Return to Answer

I've let this kick around in my head for a bit and read some of the other feedback and I am a bit worried this is heading in the wrong direction. I do appreciate that y'all are trying to solve issues in a sustainable way that involves the community. I'm happy to see it even though I think it's the wrong approach to set up user councils. The problem with this approach is that you're asking us to donate our time to the company and just hope that investment will influence things our communities care about even though other sites' communities will have competing interests.

I think the real solution is less company control and more self-governance on the site level. I know that gets really scary when we start thinking about the implementation details. For it to work the company has to relinquish a lot of control and invest a lot of development resources. Things will be chaotic for a while no matter how thoughtfully changes are designed.

Centralized control is a council that advises the company on what projects should be prioritized. Self-governance is a public bug tracker that allows the community to contribute, curate and vote on issues. We do this already on Meta, and it works pretty well until it has to interface with the internal bug management where we lose all visibility. The company doesn't have to agree to abide by the rankings in the bug tracker, but it makes a whole lot more sense to let the people who care about particular issues interact with them directly instead of through a proxy who might misunderstand or disagree with how important that issue is to a particular group.

Centralized control is a council to advise the company on network-wide policy. Self-governance is a few general network-wide policies (The code of conduct, the moderator agreement) and communities setting their own policies within that framework. I realize that there are some legal and practical constraints, but we should be working towards more flexibility for sites to set their own rules that make sense for their topic. Maybe a site wants discussion in comments and doesn't want to have to keep explaining to people that all that stuff about commenting in the Help Center doesn't really apply on this site.

Centralized control is having to compete with other sites for company developer time to implement features and changes because the software needs to be pretty much the same across the network. Self-governance is each site being an extension of the network's framework that allows the community to change certain behaviors without needing to write code. Maybe a community could choose to set a new value for how much reputation a downvote costs and see how it works for them. Maybe different sites have different ways of electing moderators (within certain constraints).

I realize that even these few examples of moving toward self-governing sites may seem impossible. I'm not advocating for any of those examples; They are just to get people thinking about what is possible. If the goal was to evolve the network to be a federation of sites that can handle most of their own specialized needs without needing much company intervention, we could figure out how to start breaking up the work into manageable chunks. This could also translate into a much more flexible enterprise product.

The most valuable asset Stack Exchange has is its communities. Healthy communities keep people engaged and donating their time and expertise. No amount of page scraping to build data sets for AI can steal that. No amount of money from easily-blocked web ads can buy that. The best thing the company can do is to manage them with as light a touch as possible.

I've let this kick around in my head for a bit and read some of the other feedback and I am a bit worried this is heading in the wrong direction. (Narrator: It was apparently not headed in any direction at all.) I do appreciate that y'all are trying to solve issues in a sustainable way that involves the community. I'm happy to see it even though I think it's the wrong approach to set up user councils. The problem with this approach is that you're asking us to donate our time to the company and just hope that investment will influence things our communities care about even though other sites' communities will have competing interests.

I think the real solution is less company control and more self-governance on the site level. I know that gets really scary when we start thinking about the implementation details. For it to work the company has to relinquish a lot of control and invest a lot of development resources. Things will be chaotic for a while no matter how thoughtfully changes are designed.

Centralized control is a council that advises the company on what projects should be prioritized. Self-governance is a public bug tracker that allows the community to contribute, curate and vote on issues. We do this already on Meta, and it works pretty well until it has to interface with the internal bug management where we lose all visibility. The company doesn't have to agree to abide by the rankings in the bug tracker, but it makes a whole lot more sense to let the people who care about particular issues interact with them directly instead of through a proxy who might misunderstand or disagree with how important that issue is to a particular group.

Centralized control is a council to advise the company on network-wide policy. Self-governance is a few general network-wide policies (The code of conduct, the moderator agreement) and communities setting their own policies within that framework. I realize that there are some legal and practical constraints, but we should be working towards more flexibility for sites to set their own rules that make sense for their topic. Maybe a site wants discussion in comments and doesn't want to have to keep explaining to people that all that stuff about commenting in the Help Center doesn't really apply on this site.

Centralized control is having to compete with other sites for company developer time to implement features and changes because the software needs to be pretty much the same across the network. Self-governance is each site being an extension of the network's framework that allows the community to change certain behaviors without needing to write code. Maybe a community could choose to set a new value for how much reputation a downvote costs and see how it works for them. Maybe different sites have different ways of electing moderators (within certain constraints).

I realize that even these few examples of moving toward self-governing sites may seem impossible. I'm not advocating for any of those examples; They are just to get people thinking about what is possible. If the goal was to evolve the network to be a federation of sites that can handle most of their own specialized needs without needing much company intervention, we could figure out how to start breaking up the work into manageable chunks. This could also translate into a much more flexible enterprise product.

The most valuable asset Stack Exchange has is its communities. Healthy communities keep people engaged and donating their time and expertise. No amount of page scraping to build data sets for AI can steal that. No amount of money from easily-blocked web ads can buy that. The best thing the company can do is to manage them with as light a touch as possible.

I've let this kick around in my head for a bit and read some of the other feedback and I am a bit worried this is heading in the wrong direction. I do appreciate that y'all are trying to solve issues in a sustainable way that involves the community. I'm happy to see it even though I think it's the wrong approach to set up user councils. The problem with this approach is that you're asking us to donate our time to the company and just hope that investment will influence things our communities care about even though other sites' communities will have competing interests.

I think the real solution is less company control and more self-governance on the site level. I know that gets really scary when we start thinking about the implementation details. For it to work the company has to relinquish a lot of control and invest a lot of development resources. Things will be chaotic for a while no matter how thoughtfully changes are designed.

Centralized control is a council that advises the company on what projects should be prioritized. Self-governance is a public bug tracker that allows the community to contribute, curate and vote on issues. We do this already on Meta, and it works pretty well until it has to interface with the internal bug management where we lose all visibility. The company doesn't have to agree to abide by the rankings in the bug tracker, but it makes a whole lot more sense to let the people who care about particular issues interact with them directly instead of through a proxy who might misunderstand or disagree with how important that issue is to a particular group.

Centralized control is a council to advise the company on network-wide policy. Self-governance is a few general network-wide policies (The code of conduct, the moderator agreement) and communities setting their own policies within that framework. I realize that there are some legal and practical constraints, but we should be working towards more flexibility for sites to set their own rules that make sense for their topic. Maybe a site wants discussion in comments and doesn't want to have to keep explaining to people that all that stuff about commenting in the Help Center doesn't really apply on this site.

Centralized control is having to compete with other sites for company developer time to implement features and changes because the software needs to be pretty much the same across the network. Self-governance is each site being an extension of the network's framework that allows the community to change certain behaviors. Maybe a community could choose to set a new value for how much reputation a downvote costs and see how it works for them. Maybe different sites have different ways of electing moderators (within certain constraints).

I realize that even these few examples of moving toward self-governing sites may seem impossible. I'm not advocating for any of those examples; They are just to get people thinking about what is possible. If the goal was to evolve the network to be a federation of sites that can handle most of their own specialized needs without needing much company intervention, we could figure out how to start breaking up the work into manageable chunks. This could also translate into a much more flexible enterprise product.

The most valuable asset Stack Exchange has is its communities. Healthy communities keep people engaged and donating their time and expertise. No amount of page scraping to build data sets for AI can steal that. No amount of money from easily-blocked web ads can buy that. The best thing the company can do is to manage them with as light a touch as possible.

I've let this kick around in my head for a bit and read some of the other feedback and I am a bit worried this is heading in the wrong direction. I do appreciate that y'all are trying to solve issues in a sustainable way that involves the community. I'm happy to see it even though I think it's the wrong approach to set up user councils. The problem with this approach is that you're asking us to donate our time to the company and just hope that investment will influence things our communities care about even though other sites' communities will have competing interests.

I think the real solution is less company control and more self-governance on the site level. I know that gets really scary when we start thinking about the implementation details. For it to work the company has to relinquish a lot of control and invest a lot of development resources. Things will be chaotic for a while no matter how thoughtfully changes are designed.

Centralized control is a council that advises the company on what projects should be prioritized. Self-governance is a public bug tracker that allows the community to contribute, curate and vote on issues. We do this already on Meta, and it works pretty well until it has to interface with the internal bug management where we lose all visibility. The company doesn't have to agree to abide by the rankings in the bug tracker, but it makes a whole lot more sense to let the people who care about particular issues interact with them directly instead of through a proxy who might misunderstand or disagree with how important that issue is to a particular group.

Centralized control is a council to advise the company on network-wide policy. Self-governance is a few general network-wide policies (The code of conduct, the moderator agreement) and communities setting their own policies within that framework. I realize that there are some legal and practical constraints, but we should be working towards more flexibility for sites to set their own rules that make sense for their topic. Maybe a site wants discussion in comments and doesn't want to have to keep explaining to people that all that stuff about commenting in the Help Center doesn't really apply on this site.

Centralized control is having to compete with other sites for company developer time to implement features and changes because the software needs to be pretty much the same across the network. Self-governance is each site being an extension of the network's framework that allows the community to change certain behaviors without needing to write code. Maybe a community could choose to set a new value for how much reputation a downvote costs and see how it works for them. Maybe different sites have different ways of electing moderators (within certain constraints).

I realize that even these few examples of moving toward self-governing sites may seem impossible. I'm not advocating for any of those examples; They are just to get people thinking about what is possible. If the goal was to evolve the network to be a federation of sites that can handle most of their own specialized needs without needing much company intervention, we could figure out how to start breaking up the work into manageable chunks. This could also translate into a much more flexible enterprise product.

The most valuable asset Stack Exchange has is its communities. Healthy communities keep people engaged and donating their time and expertise. No amount of page scraping to build data sets for AI can steal that. No amount of money from easily-blocked web ads can buy that. The best thing the company can do is to manage them with as light a touch as possible.

I've let this kick around in my head for a bit and read some of the other feedback and I am a bit worried this is heading in the wrong direction. I do appreciate that y'all are trying to solve issues in a sustainable way that involves the community. I'm happy to see it even though I think it's the wrong approach to set up user councils. The problem with this approach is that you're asking us to donate our time to the company and just hope that investment will influence things our communities care about even though other sites' communities will have competing interests.

I think the real solution is less company control and more self-governance on the site level. I know that gets really scary when we start thinking about the implementation details. For it to work the company has to relinquish a lot of control and invest a lot of development resources. Things will be chaotic for a while no matter how thoughtfully changes are designed.

Centralized control is a council that advises the company on what projects should be prioritized. Self-governance is a public bug tracker that allows the community to contribute, curate and vote on issues. We do this already on Meta, and it works pretty well until it has to interface with the internal bug management where we lose all visibility.

Centralized control is a council to advise the company on network-wide policy. Self-governance is a few general network-wide policies (The code of conduct, the moderator agreement) and communities setting their own policies within that framework. I realize that there are some legal and practical constraints, but we should be working towards more flexibility for sites to set their own rules that make sense for their topic. Maybe a site wants discussion in comments and doesn't want to have to keep explaining to people that all that stuff about commenting in the Help Center doesn't really apply on this site.

Centralized control is having to compete with other sites for company developer time to implement features and changes because the software needs to be pretty much the same across the network. Self-governance is each site being an extension of the network's framework that allows the community to change certain behaviors. Maybe a community could choose to set a new value for how much reputation a downvote costs and see how it works for them. Maybe different sites have different ways of electing moderators (within certain constraints).

I realize that even these few examples of moving toward self-governing sites may seem impossible. I'm not advocating for any of those examples; They are just to get people thinking about what is possible. If the goal was to evolve the network to be a federation of sites that can handle most of their own specialized needs without needing much company intervention, we could figure out how to start breaking up the work into manageable chunks. This could also translate into a much more flexible enterprise product.

The most valuable asset Stack Exchange has is its communities. Healthy communities keep people engaged and donating their time and expertise. No amount of page scraping to build data sets for AI can steal that. No amount of money from easily-blocked web ads can buy that. The best thing the company can do is to manage them with as light a touch as possible.

I've let this kick around in my head for a bit and read some of the other feedback and I am a bit worried this is heading in the wrong direction. I do appreciate that y'all are trying to solve issues in a sustainable way that involves the community. I'm happy to see it even though I think it's the wrong approach to set up user councils. The problem with this approach is that you're asking us to donate our time to the company and just hope that investment will influence things our communities care about even though other sites' communities will have competing interests.

I think the real solution is less company control and more self-governance on the site level. I know that gets really scary when we start thinking about the implementation details. For it to work the company has to relinquish a lot of control and invest a lot of development resources. Things will be chaotic for a while no matter how thoughtfully changes are designed.

Centralized control is a council that advises the company on what projects should be prioritized. Self-governance is a public bug tracker that allows the community to contribute, curate and vote on issues. We do this already on Meta, and it works pretty well until it has to interface with the internal bug management where we lose all visibility. The company doesn't have to agree to abide by the rankings in the bug tracker, but it makes a whole lot more sense to let the people who care about particular issues interact with them directly instead of through a proxy who might misunderstand or disagree with how important that issue is to a particular group.

Centralized control is a council to advise the company on network-wide policy. Self-governance is a few general network-wide policies (The code of conduct, the moderator agreement) and communities setting their own policies within that framework. I realize that there are some legal and practical constraints, but we should be working towards more flexibility for sites to set their own rules that make sense for their topic. Maybe a site wants discussion in comments and doesn't want to have to keep explaining to people that all that stuff about commenting in the Help Center doesn't really apply on this site.

Centralized control is having to compete with other sites for company developer time to implement features and changes because the software needs to be pretty much the same across the network. Self-governance is each site being an extension of the network's framework that allows the community to change certain behaviors. Maybe a community could choose to set a new value for how much reputation a downvote costs and see how it works for them. Maybe different sites have different ways of electing moderators (within certain constraints).

I realize that even these few examples of moving toward self-governing sites may seem impossible. I'm not advocating for any of those examples; They are just to get people thinking about what is possible. If the goal was to evolve the network to be a federation of sites that can handle most of their own specialized needs without needing much company intervention, we could figure out how to start breaking up the work into manageable chunks. This could also translate into a much more flexible enterprise product.

The most valuable asset Stack Exchange has is its communities. Healthy communities keep people engaged and donating their time and expertise. No amount of page scraping to build data sets for AI can steal that. No amount of money from easily-blocked web ads can buy that. The best thing the company can do is to manage them with as light a touch as possible.