SE Inc. Director of Public Q&A retweets bad-faith, misrepresentative tweet

Question

As we all know, SE Inc. has engaged in highly problematic and widely criticized actions against the SE community and specific moderators.

Earlier today (Oct 11th, 2019), Ms. Sara Chipps, "Director of Public Q&A" at Stack Exchange Inc. (who has been personally involved in SE Inc.'s problematic conduct) retweeted the following:

Text:

Sara Ownbey Chipps has retweeted

Tyranny Siren @bitandbang · 11 Std.
Reading comments on a blog post about a CoC:

If you’re against CoCs and to protest you’re leaving the community because the CoC has become more inclusive...

1. You identified yourself as part of the problem
2. You removed your problematic self from the community

... thank you?

While Ms. Chipps did not write this herself, she did actively retweet it without commenting on it; and considering her official capacity – this is very close to being a statement of the company's position on the matter.

I will state the obvious and say that:

• The claim that the Code of Conduct has "become more inclusive" is, at best, highly contested.
• Almost no critics of the new Code of Conduct changes believe it has "become more inclusive".
• The reasons for protesting and for leaving aren't excessive or insufficient "inclusivity", but rather coercion, authoritarianism and action in bad faith on the part of SE Inc.

and the above holds regardless of whether one agrees with the criticism, or whether one believes the CoC changes are called for. Moreover, relevant SE Inc. staff is quite aware of the above.

It is therefore, in my opinion, quite offensive for an SE Inc. official such as Ms. Chipps to have chosen to misrepresent the situation and the company's critics with this retweet.

Critics of SE Inc. policies or diktats are not "problematic selves" who should remove themselves from the community.

_{Another twitter thread of Ms. Chipps from October 10th may also be of interest.}

Answer 1

There needs to be a serious discussion regarding a policy for staff which prevents them from publicly discussing/endorsing things that directly oppose how the sites generally work.

---

Case in point, I was astonished that The Register had been given actual details regarding the firing debacle and not a canned response like:

We are aware of this issue and we take all matters involving dismissals of a moderator seriously. As such we cannot share any details regarding this until we deem it appropriate. We can however say that an investigation into finding out exactly what transpired is on its way.

I don't want to rehash it all but a part of what Sara said was:

"While we can’t discuss any more specifics, I’ll share that we take our CoC very seriously," Chipps continued. "It was created to foster a community of kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect. We understand that a few other moderators have resigned, and they may or may not have full knowledge of the situation. But we hope all moderators know that we very much value and appreciate their contributions, and above all else, we are committed to creating communities that are welcoming and inclusive."

The clear implication is that Monica went against said CoC which fosters a community of kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect thereby casting shadows on her character.

This sort of statement should never have been allowed to go out - and I'm saying this as someone with very little no experience dealing with press or community management - and the fact that it did really shows the levels of gross incompetence or the malicious nature of the people we're dealing with.

Answer 2

Seeing a public figure of the company nudge one opinion that people leaving is a positive thing is an indirect way of saying "We don't want people who disagree with our decisions to stay here." The mob mentality of accept-it-or-go in a place where the success of the site relies solely on community feedback is absurd. These changes may help a subset of people feel more included, but there is a cutoff where the cost of alienating the rest of the community isn't worth it, especially if it makes a mess of how Q&A takes place.

Ever since the abrupt change to the Code of Conduct, the welcoming nature of the community has taken a major hit as a whole. The amount of backlash is not because people are going to choose not to be respectful; it's because it's an unrealistic and unreasonable way to encourage users to be good people. I am very resistant to being demanded that I type in a particular manner that is abnormal to me. If I encountered someone, in person, who threw a pronoun my way that isn't typical language to me, I'd refer to them by their name, "you", or "they". Someone being offended by "you" or "they" is being at least as unreasonable as I am when I disagree with their desire to control my language.

CM's should be there to build a foundation of rules, but the community feedback should help shape and refine those rules to fit the social nature of the site.

Answer 3

A statement such as "if you are X then you are Y" seeks to draw an "us and them" distinction. The antithesis of inclusivity.

Answer 4

Like any good member of a community, I have always tried to presume the actions of all parties - regular community members, moderators, and the omnipotent staff of SE - were and are well intentioned. I'm willing to be inclusive and build up the community. I'm willing to let facts come in and processes play out.

But here's the saddest part of this whole episode: Actions intended to do good and promote inclusivity have instead continued to enflame the problem.

As leaders of a community of messy people, your objective needs to be to keep the peace well enough that life can flourish. Endorse good behavior, punish things that cross the line. Did the foundational policy need to move to directly address a problem behavior? Fine. But once the right foundation is set, be clear, tread carefully in your public remarks and actions, be smart about whether you are about to do more harm than good.

The loss of community members, even when warranted, is tragic. You've already won the point anyway, so hang up the sword and start working to bring back the peace.

Answer 5

While Ms. Chipps did not write this herself, she did actively retweet it without commenting on it; and considering her official capacity – this is very close to being a statement of the company's position on the matter.

I will state the obvious and say that:

• The question of whether the Code of Conduct has "become more inclusive" is, at best, a highly contested claim.
• Almost no critics of the new Code of Conduct changes believe it has "become more inclusive".
• The reasons for protesting and for leaving aren't excessive or insufficient "inclusivity", but rather coercion, authoritarianism and bad faith on the part of SE Inc.

and the above holds regardless of whether one agrees with the criticism, or whether one believes the CoC changes are called for. Moreover, relevant SE Inc. staff is quite aware of the above.

It is therefore, in my opinion, quite offensive for an SE Inc. official such as Ms. Chipps to have chosen to misrepresent the situation and the company's critics with this retweet.

I stumbled into this question due to the bounty asking which is

Looking for an answer drawing from credible and/or official sources.

---

Firstly, it seems that this is not a statement reflective of company policy, it has not been endorsed more explicitly by the company and Shog9 wrote in a comment under your question:

I'm leaving this here for Sara to respond to if she wants to, but I don't see anything useful coming out of it otherwise.

As such, it seems to be a retweet made by Ms. Chipps in a personal capacity. Furthermore, I will assume that Ms. Chipps is aware of this question's existence, given its two week anniversary today. If she really stood by it, she has had ample time to double down, for example by endorsing the contents of the tweet once more in an answer here.

While I cannot look into Ms. Chipps head, I can look on her blog which I think has a relevant article on forgiveness. I will quote a liberal chuck (but not all) of her blog post, so as not to misrepresent her words. I have emphasised a few words which I will refer back to in tying this back to the question at hand.

There is one trait, and besides the many good people that surround me it is the only thing that has kept me away from succumbing to the dangers of my temperament. That trait is the ability to forgive myself, even when it seems unbearable.

Very often, I do things that are extremely stupid. I think no matter what our personality type that happens to us every so often. I make a bad call when designing a product that hindsight shows me from a mile away, I put off a client with a sloppy email or a poor follow up, I miscalculate my monthly income in an astronomical way, or I drop my iPhone 4 on cement while running down the street in heels (for absolutely no good reason besides being dared or trying to catch an ice cream truck). Things like this used to cause me much pain, and stop me in my tracks unable to go forward from the shame I felt and the voice in my head telling me I should have known so much better. There would be absolutely no forward progress while I berated myself, sometimes looking in the mirror and asking repeatedly how it was possible for one person to be so stupid.

Time and experience taught me that if I kept up that type of behavior it not only would retard my progress it would endanger my ability to run my business and follow my career goals. I've learned to forgive myself no matter how spectacularly I fail, and that has enabled me to accomplish things and get to places that only existed in my wildest dreams of the future.

Many tout the benefits of "getting over it" and "moving on", however, I think the only way to describe this process is forgiveness. You are angry at yourself, for hurting yourself; just as you would be angry at someone else for hurting you. You let yourself down, you should have known better, and you were inconsiderate of your own needs, yet again. If we can't get past these emotions of guilt, anxiety, and discomfort we can't look back and gain what we can use from the experience.

Based on this, I think Ms. Chipps has simply moved on. Perhaps she doesn't think an explanation is necessary, or perhaps she thinks a discussion on this will be hurtful and not constructive.

While I still think it would be helpful for Ms. Chipps to explain her reasoning with respect to this question. Alas, I think this may be what we will have to settle for.

Edit: in the blog post, too, the reasons for apologizing are not limited to cases that only hurt Ms. Chipps.

---

Of course an even different reason may be of the law of the holes variety. As someone who's paid attention to different crises, I'd say that's a reasonable position for Ms. Chipps and the company to take. The number of people that are really upset isn't that big*, so they may just think they can wait out the storm. After all, people are only upset for so long until they leave or lose interest in being upset, either way, they won't be much of nuisance (to the leadership) in six to eight weeks.

*_{though it does include me, no need to downvote for that ;)}

Answer 6

I really have strong arguments about making Meta a new Twitter relay. Twitter is by nature form over substance, 62500 tweets is a lot to have on an account, so I bet you could find tons of smelly things if you cared to dig the pile. Could we not unload that all at once on Meta, please?

this is very close to being a statement of the company's position on the matter.

Yet, it's not, and I quite disagree we should try to make an angry mob about it.

Answer 7

That's none of our business. What someone does on their personal social media has no direct relevance to Stack Exchange.

If a staff member or any other user is acting badly on Stack Exchange, then we can complain about that. In the case of this director, we already do.

If they aren't acting badly on Stack Exchange, they can write "I hate every Stack Exchange user personally and want to delete their accounts" or "I kick puppies for fun" elsewhere all they want. We care about their contribution to the network, not about their private character.

Some places do have a norm to act on people's private character: people in the US often get fired for posts on social media that their boss dislikes. So what? Do we really want to contribute to a world where everyone must be in customer service mode 24/7?

Answer 8

You'll have to pardon the overflowing exhaustion, but all I'm really seeing is anti-Sara sentiment once again.

Let me be explicit - I don't believe that a retweet of that position was tasteful in the slightest, and it only further calcifies the positions many of us hold whenever she's making an announcement or doing something in an official capacity. Worse, it flies in the face of the advice shared with us when she had a rough day at the office. But, that's all beside the point.

The problem is that there's no documented social media policy to fall back on to say something was broken. So...in public there's nothing preventing her or anyone at that level from retweeting something like that.

You may not like it, but those are the breaks. Until such a policy is defined - either internal or external - that's the kind of behavior we can just...expect.