We need to stop hoping for change in, or help from, SO Inc

Question

This is a message primarily aimed at the avid SE users. Those of us who spend several hours, most every day, asking or answering or editing or closing or reopening or otherwise contributing to the body of knowledge stored on this network.

When we started out on these sites, the company behind them was a plucky little startup, with a very unofficial and "uncorporate" mentality and culture. Employees were as much a part of the community as anyone else, we were all in this together, and we had the same goals: to make the internet a better place and to collect a library of knowledge on a diverse set of subjects.

This is obviously no longer the case. The goals of the community and those of the company have clearly diverged. The company is now a very different beast to what we remember and this isn't going to change. Already, most of the old guard, the people we know and trust, those who spent years building this place, have been fired or have left. Instead of communication, we now get communiqués from management. Instead of partners, we are now considered adversaries.

So, how can we, the users of these sites, continue from here? The only way I can see is by ignoring the company. We need to think of SO Inc. as the absentee landlord and not as the friendly parent we remember. This does not mean we need to attack them or even try to antagonize them, we simply expect nothing more from them than that they keep providing the servers and software that run the sites. We should think of them as nothing more than service providers. We are not friends. We are not colleagues. We have no shared goals. They're just the faceless company that provides us with a service.

There is no point in posting here, on MSE, trying to be heard by the company. That has been made abundantly clear. So let's just keep this site, for as long as we're allowed to, as a place for users to ask questions about the network. Forget feature requests, they're ignored anyway. Forget the desperate pleas for the company to hear us. They fall on deaf ears or, more likely, are never even read at all.

There is also no point in wanting revenge. Sure, the company will be making money off of the content we create. That has always been the case. Yes, many of us object to the idea of a company like this one profiting from our work, but that's the way it is: they own the infrastructure. If we don't like that, all we can do is leave.

I say let them make their money. It costs me nothing. I am here because I enjoy asking and answering questions. I enjoy learning and I enjoy teaching. As long as I can do that, I may continue to be active here, and if that means some unsavory folks will get rich off it, well that's hardly the first time it has happened. As long as the content I create is publicly available to everyone and not behind a paywall, as long as I can feel that my work benefits others and not only the company, I can live with it.

The only way forward is to completely separate the company from the community. We already have a good set of rules we can use for moderating and curating our sites. If SE start pushing new ones, we can choose whether we like them or not. If we do, if we feel they are constructive, we can follow them. If we don't, then we ignore them. If the company objects, well they will suspend us or delete our accounts or remove our diamonds or whatever. So be it.

Until they do, we should continue as we always have. Let's just go back to our sites, accept that the company will never again be a partner in what we are trying to do here, and try to keep the lights on until they finally throw the switch and kill the network. Either that, or we stop participating. But trying and hoping for change, support, or guidance from the company is a waste of everyone's time.

So, let's just forget about SO Inc. They will eventually impose rules we refuse to follow, at which point we'll leave or be kicked out. But until then, those of us who want to continue should do so, and should accept that SO Inc. are no longer relevant.

Answer 1

Two things most users are unhappy about:

1. We can do nothing about the fact that this site is controlled by its current management;

2. We do not have full control of our contributions.

I like to solve problems once and for all. For these two problems to be solved permanently, we need to move away from this platform. Any other solution has a degree of uncertainty which I do not accept.

Answer 2

So your "solution" is to let yourself be exploited?

There is no point in posting here, on MSE, trying to be heard by the company. That has been made abundantly clear. So let's just keep this site, for as long as we're allowed to, as a place for users to ask questions about the network. Forget feature requests, they're ignored anyway. Forget the desperate pleas for the company to hear us. They fall on deaf ears or, more likely, are never even read at all.

The intention of management is to keep users posting and visiting the sites they want them to so that they can make money for themselves. Your argument is that we should just go along with that regardless of what destruction happens to the site.

I don't think that's a widely held view, but regardless it's not mine.

The intention of these changes, IMO, is to make SE look attractive to investors, either in the form of merger style investment or an IPO. The managers pushing this are not doing that to keep SE alive long term, they're doing it to make a bit pay day for themselves, in the form of bonuses and share options. It's pretty clear from their behavior that they don't care at all about keep SE alive beyond that pay day.

My experience of these scenarios is that in the rush to make a big pay day for managers and VC investors the long term survival of businesses (some of which I'd been employed by at the time) is compromised.

At best companies going this route suffer a huge fall after the pay day - typically within months. This takes years to recover from. At worst recovery is not possible or the new management, again looking for a return on investment in short order, simply completely change the business and products to an unrecognizable state.

No users of SE will benefit from these changes (IMO). Adding content just adds to the pay day bonus the management team will make. It won't help SE survive long term in any form we know.

A lot of this doom and gloom could be eliminated if management, particularly the CEO, engaged with the community and made clear, unambiguous statements about the Plan for SE.

What we have instead been given is the likes of the last blog post:

https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/01/17/this-week-stackoverflowknows-syntactic-sugar-overfit-or-nah-and-the-definition-of-norm/?cb=1

Just what is the point of that drivel of a blog post? It serves no useful purpose and if that's management's idea of solving problems on SE, they're clueless. Talk about syntactic sugar - that's all this was - sugar.

What's the Plan, CEO?

What we need is a short post from the CEO stating the Plan for SE, not just Teams. We need no waffle, no marketing speak, no legalistic language. No "one big happy family" spin. Just the plain, ordinary truth.

I don't believe we'll get it, but I'd like to be wrong.

Whether making noise and protesting makes any difference in the end I'm am skeptical about - I don't think anyone "up top" gives a damn. But doing nothing produces the same end game: SE a shell gutted for the aims of M&A or IPO and "management by bonus".

We all want a profitable SE long term. But if what is left is not SE, I, for one, am not interested in contributing to the wallets of a few managers aiming for a big pay out.

So prove me wrong, CEO. Let us know the game plan. Convince us it's not to gut SE for personal profit.

If you actually published a plan we could believe in and listened to our advice about running SE, maybe it would help SE survive long term.

It is kinda dumb ignoring the advice of posters on a site that you want to be used by companies to get their advice from and inform their decision making. Maybe you (SE Inc) need to start using your own product.

Answer 3

Remember the recent case where staff removed the featured tag from a moderator resignation? They earlier said site moderators were given "full control" of the featured tag, which just made it another violation of their own protocols.

"Move on" could be an option if we actually controlled at least some aspects of the site. Instead, we (the community) risk getting steamrolled by SE if they disagree with some way the site is handled.

It's like any kind of new laws: unless the state is a dictatorship, there are lots of people who have a say in the decision. SE was a sort of democracy (ish), and now, it's a dictatorship. We, the moderators (diamond and otherwise), have some tiny bit of control over site moderation policies, but we can be overruled by SE without a discussion.

They will eventually impose rules we refuse to follow, at which point we'll leave or be kicked out.

This has already happened. People are leaving more or less constantly, because of new rules and events that act as the last straw for different people. Many, including me, took the first round of problems as the opportunity to leave (hence the 1 rep account). A growing amount is taking the firing of Shog and Robert as the final straw. Codidact is getting a ton of attention because of that specific round, now that they've actually organized themselves into a real system.

You may agree or disagree with SE on so many things, and decide to leave or stay, but this:

But until then, those of us who want to continue should do so, and should accept that SO Inc. are no longer relevant.

It isn't right. At all. SOI still enforces policies presumably cooked up at staff meetings, without properly considering the consequences. Removing the featured tag on resignations after a day for an instance; this goes against their previous statements (although that's most certainly not a first). It caused backlash because it's seen as disrespectful to the moderators (which I agree with, but it's not relevant here).

SE gets involved in a tiny subset of cases, and now without involving the community in the decision. If you think "SE isn't gonna get involved, so I'll continue on the site", you should reconsider your reason for staying, because they're gonna get involved in some things, whether you want it or not, even if the community can handle it.

Twitter-driven development might still be going hard, in which case, a tweet can get staff involved. It has happened several times already.

Stay if you manage to look aside this, as well as the extremely high likelihood of future transgressions, and still can and want to carry on with your regular business.

Otherwise, it might be time to look for the door. You definitely wouldn't be the first to.

Answer 4

Hoffen und Harren macht manchen zum Narren

German proverb, roughly translates to

To hope and to wait turns many into fools

Actually, there are two scenarios where "hope" is a useful resource:

First, when you have really nothing else. Keeping up a positive attitude is a significant trait in people who show high levels of mental resilience.

And then, when your hope has company... Meaning: you are actively working to improve the situation. You are the one who pushes your hopeful vision towards becoming reality.

Now, as written elsewhere repeatedly, I fear that we have no more influence on the course that SE Inc wants to take.

So, actually, in case we decide to stay around here for this or that reason, there isn't much left besides that unrealistic glimpse of hope. We, the community, we can try and see how far we get on our in this place. The company can try and see how they grow dynamically, now that they alienated so many of us.

Answer 5

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go, there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

-- The Clash

Staying - YES

Pretending like nothing has happened and continuing as usual - NO

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For me NO implies not adding any new content on the main sites. This is an important difference from just ignoring the company (knowing we are no longer partners) while continuing to add additional value in terms of content.

Answer 6

The biggest question mark in your argument for me is whether the company is content to just ignore us. Right now the company views the community as a liability, at some point in the future it might decide to do something about that even beyond the damage they caused just this week. The current SO, and even more the SO of the near future isn't the same company we knew anymore. I don't think we can count on the public Q&A to remain as it is, we simply don't know what the company will do.

The company is pursuing an IPO, which means they have to grow revenue from 70 million to 700 million as Joel Spolsky said himself. Anything that isn't helping to achieve the goal is in a precarious position.

I agree that there is nothing we can do to change their minds, with VCs involved and an IPO as a goal the decisions aren't made anywhere we could reach.

Answer 7

I think you're largely right. I can even mostly agree with the bit about free contributions for someone else's profit. At least to the extent that contributions are a net positive for the contributor.

The problem with returning to contributing is this. The discontent or whatever we want to call it didn't start with Shog, Monica, or pronouns. It didn't even start with the Twitter/HNQ thing, or The Unwelcoming. It started a long time ago, somewhere in the middle of the decade. "Let's Plan the Second Iteration of the Stack Exchange Quality Project!" is kind of the poster child at this point for what went wrong: lots of ideas solicited from enthusiastic volunteers, then...crickets.

The problem is, I don't feel like my contributions are a net positive. Stack Overflow is the site that I care about and that I am (was) invested in. And for me -- and I think for others -- it doesn't feel like we can make it a good place without a partnership from the company.

Maybe this is a problem specific to that giant. Maybe you folks who participate on smaller sites feel like you have post quality mostly under control. But I don't. I feel frustrated and unable to find anything to do that feels useful.

I don't feel like my answers are making the world a better place -- I feel like they're barely visible in a sea of mediocrity. I don't feel like my edits are helpfully polishing raw lode into search target gold -- I feel like they're mostly, well, you know. I don't feel like my votes are sorting content, my comments are eliciting useful improvements, or my closures are particularly effective at pruning search dead ends.

I'm not going to fully rehash this; it's been said many times in many places (by me among others). We have asked, again and again, for help with the problems we see. And we have been met variously with silence, promises of change, distractions, and the occasional um, bold reversal where the company decides we're the ones not doing enough. The last year or two have just been about realizing how fundamental, rather than accidental, that was.

So, I don't disagree with your plea for acceptance; I am coming to accept the reality. But in my case it pairs with not wanting to be a part of that reality.

Answer 8

If we are talking from the moderators perspective...

So, how can we, the users of these sites, continue from here?

I don't know, how we can do this. And you have already answered why:

If the company objects, well they will suspend us or delete our accounts or remove our diamonds or whatever. So be it.

They have already forced some, hm, unpleasant rules. I assume, later this year they will push new rules, which many of us will not agree with. So, probably, to leave right now is not the bad choice. The problem with that, at least for me, is that I feel, that for the community it will look like betray.

Answer 9

We can ignore the company, sure. On most Q/A or forum-like websites, not many people pay a lot of attention to the company behind the site.

But on most sites, users aren't asked to invest so much time and effort polishing content, performing moderation actions, participating in 'meta' conversations, and so on. (When I say 'asked', obviously no-one's obliged to, but it has been implied that effort is expected, worth people's time, and required for the proper functioning of the sites.)

Let's just go back to our sites, accept that the company will never again be a partner in what we are trying to do here, and try to keep the lights on until they finally throw the switch and kill the network.

If there's a realistic threat that they're going to throw that switch, it makes it much less worth people's time contributing here going forward.

I agree that it has now been made clear that the company doesn't really want the same level of community input into the future of the sites as they used to. But perhaps the least that active members deserve is for it to be set out what the company's vision is, so they can take an informed decision as to how much time it is worth spending making contributions.

Answer 10

Sure, the company will be making money off of the content we create.

I'm not sure that's so.

Apparently the numbers are ...

• $44 million from Jobs (careers)
• $28 million for Teams (software to Enterprises)
• $16 million from Ads (mostly for Azure)

... so about $70 million. That's not exactly "money from the content" -- though it is from having a large number of users and a good software product.

What we need is a short post from the CEO stating the Plan for SE

Perhaps it's to, double the revenue each year for the next three years -- to take it from $70 million to $700 million -- and then an IPO.

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But anyway yes -- what the OP posted here might overlap with what Jon Ericson (leaving SE) said -- i.e. perhaps you're not and don't have to be interested in the company, instead you can focus on using the service for Q&A.

What other thing Joel mentioned was Trello -- the plan was to have like 100 million users, of whom 1% would pay for it -- and the 1% would be people who made money from using it. And to get that many users it had to appeal to more than only software developers.

So perhaps that means that SE won't be shutting down the non-SO sites (or at least not all of them) though we don't know how they'll hope to monetise them all (and the monetisation plan if any might be different for different sites, site-specific).

Answer 11

Re: your final words

They will eventually impose rules we refuse to follow, at which point we'll leave or be kicked out. But until then, those of us who want to continue should do so, and should accept that SO Inc. are no longer relevant.

No, no and no. Some leaving (probably righteously) happened after several previous cases of ignorance. Some people went on boycotts, were leaving or reducing activity, showing anger. But majority was simply shrugging it and "doing the best I can".

Now, the company decided to go further and intentionally harm a specific person. If before we could question some abstract rights, morals and ethics (such as licences and SEI owning anything to the people), now we question the rights, ethics and morals of humanity and individual dignity (N.B.). That's a differnet level, it's not about rules, as no rules really exist any more.

So, if you say (paraphrased) "once they impose rules we refuse to follow, we'll leave", I say that it's time to leave, as I refuse to follow "no rules" rules.

I know that by still posting here, I don't lead by example, but I, too, am emotionally attached (if that is a thing), so it's hard.

(N.B.: I don't mean the fact that M.C. was removed, I do mean the way how it was done. Also, to day, nobody, seemingly not even her, knows how she broke the rules. Unacceptable.)

Answer 12

As a user, I'm reasonably happy. Like you, I use SE to learn things by answering other people's questions, just outside of my comfort zone. And that works. But my involvement will stop there(*).

SE needs moderators and reviewers, but nothing forces anyone to do that job for free. And if everybody stops reviewing/moderating this place will lose a lot of its attractiveness for users.

SE should also remember that its success was built for a part in on Experts-Exchange's demise. History repeats itself for those who ignore it.

(*) I did a lot of reviewing, until I figured out I was wasting a lot of time on the "test" reviews.

Answer 13

The only way forward is to completely separate the company from the community.

How?

We already have a good set of rules we can use for moderating and curating our sites. If SE start pushing new ones, we can choose whether we like them or not.

No, the rules are not for debate, discussing them leads to bans or other measures. We have seen that happen before.

If we do, if we feel they are constructive, we can follow them. If we don't, then we ignore them. If the company objects, well they will suspend us or delete our accounts or remove our diamonds or whatever. So be it.

So be it? That's not a very strong argument.

We need to stop hoping for help and continue like nothing is going on. When the company misbehaves again then so be it? When the company is not listening to the community (E.g. bugs and requests) then so be it?

accept that the company will never again be a partner

Why should this be considered acceptable?

So, let's just forget about SO Inc. They will eventually impose rules we refuse to follow, at which point we'll leave or be kicked out. 

How is that a good plan?