This also kind of undermined us when dealing with what we deemed to be problem users.

In addition

1. Stack Exchange made an assumption we were using chatgpt detectors. Many of the flags were from folks using it to confirm their hunches.

2. Regions of the world that appear to be unjustly targeted by GPT detectors in use on our platform include southeast Asia, the Middle East, and most of Africa. Regions of the world unjustly benefited by GPT detectors include North America, Europe, and Oceania.

This makes a bit of a awkward situation. If folks there are using GPT more - they'd tend to be suspended more. Causation isn't correlation. I'd also note we also get a good chunk of our spam from literally 2-3 indian and pakistani metropolises. Would that mean they're unjustly targetted, or there's just more of it? There's various other tells that I believe the (informal?) folks looking at heuristics can shed light on, like a sudden velocity in decent quality posts and some unusual conjectures.

3. Therefore, the only admissible evidence we can currently permit for GPT usage is self-admission by the author of the posts, freely given. Please note that “freely given” is important here: please do not, under any circumstances, try to trick users into admitting GPT usage, lure them into saying it, or otherwise coerce a response. Even a user saying they have used GPT in general may not count unless they specifically say they have used it here, or for this contribution.

Thats an impossibly high barrier. And I feel like this was known.

And somehow we're protecting random folks who could be causing the site harm, over trusting the moderation teams to protect their sites.

The attitude here is one of the reasons I'm striking

4. Next April I'll be moderating for a decade. Most moderators have a deep knowledge of their communities, and to an extent the subject material.

As a final reminder, suspensions should only be issued for real behavior, actually known to be malfeasance. We just can’t endorse kicking users off the platform on the basis of hunches, intuitions, guesses, or untested/untestable heuristics.

Quite a lot of moderation starts off on a hunch, and intuition built up over years. This literally smacks of a lack of trust. I try very hard not to tell community managers how to do their job - and I'd expect the trust to do what I do. And I'm open to being told when I'm wrong. Just... when, not if I might.

I'm not angry at this. I just don't think its a great way to work if we can't trust moderators - folks who're practically in positions of community leadership for their respective communities. It also shows (well one of the things that do) that there's a lack of understanding of what we do.

Well, in the interest of the historical record and hopefully leaving something educational for future readers - to me there's a few specifically problematic things.

Firstly - while there were clear attempts by the moderator communities to engage the company with respect to the problem of folks posting unverified GenAI answers at scale. We posted on meta, and based on the feedback provided to us at the time. That we ended up with a patchwork of per site policies, including up to a 1 year suspension, and we didn't get any communication until this. No consultation. No warning. This also kind of undermined us when dealing with what we deemed to be problem users.

In addition

1. Stack Exchange made an assumption we were using chatgpt detectors. Many of the flags were from folks using it to confirm their hunches. However we made the determination based on other factors like velocity of posting and writing style

2. Regions of the world that appear to be unjustly targeted by GPT detectors in use on our platform include southeast Asia, the Middle East, and most of Africa. Regions of the world unjustly benefited by GPT detectors include North America, Europe, and Oceania.

This makes a bit of a awkward situation. If folks there are using GPT more - they'd tend to be suspended more. Causation isn't correlation. I'd also note we also get a good chunk of our spam from literally 2-3 indian and pakistani metropolises. Would that mean they're unjustly targetted, or there's just more of it? There's various other tells that I believe the (informal?) folks looking at heuristics can shed light on, like a sudden velocity in decent quality posts and some unusual conjectures.That said this could be read as a potential accusation of racism.

3. Therefore, the only admissible evidence we can currently permit for GPT usage is self-admission by the author of the posts, freely given. Please note that “freely given” is important here: please do not, under any circumstances, try to trick users into admitting GPT usage, lure them into saying it, or otherwise coerce a response. Even a user saying they have used GPT in general may not count unless they specifically say they have used it here, or for this contribution.

Thats an impossibly high barrier. And I feel like this was known.

And somehow we're protecting random folks who could be causing the site harm, over trusting the moderation teams to protect their sites.

The attitude here is one of the reasons I'm striking

4. Next April I'll be moderating for a decade. Most moderators have a deep knowledge of their communities, and to an extent the subject material.

As a final reminder, suspensions should only be issued for real behavior, actually known to be malfeasance. We just can’t endorse kicking users off the platform on the basis of hunches, intuitions, guesses, or untested/untestable heuristics.

Quite a lot of moderation starts off on a hunch, and intuition built up over years. This literally smacks of a lack of trust. I try very hard not to tell community managers how to do their job - and I'd expect the trust to do what I do. And I'm open to being told when I'm wrong. Just... when, not if I might.

I'm not angry at this. I just don't think its a great way to work if we can't trust moderators - folks who're practically in positions of community leadership for their respective communities. It also shows (well one of the things that do) that there's a lack of understanding of what we do.

Well, in the interest of the historical record and hopefully leaving something educational for future readers - to me there's a few specifically problematic things.

Firstly - while there were clear attempts by the moderator communities to engage the company with respect to the problem of folks posting unverified GenAI answers at scale. We posted on meta, and based on the feedback provided to us at the time. That we ended up with a patchwork of per site policies, including up to a 1 year suspension, and we didn't get any communication umtil this. No consultation. No warning. This also kind of undermined us when dealing with what we deemed to be problem users.

In addition

1. Stack Exchange made an assumption we were using chatgpt detectors. Many of the flags were from folks using it to confirm their hunches.

2. Regions of the world that appear to be unjustly targeted by GPT detectors in use on our platform include southeast Asia, the Middle East, and most of Africa. Regions of the world unjustly benefited by GPT detectors include North America, Europe, and Oceania.

This makes a bit of a awkward situation. If folks there are using GPT more - they'd tend to be suspended more. Causation isn't correlation. I'd also note we also get a good chunk of our spam from literally 2-3 indian and pakistani metropolises. Would that mean they're unjustly targetted, or there's just more of it? There's various other tells that I believe the (informal?) folks looking at heuristics can shed light on, like a sudden velocity in decent quality posts and some unusual conjectures.

3. Therefore, the only admissible evidence we can currently permit for GPT usage is self-admission by the author of the posts, freely given. Please note that “freely given” is important here: please do not, under any circumstances, try to trick users into admitting GPT usage, lure them into saying it, or otherwise coerce a response. Even a user saying they have used GPT in general may not count unless they specifically say they have used it here, or for this contribution.

Thats an impossibly high barrier. And I feel like this was known.

And somehow we're protecting random folks who could be causing the site harm, over trusting the moderation teams to protect their sites.

The attitude here is one of the reasons I'm striking

4. Next April I'll be moderating for a decade. Most moderators have a deep knowledge of their communities, and to an extent the subject material.

As a final reminder, suspensions should only be issued for real behavior, actually known to be malfeasance. We just can’t endorse kicking users off the platform on the basis of hunches, intuitions, guesses, or untested/untestable heuristics.

Quite a lot of moderation starts off on a hunch, and intuition built up over years. This literally smacks of a lack of trust. I try very hard not to tell community managers how to do their job - and I'd expect the trust to do what I do. And I'm open to being told when I'm wrong. Just... when, not if I might.

I'm not angry at this. I just don't think its a great way to work if we can't trust moderators - folks who're practically in positions of community leadership for their respective communities. It also shows (well one of the things that do) that there's a lack of understanding of what we do.

Well, in the interest of the historical record and hopefully leaving something educational for future readers - to me there's a few specifically problematic things.

Firstly - while there were clear attempts by the moderator communities to engage the company with respect to the problem of folks posting unverified GenAI answers at scale. We posted on meta, and based on the feedback provided to us at the time. That we ended up with a patchwork of per site policies, including up to a 1 year suspension, and we didn't get any communication until this. No consultation. No warning. This also kind of undermined us when dealing with what we deemed to be problem users.

In addition

1. Stack Exchange made an assumption we were using chatgpt detectors. Many of the flags were from folks using it to confirm their hunches.

2. Regions of the world that appear to be unjustly targeted by GPT detectors in use on our platform include southeast Asia, the Middle East, and most of Africa. Regions of the world unjustly benefited by GPT detectors include North America, Europe, and Oceania.

This makes a bit of a awkward situation. If folks there are using GPT more - they'd tend to be suspended more. Causation isn't correlation. I'd also note we also get a good chunk of our spam from literally 2-3 indian and pakistani metropolises. Would that mean they're unjustly targetted, or there's just more of it? There's various other tells that I believe the (informal?) folks looking at heuristics can shed light on, like a sudden velocity in decent quality posts and some unusual conjectures.

3. Therefore, the only admissible evidence we can currently permit for GPT usage is self-admission by the author of the posts, freely given. Please note that “freely given” is important here: please do not, under any circumstances, try to trick users into admitting GPT usage, lure them into saying it, or otherwise coerce a response. Even a user saying they have used GPT in general may not count unless they specifically say they have used it here, or for this contribution.

Thats an impossibly high barrier. And I feel like this was known.

And somehow we're protecting random folks who could be causing the site harm, over trusting the moderation teams to protect their sites.

The attitude here is one of the reasons I'm striking

4. Next April I'll be moderating for a decade. Most moderators have a deep knowledge of their communities, and to an extent the subject material.

As a final reminder, suspensions should only be issued for real behavior, actually known to be malfeasance. We just can’t endorse kicking users off the platform on the basis of hunches, intuitions, guesses, or untested/untestable heuristics.

Quite a lot of moderation starts off on a hunch, and intuition built up over years. This literally smacks of a lack of trust. I try very hard not to tell community managers how to do their job - and I'd expect the trust to do what I do. And I'm open to being told when I'm wrong. Just... when, not if I might.

I'm not angry at this. I just don't think its a great way to work if we can't trust moderators - folks who're practically in positions of community leadership for their respective communities. It also shows (well one of the things that do) that there's a lack of understanding of what we do.