What should we be looking to change and what is inviolable?

Question

Updated note (with the original post still below the line)- Thank you, very much, for the time you've spent answering these questions. I learned a ton. In fact, as I've hinted below, I'd like to do a set of questions and answers like this fairly regularly (roughly weekly, in the beginning, and with less frequency later). For now, my brain is full :). I will keep reading, but I have to shift my focus to writing the quarterly blog / meta post, for instance. So feel free to keep answering, and I'm still reading, but know that the frequency of posts from me here will slow down some (just to set expectations). Check out (and please answer) my next question!

---

As part of my onboarding as the new VP of Community, I want to better understand what Stack Exchange means to you (yes, you, everyone reading this question). I’ve got many questions and I know you have many answers but let’s start with one or two at a time and see where it goes.

Would you please take a moment to think about and tell me the following:

• One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.
• One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

What would these things be?

I understand that many of these answers may already exist here on MSE or over on MSO or other meta sites around the network but if you’d humor me by helping me find them more easily, I’d really appreciate it.

For the next 24 hours (at least) I’ll be checking here frequently to respond to any notes or questions that you may have. I don’t promise to have all the answers yet, but I will promise to read and take seriously everything said, and to do my best to answer questions where I can.

Initial thinking around some early goals

Yesterday, I promised some discussion around community strategy and to share my thinking about some early goals for my tenure here. One of my goals is to post a question like this for the community roughly every week as we get to know each other and discuss it so that you get a chance to know me, and I get a chance to learn more about you. I will probably muck with the format of this, (and possibly the medium.. Maybe chat, maybe text, etc). I’m also, hopefully very soon, going to begin a “listening tour” through the various stack exchange sites, once we get the logistics figured out.

When I was at Reddit, I had a “standing offer” to meet with any mod team that wanted an hour of my time and listen and talk about whatever they would like, provided they understood that I was not able to change the past, but only to talk about the future. Those conversations were the most meaningful that I had in my time there, and with a very diverse group of users (from those who ran big subreddits like r/news to those in more… esoteric parts of the site). I learned a ton, and I know that I will again, once we figure out how to execute conversations like those here. What I learned in those definitely influenced my decision-making every day.

Today, I’ll be in a monthly business review meeting presenting what the team will be doing in Q3 (this was a plan that I largely inherited, so it isn’t exactly “mine” as much as it’s the combined work product of the team and its interim leadership). Once we’ve kicked off the work of Q3, I intend to begin planning Q4. I have high hopes that we can make parts of that process far more open and collaborative (if not immediately, very soon). Catija is working with a group of moderators to identify mod tooling and policy improvements that would be beneficial for us to work on in future quarters. Some parts of our quarterly tactics are ripe for community involvement. Others, (for instance, Trust and Safety tools designed to prevent spammers and trolls from abusing the sites) absolutely are not likely to be discussed in public. We will continue to hold those tools closely, and won’t tend to discuss them much in public, other than in the most general of terms.

I have other, more internal goals as well, of course (for example, improving the way that the community team interacts with the product teams and how to improve the quality and frequency of the advice that we give them; improving the quality of onboarding that we give new Community Team members, etc). But one thing that I hope you will notice quickly is that we are going to be looking for opportunities to engage with community members in the spirit of partnership.

Which returns me to where I started: if there was a) one thing that you would advise me, in my role as VP of Community, never to touch, and b) one thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible, what would they be?

Answer 1

Today is Tisha b'Av, the date the ancient Jewish temple was destroyed. (I promise this is relevant.) According to our tradition, the second temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred, sinat chinam. Among all the problems of the time, one incident stood out as the precipitating event:

A wealthy man held a party and sent his servant to invite his friend Kamtza. The servant misunderstood and made the invitation to Bar Kamtza, whom the host hated. Bar Kamtza, thinking the man was offering an olive branch, attended. The host was furious and ordered him to leave. Bar Kamtza, trying to save face, repeatedly tried to make peace, offered to pay for his food, and even offered to pay for half the party. But the host expeled him in front of all his other guests, none of whom objected, setting in motion a chain of events that led to the destruction.

The host hated Bar Kamtza so much that he no longer saw him as a fellow human being deserving of basic decency and dignity. Presented with the results of a misunderstanding, the man in power escalated instead of de-escalating, harming everybody present (and, according to the account in the Talmud, the whole nation).

Philippe, your predecessors didn't destroy a whole people or a national treasure, but there has been a lot of baseless hatred and harm and pain to lots of people over the last few years. Some of that can never be repaired, but some still can be, even at this late date. What has been missing is not the ability to correct errors but the will.

What should you change as quickly as possible? This ongoing failure to make what amends and repairs can be made. It's the ethical thing to do, and -- to speak to the company's business-driven interests -- it would show the people who build Stack Overflow and the SE network that you're willing and able to correct mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes; we learn a lot about people and institutions by seeing how they handle their effects. Yes you have the power of the wealthy party host, but is that the kind of person you want to be?

What should you never touch? The community's goodwill. You have the potential for awesome partners in growth, people who still want to see Stack Overflow succeed despite it all, people who know a lot about how to do that on the community side. You've got lots of professional experience but you're new to SE and SE jettisoned decades of its CM expertise in January 2020. The previous people at upper levels not only didn't engage with the communities but shunned them. By coming to Meta and starting this conversation you've taken an important step. Keep that up and follow through: engage with the community, participate on some of the 170 communities, ask for feedback regularly, carefully listen to feedback (which is not the same as "do what we say"), don't spring disruptive changes on people -- treat the community as partners not enemies.

(I realize much of the previous paragraph belongs in the "what should I change" paragraph, because what needs to change is the corporate attitude, but the reason it needs to change is that somehow you still have a community here that cares, and you should work hard to maintain a good relationship with it.)

---

2021-09-27 update: I was asked in a comment if anybody from the company has contacted me since this post. No, I've received no contact. Unless I edit to remove this note, you can assume there have been no changes.

Answer 2

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

I'd like you to safeguard one of the ideas these communities are built upon: that these sites are meant to be libraries/repositories of knowledge and expertise, in Q&A form. You know, that bit that's at the top of the tour page, being drowned out by the big bold 'Ask questions, get answers' underneath it.

Past initiatives (e.g. the Welcome Wagon) haven't always ended up doing that idea justice, and it's not too hard to find people on the internet that weren't aware of this idea when asking their questions, and that as a result end up being disappointed/upset/angry/defeated when they run into it after asking their questions and seeing them moderated: They asked a question and wanted an answer, like the tour promised.

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

At least two answers have already mentioned changing (the communities' perceptions on) the current relationship between communities and staff. That's definitely a good start.

Once you're done with that though (or perhaps while you're busy doing it), some work on reinforcing that idea I mentioned above would mean a lot to me personally. Anything that can help new users constructively enter into existing communities, anything that also clearly states these sites aren't just 'drop question, become entitled to an answer', would probably help a lot to decrease frustrations and friction between existing communities and new users.

Answer 3

One thing that you should never touch? That's a difficult question, and I don't have an answer for that at the moment, but here's a stab at the other question.

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

This is going to be not so easy, but... if you have any influence, the company culture in its interactions with the community.

Especially after everything that happened in '19/'20 (which I'm sure you've heard about), the company has pulled away from the community. Nobody in the company except for the community team (including Teresa here) really gets why the community is actually valuable to the company (see the infamous %0.0015 thing). If the CMs have to worry about convincing the company that the community actually has value... then that detracts a lot from what time they can spend on actually working on it. I'm getting the impression that this is starting to change, but other things feel like a step backwards (Collectives dropping without a warning, for instance). NDAs in particular are a huge step away from how everything was conducted in the past.

The impression given over the past few years is that the company is like "Oh, god, what do we do with these people? They're loud, annoying, provide a very small percentage of our pageviews, suck up lots and lots of staff time for a very small amount of users... and they act so entitled, like they deserve to know what we're doing!"
If you have any power... that needs to change. Yes, the community - especially the Meta community - are an entitled bunch of smartasses, myself included. But it comes from a place of having had a very, very good community experience in the past, with awesome CMs, and then suddenly pulled in the opposite direction as the company changed direction, several times.

You need to build trust with the community, both personally and for the company; and build trust with the company, that the community is actually important and not just a drain on resources.

---

Staff such as Yaakov have attempted to convince me that this has started already. Which... is great, but I'm still not seeing much of a concrete change. There have been new CM hires, yes, and a lot of talk about fixing that broken trust. I consider myself a pretty active community member - I'm active here on Meta, I'm a moderator on the unofficial Meta Discord, I'm a Room Owner on the Tavern. And yet... I haven't seen much of a difference. (Except for Rosie. I've seen her around here on Meta. Credit where credit's due.) I'm a bit surprised that, as active as I am in all these community spaces, I haven't seen much change. That's what I'm looking for, as soon as possible.

---

Others, (for instance, Trust and Safety tools designed to prevent spammers and trolls from abusing the sites) absolutely are not likely to be discussed in public. We will continue to hold those tools closely, and won’t tend to discuss them much in public, other than in the most general of terms.

...can I suggest maybe discussing these with the best spam-catching team on the internet? Considering that they're actively monitoring every post that arrives on the network, keep records of every piece of spam that's been detected on SE for the past several years, and have a track record of nuking spam within seconds of its being posted, it's probably a good idea just for the data alone. They're probably the best people to work with to report any changes in how spam comes in and monitor the effectiveness.

---

Oh, yeah, and on the "do as soon as possible list", if you could reach out and maybe apologize on behalf of the company to Shog and Robert that'd be great.

---

Good luck in your new role, and hope to see you around much more than previously!

Answer 4

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

Know your limitations: some things are not within your power to change. You can advocate for them, but cannot (usefully) demand them much less promise them.

Be honest about these things. To yourself, to the people here, to your overseers.

Much pain has been wrought by those who have failed in this one area.

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

You're already doing it, but "you" - your team - can do a lot better: communicate. A CM who is silent is a CM who should probably have a different title. And no, for the love of all that is good, do not take this as a suggestion that y'all should put things on hold and do yet another re-org.

Y'all have knowledge. You've seen things, you've seen how they play out. You worked at Reddit ffs; nobody needs to school you in how things can go horribly, tragically wrong. Use that. SHARE that.

Answer 5

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

Stack Exchange sites & communities are invaluable resources. Use them!

Stack Exchange has brought together and helped foster experts in MANY fields. Yet when the company wants to change something, they never seem to think to review the idea with the experts they are so proud to show off to the world otherwise... and the community pretty much always has tons of in-depth feedback and criticism to provide as soon as changes are rolled out.

Have a new feature? Request feedback on it on an appropriate site (or meta site) so that when it goes live, we aren't blindsided and the product has fewer bugs or shortcomings.

Want to redesign some page or workflow? Request feedback on it at the UI/UX Stack Exchange site (or reach out to interested high-rep users there for private feedback, rather than random users who may or may not have any background in visual design).

Have a change in site/network policy you want/need to push out? Please run it by the moderators or the mod council first... they can provide really good feedback if you let them. Many "we told you so"s can be avoided this way.

I get that it might be a gut reaction to think "pfft, I'm not going to ask random internet users for permission to do something at my own company", but this isn't a plea to run everything by us for our approval. It's just a plea to use your resources to make your product better, and your users happier. People here are really good at what they do and are happy to give their advice for free... use that!

Answer 6

Strangely my sentiment echoes that of Mithical's in that I both find it very tough to find something that you shouldn't touch.

Also too, Mithical brings up an excellent point about community, but we need to dive a lot deeper here.

You have to change the culture which perceives the more dedicated of the community members as either antagonists, aggressors or otherwise an opposition to the goals of the company.

It runs a little deeper than what happened in '19/'20, since to be perfectly transparent, a lot of that stuff had been happening for years before that. There is a consistent pattern of engagement with the community, in that somehow we have to "start being nicer" and more accommodating, when realistically speaking, all we've ever really cared about is making sure that someone puts all the details into their gotdang question so we can answer it!

While what happened in late '19 was a fairly sizable blowup - and some of the scars are still fresh in parts of the community - just looking at that instance alone ignores a whole lot of other problems that surfaced. In effect, the volunteer curators which make sites like this viable at all are being marginalized, or often have their conventions violated by the company for experimentation purposes.

All of this speaks to a disconnect into how the company perceives how the community operates, thinks, and what it values. That is dangerous because it is the community that ultimately makes or keeps things viable for use.

Whatever conversations your team is having about how to move community forward only ever happen in secret, and aren't out in the open. What does make its way out into the open are changes that no one in the community is asking for, and that creates this indescribable angst when we see that the company has gone away for months at a time to do A Thing™ to only come back down the mountain, showcasing a service that we just didn't ask for. Then, when you actually do come down and we try to politely ask about the things that need attention, we could consider it fortunate if you only ignored us.

Then you get this vicious cycle of how we're so mean when we openly and loudly reject features that you have poured a lot of love and energy into, and I could at least get that hurt, but the problem isn't that there wasn't a lot of care put into it, it's just that we didn't exactly care about it. Worse, when you actually do deliver something we really like, it gets no fanfare - the fact that you're experimenting with reducing the close votes down from 5 to 3 is a revolutionary thing in content moderation, and we only mentioned it...maybe a month and a half ago when it finally came around to being launched on more sites than Stack Overflow. Instead, our timeline and our energy is a bit absorbed with this "Collectives" thing that you're really hoping the community just goes along with, and I've already left pointed feedback on this feature. I'm not holding out faith, but there's a non-zero chance that this time you'll actually look at it.

At this point I understand that you're probably going to want more references or resources to get you started on your way, but I maintain quite adamantly that there are people on the team who have claimed to already have done extensive research on Meta to figure a lot of this out. The only insulting part about that is that it feels like the research being done or the answers sought from the community are never the discussions we have. But hey, it's a start at least.

I could also understand that you're going to want patience, but I have to say at least for myself that patience is a luxury that Stack Overflow no longer has. You're going to need to earn back our trust, and you're going to need to work hard to do that. The long standing members in the community who have stuck through this for ineffable reasons or rationale do not have to provide yet more talking points for you to start rebuilding the relationship. We have left everything we wanted to say on the Metas. Some of us have painstakingly gone out of our way to leave sign posts on how to find everything. Please actually look for it.

You can't afford to half-ass this. Any delay in improving the relationship with your community is only going to make working with us a lot more difficult.

Answer 7

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

Stack Exchange…

 …without asking the community first.

The core community is tired of radical changes being announced as they happen.

---

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

Stop lying to your users.

Of course, you didn't lie [2023 update: yes you did!], but you can still make an important change with minimal effort and no cost: Come clean on behalf of Stack Exchange.

Make sure not to make it wordy or legalese. Here's an idea for a formulation:

On behalf of Stack Exchange, I'm very sorry for how we mistreated Monica, and how lies and cover-ups were used in the aftermath. I will keep this terrible incident in mind, to make sure such a thing doesn't happen on my watch.

---

Edit: Yet another radical change announced as it happened.

Edit: And another one.

Edit: One more

Answer 8

Changes

Mod tooling. I'm a UX guy, and I cringe when I have to deal with legacy code that I wrote. The mod tools make some of that look downright elegant. They sometimes work. They are sometimes spit and baling wire. In some cases... nobody apparently thought they were important (seriously, that should be embarrassing that not even CMs had tools for that).

The mod working group for tooling (see the Mod Team or Teacher's Lounge) is probably going to drop a giant list in your lap. It might even be wrapped in a knitted blanket that Tinkeringbell wraps it up in. But there are some tools that really really need updating, fixing or building from the ground up. There should be some low-hanging fruit you can knock out for easy wins, as well as some that are just needed.

Don't change

The current bug list system. What has helped a lot is the visibility that status-review is actively being worked across SE. It might not be ideal or exactly what we'd pick for priorities, but it's actually nice to see that list go down and that Devs and CMs are retagging as needed and reporting overall efforts. It probably could be better, but it's not broken right now. Don't fix it.

Answer 9

One thing that you should treat like the third rail is any thought the company might have of trying to shift the "voice of the customer" for the network away from Meta and over to Stack Overflow or Teams Enterprise. Yes it is difficult sometimes to measure the value of the community on Meta, especially when you look at the millions of junior software developers that visit Stack Overflow every day, or see paying customers over at Teams. Those customers do not have the experience or the insight or the commitment of the core users here on Meta. Those other users might be able to tell you what they want as individuals; the Meta community will tell you what they think is good for Stack Exchange from their perspective based on their usually extensive experience with the network and a good understanding of how things work.

What you should fix immediately? The comment system. It might not seem like a "community" issue, but it is. Comments are what turn our Q&A sites into communities and we've outgrown the original design. I realize this is probably not the scope that you were hoping for when you asked, but this is what's on my mind.

We've got another round of "Why are you deleting these valuable comments?/Comments are ephemeral." getting played on English Language & Usage's meta right now. It's an unending conflict with no acceptable solution, because the documentation says "comments are post-it notes" and the community says "comments are discussions that contain vital information". The design doesn't allow the community to indicate which comments are valuable and which should be transient, so the responsibility for curating comments in such a way that the "good" ones are kept lands on the mods. The mods don't have the tooling to curate comments effectively. The community can flag comments as "no longer needed", but not "this comment should be kept". If someone writes incorrect information in a comment, the only way to address it is more comments or moderator intervention. There's no downvoting to push it down the discussion.

We deserve something better. I don't know exactly what it should look like, but comments are not working well. If anyone doubts that, search the site metas for mentions of "deleted" and "comments" then think about all of the time and emotion wasted on the "comments are ephemeral/comments are valuable" arguments. There are also extended arguments about answers in comments on a lot of sites. Poor design is sucking away energy that would be better spent answering or asking questions, community building or something constructive.

It's time that the design matched reality better.

Answer 10

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

The fact that the accepted answer is almost always at the top. I've lost count of the number of times I've looked up a question (typically on Stack Overflow, when I'm pressed for time and need a solution asap), tried the top answer, realized "Wait that didn't work" (or worse "Wow that made everything so much worse") and then looked back to realize the second-highest answer has 10x as many votes as the highest, accepted answer.

• Please unpin the accepted answer from the top

We shouldn't care about whether the OP is happy nearly as much as we care about creating a future-proofed useful library of knowledge for the public. (That's not to say we shouldn't care at all - but why not treat it the same as voting/acceptance rep? The green checkmark could be worth exactly 1.5 upvotes in terms of how high up the answer shows in the list).

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

If I'm allowed to just copy someone else's, see this answer. If not...

This might not be a popular opinion, but keep the existence of Hot Network Questions. HNQs have (a lot of) issues, and while I think they need changes, I'd never want to see them go away entirely. If not for HNQ I'd never have even known any stacks aside from Stack Overflow even existed, let alone were worth visiting/joining.

Answer 11

What not to touch

Being honest, I don't really have much of an answer to this. Mainly because the changes I dislike here are the ones that are mainly just "dropped" on us users, rather than the changes we ask for. Plus, I'm not the most negative person, nor the most active here on Meta, so I'm sure others can think of many better things than I could.

What to change

I mainly use Code Golf, which is a bit of a weird fit into the standard Q&A model here. One thing we often make "jokes" about (sometimes jokes, sometimes as frustrations) is that it seems as though the company is moving away from their network of sites. Stack Overflow is a large part of this corner of the internet, but it's not everything. I for one would love to see more engagement with the rest of the network, both by the Community Team and by the Public Platform team.

And it doesn't even have to be a lot! Catija often hangs out in our chat room, so we definitely get a lot more CM engagement than most sites, and whenever we get a feature-request or bug marked status-completed (or even status-declined), it's something we make note of. It shows that someone is paying attention to us, and regardless of what that attention is, it's better than no attention whatsoever.

Perhaps on your "listening tour", you could work with the smaller communities here to discuss some of the more site-specific changes that they'd like, or how sites can better escalate their overlooked issues to the company.

Answer 12

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

In its 'golden' age - I felt that one of the things that worked really well was we had a significant amount of interaction with staff as community, and that our relationship with the company was symbiotic.

At some point, this changed though, and the needs of SE as a business (and well, even post independent startup - I don't begrudge this!) overtook the needs of SE as communities. We kinda got the feeling that we were seen as parasitic - Stack Overflow mattered first because "the brand's more important" and well, we spent years significantly fending for ourselves.

I believe Shog called SO "Our Shining City on the Hill". Meta's probably its "agora" - the squabbling, noisy place where decisions are loudly made and discussed. SE's forgotten its little people, its smaller communities which have been its heart. Help and attention to them can be useful. The communities that make up the network are important. Not just Stack Overflow, or even the trilogy - even the non core ones.

I think this is a long-winded way of saying - while work's been done, and things are better, getting to know the communities, and not just the ones that seem attractive to marketing, and making them feel and be valued would be nice.

.... Actually two things...

This is awkward, and is going to involve bending a few rules.

Traditionally - the broader SE community has been a fertile hiring ground both for your team and elsewhere. CM openings were a matter of excitement. In between losing a significant part of the CM team, SE's generally mildly antagonistic tone (I'm not naming names - but god, some of the folks in your place tended to shoot themselves in the foot a lot) and the apparent disdain for the broader community meant... there's not all that much interest in being a CM. I'm hoping y'all got a little more interest than I saw on the TL (which was non existent) for the last round - and I get the feeling the one person who talked to me off-network about thinking of applying didn't ☹

I feel like a worthy goal would be - fixing that. While we appreciate the wealth of experience in CMing as a whole - the loss of a feeling of 'ownership' in the future of SE, and hope is a tragedy. You won't find a more passionate group of people, and it's telling that even the communities that left stuck together (I still hang out with old Server Fault regulars, and there are a few other communities that left or sauntered vaguely away). We'd like to feel we're part of the broader picture, and valued, no matter the size.

Rebuilding that fire, that excitement about what's happening, and the desire to be part of it... is important.

We also need to look at how we can bring our 'lost' communities back. I know a good chunk of the old active Server Fault lurk off network and there are probably a few others. It would be nice to have places welcoming not just to new users, but old ones.

Answer 13

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

Downvotes. Please don't remove or weaken them.

I know people keep ranting how unfair downvotes are, how they are being hurt by it, and how many people leave the sites never to come back only because they got a single downvote.

It's very tempting, as the one who call the shots, to just remove this annoying feature and making great many people, millions of people, happy.

But please, don't. It's the one thing that makes Stack Exchange stick out and stay on top of the other sites, by keeping somewhat decent quality of the content. (I think there isn't any need to explain it further here. If I should, please let me know.)

---

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

Very related to the thing that shouldn't be touched. Great many people find it really hard to ask questions on Stack Overflow (possibly on other SE sites due to the voting system) and refrain from asking. This should be changed. What I suggest is to revive the Mentorship Project and make it alive. In a nutshell:

• Users with enough reputation and enough time being member (e.g. 30k rep, at least 2 years on the site) would be able to be mentors.
• When a new user (less than X rep or member for less than Y days) asks a question, they will be taken to special a platform where they will interact with a mentor.
• The mentor will see what the user writes in real time, and be able to comment in real time.

In early alpha test where I took part, the chat platform was used. It was fine, but I gather that developing something from scratch just for the Mentorship would be better. It doesn't really matter as long as the goals are achieved: knowing they have someone to guide them, people will be more willing to ask questions, and the questions would be of decent quality to begin with. Fewer downvotes, less pressure, and more happy people all around. :)

Worth to mention, the original project was quite a success:

RESULTS!

So, now you have a clearer picture of how this worked and what issues we faced… what about its effectiveness? As I mentioned above, question score means increased by 50%. Practically, this means that questions from mentored users had fewer net downvotes than those that were not mentored.

Another way of measuring it is by looking at individual question quality. We used a rating system where “good” questions have positive ratings (or neutral with an accepted answer), “neutral” questions have no interactions, and “bad” questions have negative ratings. Within that system, mentored questions had a much higher share of “good” questions, and way fewer “bad” ones. Good questions increased from 18% of all questions asked by that population to 25%. Bad questions decreased from 30% of questions to 25%.

All of these results are statistically significant, with p < .05.

Answer 14

Never change: Keep the small sites

I'm biased here -- I discovered Sustainability.SE while browsing the network one day, and found it to be a place where I could get involved. I'm now a moderator there. It's my experience that the small sites give users a place to get engaged and learn the network before becoming more involved elsewhere. Even though they may not drive a lot of traffic, I believe they serve a valuable role for the broader community by provide a space to attract and develop engaged users like myself.

Change immediately: Next time, add value before extracting

As a for-profit company, Stack Exchange uses the community to make money -- otherwise, it wouldn't be free. There is a mutual benefit for users and the company to the services you provide for free: We use those services to generate value, which you can capitalize on. This is a business model which has worked (in the sense that we're still here) for over 10 years. However, recently this relationship has felt extractive. In order to keep that well from drying up, you need to invest resources into keeping it healthy.

I imagine that you keep a running list of community attributes that you hope to translate into profit centers. Lately, it seems like you're taking this list and rushing to extract value. I'd suggest taking a long view -- if you first invested resources into enhancing those attributes, you would build trust with the community and replenish the well, with the added benefit that in the future when you launch the Next Big Thing^TM, it will provide even more profit, without all of most of the negative feedback.

The changes that are made directly to the public side lately seem to be in the category of fixing broken things, or preventative maintenance. Meanwhile, the private side gets big effort, new code base, and focused development.

The next time you hit on a good idea for a new profit center, turn your development around -- look at the list of community attributes that would make that idea work, and think about which of those things could benefit from some big efforts. A lot of the feature-request's on this site focus on small changes to existing systems. Review those for trends, then analyze those trends in light of the community attributes that you want to profit off. We as the community are a hive-mind. We don't have the focus to do that exercise -- but you do, and have done so in developing Teams, Careers, Articles, etc.

I suggest combining that company focus, with the community hive-mind, to put some dedicated effort into replenishing the well.

Answer 15

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

Can we get rid of the mandatory arbitration clause from the terms of service? Arbitration clauses are inherently abusive, and there was a pretty big uproar when it was introduced. Frankly, its very existence is offensive to the community. Can SE remove it completely, as a sign of good-will to the community?

Answer 16

What should be changed

Can something be done to create a process for graduating beta sites or change the process (if it isn’t in progress already). There are a lot of very healthy beta sites that:

• cannot crash and burn. The sheer age of some beta sites should speak to this
• Have veritable experts. Some beta sites have user(s) over 100k rep, user(s) with legendary, and user(s) with gold tag badges. These people are experts
• have plenty of questions. For example, politics is approaching 13k questions and space exploration is approaching 16k
• have very active moderation. Politics SE has very high moderation (from my experience)
• Are quite interesting. As demonstrated by the link, politics hits HNQ quite often, meaning that these sites are interesting.

So, can something be changed about the graduation of beta sites?

Answer 17

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

Actually two things: the creation of a high quality knowledge base mission and downvotes. Messing with these will result in instant doom.

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

Keep on doing what you started, i.e. listen to the community, present ideas early, give feedback, in general engage. Judging by this question you may be exactly what was missing. Time will tell.

Answer 18

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

Maybe not to never touch, because touching it is critical, but if I interpret that as "never remove/interfere with" it would be history. As the company moves forward in a new operating context post-acquisition, we've already lost a lot of institutional memory and I expect more employees will be moving on shortly around the company as a whole.

There are a lot of past lessons learned, arguments had, shifts in thinking within the community for good or bad. I think it would be a mistake to think only in a forward fashion if it means neglecting everything that's already happened to shape this place, both positive and negative. I think getting acquainted with all of that is going to be the biggest onboarding challenge for anyone new to the company, especially if they don't have their own history here as a user.

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

My suggestion is not for a thing that you can unilaterally change, but for something I hope you can advocate for within the company given your position, and serve as a model for.

The style of communication from the company appears to have changed from years ago. Aside from CMs in private spaces (and an honorable mention to all the efforts Yaakov in particular has made), it seems that most staff are either muzzled or afraid to interact with the (meta) community, or perhaps see it as just a chore to complete to try to placate people rather than something useful.

I get it - meta is loud and cantankerous at times, but it's also a unique resource. I don't know what the roadblocks are, because they are not transparent to us: maybe there are edicts from legal, maybe just a bit of fear/culture inside the company (this was expressed publicly multiple times by at least one former employee) that assumes meta is a scary place, maybe it's because people are so busy they aren't freed to take the time. In any event, it seems like most communication from staff is in the form of announcements that feel more "team-written" rather than from an individual, more crafted than candid, more feeding us than dining with us.

We want to hear what y'all are working on, and to give feedback at early stages so there isn't as much surprise. I appreciate the impossibility of having hundreds of bosses telling you what to do rather than just one, but I think if staff are willing to engage candidly the community will give them a lot of slack for not doing everything requested of them.

I don't know what the fixes are, but I do hope that you have or will gain some insider insight to what might be done on the company's end, and propagate that through the organization.

I do want to acknowledge that I've already seen movement on this. I'd echo Machavity that the new use of status tags on meta is a great step towards what I'm asking for. The quarterly roadmaps are really nice to see, too, though they lack a bit of the back-and-forth. I thought Lisa Park's latest here: Changing the question reopening experience is a step in the right direction, where there's a mix of "here's what we plan" while leaving a door open for feedback. This post itself also feels more human and conversational than others. I also thought Teresa made some great initial forays here, but the follow up was a bit more erratic; I believe that the intentions were sincere but maybe the time commitment just wasn't available. My impression from both the creation of your position and your first public steps here is that at least part of your position will fit into that void, and if so I welcome that.

Answer 19

Something to improve: communication of touchpoints with the mod community.

We have the Teams page, orange diamond messages, pinned messages in TL, maybe email. I find myself frequently missing discussions / town halls / Q&As because I don't see these messages in time (or at all), or I forget them and can't find the message again. I would really like it if these were maintained on a calendar of events with reasonable advance notice. One place. It sounds like you plan to conduct meetings like this more regularly, so maybe this would be a good time to implement a calendar.

Peripherally, we have had a few zoom calls, and it would be great if they were recorded for those who couldn't be there.

Answer 20

"One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible."

Communication

, and then especially the timing of it.

I have voiced my concerns about this time and time again. Most recently in this answer regarding the removal of an API endpoint. And also noticeably with regards to the posting of the quarterly roadmap posts, when the quarter is already about a third underway. And today about 1/6^th of the current quarter has already passed, and there is no roadmap yet. You see the recurring theme here?

Answer 21

I'm coming at this question from the viewpoint of a moderator on a teeny-tiny beta site, so we have different concerns perhaps from other respondents.

The 'famous kerfuffle' was, for this site, a non-event. Nobody who participates on our site has lost trust as a result and/or gone away. And if I drew their attention to it, the reaction would probably be: Meh. Our users participate to get useful answers that help them progress their goals; anything else is noise. (As a corollary, the site Meta participation is low -- policy is mostly decided by moderators, unfortunately - and meta.stackexchange participation is limited to moderators.).

Which is not to say that the CoC is irrevelant -- our subject necessarily brings us into contact with some contentious issues, and it's good to have the CoC to fall back on -- not that we've ever needed to.

Never to touch?

This is an (hopefully authoritative) Q&A site, not a discursive forum. If I want to know what Jane's Aunty Mabel said, or how hard it was for 10 people (who all have different experiences) to knit a cardigan from pattern X, I can go elsewhere. There aren't many (any?) sites where I can ask for a definitive sourced answer on the subject at hand.

Change as quickly as possible?

On a small site, moderation tools are not so much of an issue. You'll hear a lot about deficiencies in the current moderation tools from large sites, and I understand their pain, but it's not 'our issue' (although the squeaky wheel will inevitably get the oil). Similarly, more engagement from CMs wouldn't achieve a lot -- it was helpful when we just went into public beta, to help us find our feet, but we're coping Ok now. Reducing the number of votes for close/reopen will help us, but that's underway.

Some of my fellow moderators on the site would like us to move out of beta status -- and honestly, I would like to see a roadmap so that we can understand what we need to do to achieve that as well as some concrete benefits if we do (although I'm nervous that the reputation threshold requirements will cause problems if we graduate).

So I'm going to settle for some evidence that the impact on the small viable sites have been considered before new features/changes are rolled out. Collectives will almost certainly never affect us, but UI changes will, and most of our users couldn't find their way to Meta using both hands and feet, so will be in the silent minority? majority?. Plus some serious consideration on how to remove the beta label from sites that have demonstrated their longevity without making them immediately non-viable.

Answer 22

Welcome to the War Room.

I am not a "power user" of this site, or any other site, or beta site, in the network. I have no significant curation abilities and, therefore, cannot address the efficacy or deficiencies of the tooling for that, though I understand from many other posts here that there are some deficiencies. My views here probably ought to be considered the "common user" view rather than the power user view probably represented by many of the other answers. I do, however, give a nod to Tinkeringbell's excellent answer and, as a nice representation of the negativity felt by many, the thoughtful answer by Makoto.

Directly to your two questions then:

One thing that you would advise me (in my role as VP of Community here) never to touch.

Anything

Ok, that's a bit broad. Some answers to your question, and many posts on Meta Stack Exchange (MSE), as well as posts on the meta sites of other sites, will put forward one or another "sacred cow" as the thing not to change. Admittedly, eventually, change affects everything. I don't think there is any one thing, or even multiple things, which should never change. The catch is that change for the sake of change is going to have random results.

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

Everything

Ok, again, that's a bit broad. That said, as already said, change affects everything.

Now, here's the real answers, which is in reality one answer, which, depending on the reader's emphasis, is the answer to both questions.

What needs to change is how things change.

Whether it is a simple change, such as fonts, or a major rollout, such as collectives, there are points which should be satisfied before the change is launched.

1. You, as the VP responsible, should know, and understand:
   • How the current version, if any, developed over time
   • Why the current version must change
   • How the users currently use, or interact, with the thing(s) affected
   • What problems users have complained about with regard to the possible change
   • What tools, workarounds, or user scripts have been created to overcome the perceived deficiencies
   • Which other features or tools will, or might be, affected by a change in the current target of change
   • How the contemplated change advances the site toward its vision
   • How the contemplated change matches the mission of the site
2. You, as the VP responsible, should ensure that the the team tasked with evaluation and implementation for the change knows and understands at least as much as you do from the list above
3. Having an idea of where the change will end, involve the users affected, with a significant sampling, in an attempt to prove the change is wrong
   • That is wrong, find the friction points, now rather than later
   • The users affected might be the mods on one site, or > 20K rep users network-wide.
   • Users active, and vocal, on MSE are a statistically insignificant segment of the total user base. However, they are also the ones who make the network "work". Use them
4. Sell the new version to the users - the affected users, not the whole user base
   • Rarely will a change affect me, for example, very much compared to the power users and moderators
   • Selling it means getting the users to buy it, not claiming it's good and expecting to be believed
5. Make small changes, and test them
   • Make a plan for "milestones" between the current and future versions
   • Be prepared to correct, or change, course when the tests fail, either in objective or subjective standards
6. Be open, from the beginning, about the entire process
   • Use Meta to get feedback to understand the bullets in point 1
   • Use Meta to explain why the change is needed, and how it is supposed to "help" users, or enable the vision and mission of SE - the site(s) or the company
   • Use Meta to flesh out point 3
   • Use Meta to update the users with the progress, good and bad, as the changes are made, and the tests are performed
   • Use Meta to admit when tests fail and what corrections are made
   • Use Meta to sell idea, and gather the buy-in from the community
   • Even use Meta to admit when an idea ends without ever leaving point 3, or when it is dropped because the community voted it down
   • NDAs are not being open about anything

Admittedly, there will be things which are the "sacred cow" of some, sometimes non-trivial, number of users. When such needs changing the third point will expose that view rapidly.

Having learned that, the need for open, clear, direct, and honest, communication increases greatly. There will, from time to time, be changes needed which are necessary from a business standpoint which will, or could, have a negative impact on the sites and their communities.

Do not treat the users as the enemy - without the users, including the power users and moderators, the business will become valueless. One, or several, lost users may not be significant if lost, yet losing the vast majority of the power users will reduce the worth of the Q&A. The power users got there by providing lots of answers and earning lots of votes, not by just lurking in Meta. A million new questions per day has no value if there are 50 answers per day.

As a recent case: Collectives. I have no interest in Collectives. I have blocked all the elements of them from my browser view. I'm also, conceptually, not against Collectives. I was disappointed to have a totally new thing dropped on the site with no hints or warnings. I remain disturbed that the moderators and users involved in the "feedback" for development had to sign NDAs. Frankly, without the NDAs SE could have gathered much more feedback, had more input and debate, and probably developed a better product. In the current implementation I have doubts as to its viability.

Lastly, in part to answer the question(s) and to clear a point I believe to be wrong-headed, I have to say that MSE is not a battlefield; it is a War Room. Generals, captains, and sergeants all have important input in planning, and executing, a campaign. The final decision might belong to the generals and yet the success depends on the sergeants. Will there be yelling? Yes. Will there be agreement? Maybe. Do the generals hate the captains or do the sergeants despise the generals? Probably not. After all have had their input, and their input has been seriously evaluated, the final campaign plans can be drafted. Always being aware of the axiom that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning

Answer 23

One thing to never touch:

The site moderation done by the community members based on privileges (upvote/down vote, flag, vote to close / delete, etc.)

One thing to change as quickly as possible:

New users experience regarding how the site works

I think that many questions are abandoned because some new users posted a question without understanding how the site works. If they got a downvote or their question is closed they perceive the community to be rude instead of see the downvotes / closing as a positive feedback regarding the quality of their question.

I think that it's possible to find a "nice" and scalable way to tell these users that their post might need to be improved to be a good fit / well received in the case of the small sites / small tags suggest them ways to get more attention to their first post as a single downvote might not be conclusive.

Answer 24

I am a "casual" member of the community. I look in on Meta every now and then to see what is going on. But mostly Stack Overflow is a place to come search, ask questions and, when I am smart and fast enough, answer one that I know.

What to Change

Over the last year or two I have noticed that fewer and fewer of my questions get answers. Not sure what has caused this. But I would request that more be done to attract the experts that make Stack Overflow a great place to ask well thought out questions.

There are a few other things that I could list, but they are very minor compared this this one. So I will leave it there in hopes of giving further emphasis to my main point.

Answer 25

I am quite new to the community, so I can't comment about:

• One thing that you would advise me never to touch.

---

But there's one thing that I think you should change as quickly as possible.

Please change the words "should" and "shortly" in the response that we get when we contact SE Team using the Contact page to more appropriate ones.

Thank you for contacting the Stack Exchange Team. You should receive an email response shortly.

The reasons why I want these words to be changed are:

• It's been a over a month since I contacted SE Team using Contact page and I still did not receive any email response from SE Team. So I don't think the word "shortly" is appropriate.

• Mithical mentioned in chat that some things won't get a response at all. So I don't think the word "should" is appropriate. (https://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8932810#8932810)

Please consider changing the response to "Thank you for contacting the Stack Exchange Team. You might receive an email response if we can respond." or please make sure that the SE Team will respond on-time :)

I am not sure if this will come under the Community department which you take care of, but please inform the relevant department regarding this.

Answer 26

What I would advise to never touch

The licensing, as that one most definitely did not get a positive response last time.

_{I’d also advise staying away from pluralization bugs, as those things have an... interesting history.}

What I think should be changed as quickly as possible

Advertise chat a bit more (Journeyman Geek has a good idea on this). Chat is amazing (at least the ones I normally use, and some of them do have problems), because you can do anything nearly anything in chat. For instance:

1. Socialize. The least important of these IMO, but it’s there.
2. Ask off-topic (but nearly on topic), opinion based, or other not-so-great-for-Stack Exchange-but-still-a-valid-questions there.
3. Get feedback quicker and easier than a meta post. If you want to know whether a question is on topic, if you ask on meta you have to have the question on hand, and be prepared for asks about details or clarification, or possibly just have to wait a while. Chat is far simpler, and in chat you simply ask “hey, are questions about making unicorns eat google on topic for sure user?” and you’ll likely receive a quick and easy and simple answer.

I know chat currently has a link in the footer, but there is way to much information there to expect casual users to read. I have no ideas on how or where to advertise chat though.

Answer 27

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

Some kind of move towards shared Privileges across accounts on the Stack Exchange Network.

• Why not merge reputation across Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User?
• Suggestion: Shared Stack Exchange Privileges
• Could there be a bit of reputation leakage between the sites, please?

The decade-long company and community thought is that each site is so unique that users who have been trusted to edit, say, Stack Overflow couldn't possibly be trusted to edit Super User without putting in years of work to hit 2,000 reputation and beyond.

I really don't think this hypothesis has ever been tested. We have no problem allowing accounts on SO to edit questions and answers on tags with which they have zero experience. Let those same users make edits and tag suggestions and work the review queue on completely separate sites.

The 100-reputation "association bonus" was an essential quality-of-life improvement to get experienced users started on secondary SE sites. Expand that same system to give higher-rep privileges to trusted users, network wide.

This would potentially inject a ton of new life and new Curators into the lower-traffic SE sites.

---

^{P.S. Some individual sites could of course opt-out, similar to the per-site HNQ controls.}

Answer 28

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

1. Stop removing questions just because they have a score of 0 and haven't been viewed by an unusually high amount of people: Decrease the required view count to prevent Roomba deletion when score = 0 on smaller sites . I've personnally had hundreds of questions removed because of that, and this obliterated most of my respect for Stack Exchange. Keep in mind that the frequent users on Meta.SE tend be users who write answers rather than questions, and therefore most of them aren't personnally impacted by the automated question removals.
2. Always notify users when some of their content is removed: When a user has one of their questions or answers deleted, why don't you notify them about the deletion, and send the removed content by email?
3. Have your lawyers send a letter to Quora: Quora users (bots?) are copying a significant amount of Stack Exchange questions to Quora, without proper attribution
4. Be more proactive when a user continuously downvotes another user. While downvotes are vital to identify bad content, a tiny minority of users sometimes use downvotes for non-content-related reasons, which can turn SE into a rather hostile place in some cases.
5. Consider allowing “crossover questions” between sites, given that many topics tend to be fragmented across several Stack Exchange websites (e.g., most machine learning questions are on-topic on both https://stats.stackexchange.com/ and https://datascience.stackexchange.com).

Answer 29

An excerpt from Philippe♦'s most recent update (19/7/2021)

“I will keep reading, but I have to shift my focus to writing the quarterly blog / meta post, for instance. So feel free to keep answering, and I'm still reading, but know that the frequency of posts from me here will slow down some (just to set expectations).”

Reading between the lines it seems that the author have their hands tied. In five months the new Community VP has posted just twice but they feel that was already one too many.

What does a community manager do anyway? Isn't one of their duties to engage with the community?

The 2nd update comes less than 24 hours after Monica Cellio's calibrated request that the company makes amends.

The company's lack of engagement with Monica is telling. The author has yet to post a comment beneath Cellio's answer. Frankly, this is not the way I imagine a new CM builds trust.

Answer 30

One thing that you think I should change as quickly as possible.

I'm going to give a little context for this, so please bear with me.

About a year ago, I had a Stack Overflow account. I was not a Stack Overflow power user, at all. I would rarely ask very complex questions which either got a closed for being "off-topic" because someone didn't understand the nuance (proven since I was able to get the same exact question answered when I copy-pasted) or for being "too broad" even though the question's granularity prevented this from being even a remote possibility. Of course, my favorite was the "duplicate of" answers which weren't even close to being duplicates.

With this in mind, I posted a wiki-style question about indexing strings in a batch script. While it was not a smashing success (who uses batch anymore?) I did get a positive response. Later, I tried the same again, emulating the same exact writing style and format, this time for a C-style array in batch script. A key feature was it worked around some of batch's memory limitations.

Despite being almost visibly identical to my earlier wiki it was quickly closed as "too broad." Then, some other person had the gall to vigorously berate me for "not offering anything new" and it being "too slow."

I repeated many of the reasons that were outlined in my post why this implementation was different and why it was useful. The individual was unmoved. So, I asked them: (not verbatim)

"When Steve Jobs released the iPhone, do you think he invented smartphones? No. There were already several smartphones. He merely improved what already worked and put it into a package anyone could use. I implemented a whole API for C-style arrays in batch! Yes, some of these things existed, but I made them work together and easy to use. Why do you even care if it's slow?"

Do you know what they said? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. After a few minutes they resumed ignorantly berating me, at which point I completely lost my cool and deleted my Stack Overflow account.

This is precisely what's going on in your company, and by extension, in your community. People here are saying their values differ dramatically from whatever your team believes is its priority. That's understandable to an extent because the values of a for-profit corporation must differ from those of its consumers.

In this relationship the corporate side is the party with the prerogative to implement permanent policy. If they are unwilling or unable to bridge that gap in values by at least communicating their intentions, regardless of whether they actually take any feedback, then they are setting up an environment where only the most hardheaded will stick around to find out about the next change that will be forced upon them.

Which, maybe that is desirable, I don't know. I'm not a C-level manager.

What I do know, because I've seen it time and time again, is that this non-responsive model eventually leads to an insular corporate environment. Regardless of whether you or the CEO personally sit here and tell us we're being heard, if we don't see anything change, or those changes don't stick? Then the company's words - not yours - the company's - stop mattering. That's the power of a brand name; it cuts both ways. The fact so many in this Q/A are discussing communication issues, whether it be terms of service or the site's features, strongly infers that the situation is sliding past "non-responsive" into "self-destructive" territory.

People here are grasping at whatever they can, trying to help, but your coworkers may not think these are viable ideas. Even if changes are made, the community may view it as "not enough," and the team could feel alienated when they finally do respond. The two sides might already be at an impasse.

So, one thing that needs to change as quickly as possible is your company's view of what consumers are. They're people. They have differing ideas. They want different things. They seek varying needs. And above all, consumers aren't required to specifically consume your company's product. Show them why they should.