How many more casualties in the war on pronouns? [duplicate]

Question

I've been reading posts and comments all over the network for many years and never felt like I need to register. I've also been watching what's going on here since the pronoun-crisis broke out and I notice how it's getting worse every day and I can no longer just sit there and do nothing. I identify myself as transgender and I am disgusted about the war on pronouns that is like an earthquake splitting communities into opposing groups.

There are many users who recognize the problems with the new CoC -- see this nice compilation -- and there are their enemies. They seem to be organized in flag brigades and use moderators as a tool for their own sake by rising rude flag. They call for help in the Tavern on the Meta.

What worries me most is that these actions are even supported by the Staff:

I'm issuing suspensions too, but not gonna talk about that

Feel free to flag anyone still "drumming up transphobia" or ping me to take a look

Flag what needs to be flagged, and folks will get what they need

I'm reading nearly any comment and I rarely think that any one deserves this kind of punishment.

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What is wrong with you people? She/he/her/him users supported by Mods & Staff vs the rest of the community.

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I explicitly distance myself from this turmoil. It's nice when people use the pronoun you suggest them to use but if they don't and they chose to use the neutral one they then it's still OK! Nobody should be banned by using a neutral word.

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I can only hope that both sides will come to their senses soon. One of them by making the CoC less strict and community members by stopping to offend each other and provoking hateful speech.

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How many more are going to be suspended before coming to an agreement?

Answer 1

This isn't that hard to figure out.

Stack Exchange's goals have changed. I've seen it happen many times before. You start out as a small company with a pure idea. It works. But then you grow. You decide to make new things. New people coming into the company have different ideas about how things should work, and they all have different motives.

Shareholders. Their motive is profitability. You obtain a round of financing from them, and now your company is no longer completely yours. Your shareholders have a say. They rightly ask, "how is it profitable to ask the communities for permission every time we make a decision? It's slow and painful, and doesn't add anything to the bottom line."

Then you get new people in the company who are placed in key positions. They exert an enormous amount of influence. They don't always know or educate themselves about the history of the company, where it came from, or why it became successful. Consequently, they don't know how to preserve the "secret sauce," the good stuff. It's the reason that Steve Jobs had to join Apple again, and why the founder of Starbucks had to grab hold of the reins and bring it back into its original focus.

People in enormous positions of influence who have blinders on and fail to see the big picture are the reason the show "Undercover Boss" was created. You can practically set your watch by them; it has become such a common occurrence that it is almost a cliché.

It's fascinating to see how this plays out, how one person can have such an debilitating effect on an organization, and how the people around them seem powerless to stop it. I've seen it happen, not once, but several times in my own personal career. The most recent occurrence was an individual who had control over the databases of our software development group. Every little change to the database was torture and took ages, because he would give us the third degree about what it was, how we were doing it, why we were doing it, and so on. It crippled our team until this person retired and the group housing the databases simply gave us administrative control over them.

As I say to my wife sometimes (her workplace is its own special case of funny-farm): "You should be amused, but no longer surprised."

Answer 2

Actually, there's almost no active moderators left.

Let's talk about the really hard truth here. We have a lot more trolls and trolling than we had. We have folks who believe that the only way to change the status quo for the better is through conflict - something I disagree with, and well, lots of conflict.

On the other hand, we have threads with several hundred posts. We have trolls obvious and less so.

I realise that SE corporate doesn't have much trust at the moment.

Heck I'm not actually sure how much trust I have with folks right now but a good chunk of in the community folks know me.

The current crop of moderators put in a chunk of time to try to make this a better, less toxic place. Its looking like a superfund site. Tied in with low morale and burn out and... our means with dealing with this are limited.

There will be as many causalities as we let there be. We're going to get as torn apart as we let ourselves to be. Some of the conflicts are going to be a little harder to resolve than others.

Rather than cherry pick - as someone used to the SE way of moderation, let me lay out a few things.

• Things are crazy right now. The sheer moderation workload is probably insane and most of these are not 'easy' things to handle. Assuming they've gotten CMs on board, and with a fairly depleted corps of mods I doubt anyone can keep track of things. Asking folks to flag specific issues is essential in being able to manage this.

• It is worth considering the big picture here. In a chaotic situation we need to assure folks that things are looked at and under control. Letting people know that flags are appreciated, looked at and acted on helps, hopefully maintain confidence in the system.

• While the goal of the new COC was to make SE safer, on the short term, partially due to the sequence of events, things are confused. We have 4 different issues at least none of which have anything to do with the COC all jumbled together. I am for the spirit of what we're trying to achieve, but feel that the way it was handled has basically made it difficult for everyone involved.

• There's no effective way short of working together to deal with these things for now. Even a full compliment of motivated moderators would have difficulty with support of CMs.

I'd love to say there's a quick fix - or even a clear path ahead. There isn't. There's no good way for getting rid of the more... unfortunate choices of words people use, or the pile on of comments. We need folks actively de-escalating not re-escalating things and helping deal with less pleasant stuff. That needs a active, motivated community core. We are not going to end this by pointing fingers at people. We end this with kindness and empathy to the folks who are around us.

Answer 3

You quoted me, so I want to clarify something: we're not warning or suspending people for discussing this stuff, or for disagreeing with our implementation, or for asking questions. All of that is important, even if it isn't always pleasant.

But when that discussion verges into personal attacks and harassment, we have to draw a line. There's nothing to be gained here if, in the name of becoming more welcoming, we end up driving away folks who are trying to learn and build. To achieve that end, participation must be constructive.

The Code of Conduct applies to everyone:

• If you’re here to get help, make it as easy as possible for others to help you.
• Be clear and constructive when giving feedback, and be open when receiving it.
• If you’re here to help others, be patient and welcoming.
• Be inclusive and respectful.
• No subtle put-downs or unfriendly language.
• No name-calling or personal attacks.
• No bigotry.
• No harassment.

I, along with my colleagues, have issued warnings and suspensions to a very diverse group of individuals expressing a wide range of opinions over the past few days... Because they couldn't or wouldn't follow one or more of those rules, opting instead to go out of their way to hurt others. That's unfortunate; but the alternative is worse.

So here's a reminder: this is not a time or place to wage war or to seek retribution; if anyone here is not interested in helping others to learn and build, then they should go do something else, somewhere else. Nothing can be gained here by adding to the damage that has already been done.

Answer 4

I find it a bit difficult to understand the bottom line of your question, because I feel there are multiple issues being conflated here. I will concentrate on this:

There are many users who recognize the problems with the new CoC [...] and there are their enemies. They seem to be organized in flag brigades and use moderators as a tool for their own sake by rising rude flag.

A quick clarification before I go on: the messages you linked to contain comment links. If a comment gets deleted, clicking the link will take you to the question or answer where the comment was posted. So if you find such a link and it leads to an answer that should not be deleted: well yeah, the original comment is now gone!

Whether or not the new (only slightly altered) CoC is helpful or not for the LGBTQ+ community is a debate on its own. Cis and trans people even disagree amongs themselves and I don't intend to discuss that here.

What seems to be a larger issue is the interpretation and planned enforcement of the updated CoC, which is in great part shadowed by the fact that it was heralded by the very unfair treatment of a user of a community in high standing (again, there's a lot to be said about this, and most of it has been said elsewhere).

However, the greatest issue is that the debate around the updated CoC and its official FAQ has sprouted an immense community response; and a lot of it not Nice. There's a wide gray area where we can argue that certain views fit into a person's personal beliefs, but there are a lot of examples of flat-out abuse (mostly transphobic, but also homophobic remarks). The worst of these don't live long on the site, because they are deleted fast, as they should be.

So how do abusive posts and comments get deleted? By flagging. Flagging is a key component in community-driven moderation. But the way flags are implemented suggests that it's very hard to do harm. You need several flags to destroy posts, and the full flag history is transparently visible to moderators and staff, complete with the name and date of the flaggers. One can easily imagine a band of trolls getting together to delete things with flags, but if anything gets deleted without merit, a single custom moderator flag can initiate an investigation on the matter, and I assure you that mods and staff will not take such flag abuse lightly.

So about the "flag brigades". Since you said you've only registered you might not be aware of moderation in chat. Some language- and moderation-related chatrooms support cv-pls tags (mild abuse of the tag markdown syntax in chat) to raise awareness of things to close. The tag itself reads as "CV please" for "close vote please", but everyone understands those to mean that this is only a request for other users to make educated, conscious assessments of the post being linked. It usually takes 5 pairs of eyes to have something closed in this manner.

Although we're talking about flag "requests" now, the dynamics is the same. You might see in the transcript that certain users are angrily asking for flags regarding the pronoun debate, and perhaps it's understandable to be angry considering the amount of filth being thrown around. My point, however, is that such a request for a flag doesn't imply that "a brigade" will jump on the post and flag it. Unless you think that everyone in chat is a mindless droid (I hope not!) you should see that these messages only raise awareness to content that the poster found unacceptable. What happens after is up to the discretion of every other user. They attach their names to their flags, and if something gets deleted when it shouldn't have, there will be repercussions.

If you see something get deleted when it didn't deserve it: raise a custom moderator flag and let moderators or staff investigate. Otherwise read between the lines, and notice that plenty of the flag requests are subsequently debated, and people will disagree whether something that was linked really deserves deletion. People's backgrounds and assessment of subjective issues varies, which is why several people have to agree for rude flags to do anything without moderator intervention.

But from the sheer volume of blatant hate that I've seen posted since the CoC FAQ came out (and summarily deleted), I urge you not to think that the lukewarm responses left alive on the site are representative of the posts that are asked to be flagged.

Answer 5

They seem to be organized in flag brigades and use moderators as a tool for their own sake by rising rude flag. They call for help in the Tavern on the Meta. A couple of examples:

Moderation requests in various forms (flag-plsdelete-plsreview-plscv-pls) have been allowed within reason in the tavern for a long time now. Participants are invited to always use their own best judgement when deciding to flag a post or not.

These requests serve as a way to get more eyes on a topic, and discussing broader moderation and examples has been historically allowed in the tavern, so we're not going to forbid it for now.

This is in essence no different then users coming across posts naturally and actioning them. We have different automated moderation queues that do similar things all over the network in dozens of different forms.

Answer 6

To see how big a deal, in numerical terms, the pronoun issue actually is, I searched Stack Overflow for all of the standard English pronouns (and pronominal adjectives) that I could think of. My results were:

1. I: 26,921,573 (23.13%)
2. it: 24,983,163 (21.47%)
3. you: 21,709,865 (18.65%)
4. your: 11,353,972 (9.76%)
5. my: 11,243,650 (9.66%)
6. me: 4,947,492 (4.25%)
7. them: 3,295,834 (2.83%)
8. its: 2,849,110 (2.45%)
9. they: 2,772,588 (2.38%)
10. we: 2,559,753 (2.20%)
11. their: 1,344,058 (1.15%)
12. our: 733,703 (0.63%)
13. us: 681,041 (0.59%)
14. he: 334,225 (0.29%)
15. his: 268,400 (0.23%)
16. mine: 130,177 (0.11%)
17. yours: 74,473 (0.06%)
18. him: 72,965 (0.06%)
19. her: 43,755 (0.04%)
20. she: 40,502 (0.03%)
21. theirs: 8,175 (0.01%)
22. ours: 6,356 (0.01%)
23. hers: 1,292 (0.00%)

Five of the top six pronouns are either first- or second-person. Which is unsurprising because of Stack Exchange's Q&A format. You post your question, and I respond with my answer. Or vice-versa. Conveniently, all of those words are gender-neutral in English, and so I was able to write that without revealing my sex or gender (I'm male, in case you were wondering) or reacting to yours. If this site were in another "more-gendered" language, then we might not be so grammatically lucky.

Occasionally, it's necessary to refer to a person in the third person: Another poster ("My solution is based on User12345's, but I optimized it by..."), a user, a co-worker, or a blogger. But that's an exception to the dominant "I"/"you" conversation paradigm.

The six pronouns that carry gender information in English got a combined 761,139 search results. A large number in absolute terms, but only 0.65% of the total pronoun count. And if 99% of those are in reference to "cis" people with no controversy over the correct pronouns to use, that puts at most 1 pronoun in 15,000 in violation of the Code of Conduct.

Answer 7

This is not about pronouns.

The weaponization of the CoC started 2 years ago with the first major changes that removed the clear simple language and started the language lawyering that you see today.

We are just seeing the egregious abuse of it now, that many of us have been subject to for 2 years.

Answer 8

Over the last two weeks, I personally have cast four abuse flags on MSE posts and comments that were overtly homophobic or transphobic, and I know of plenty of other instances of that from discussions here. Though they are a minority of the reactions to the changes, such abusive posts have been coming up in a noticeable amount lately. Asking for help in getting rid of those in a timely way is legitimate (see also Magisch's answer), specially given how MSE moderation has been stretched thin. Denouncing for brigading users trying to get rid of hateful content is not appropriate.

Answer 9

Suggested Edit: Please keep in mind that this response of mine is contingent upon the currently existing mindset as stated at the bottom.

I so strongly wish that this can be resolved, but I suspect that it's not possible. And the reason that it's not possible isn't because of any particular fault on either Monica's side or SE.

(....Though there may exist significant fault on the side of SE.) Please note, I insist that this only sounds like a contradiction.

The problem has its roots in the underlying architecture of "trying to not be offensive" efforts. Note: Such efforts are absolutely laudable, and in all ways to be commended.

Specifically: You must be intolerant of subtleties in such an effort (and resulting rule set) because each and every subtlety lends itself to unavoidable misinterpretation on both sides.

And those subtleties and resulting misinterpretations land us right were we are now.

Bottom line, I don't have an answer to this, but instead the following meta-answer: An answer to this does not exist in the the context of the currently existing mindset.