Mmm this isn't the first time this (the act of not giving adequate notice to at least the moderators) was done.
See http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/3212/battle-of-the-sites-cancelled
Putting aside the Steve Jobs comment, what I see here is misrepresentation of the Ask Different Community. Here is what I think should be done for next time
For example, this should have appeared on the balloons and notices,
Happy Birthday Steve,
Love @dr_brendan
@stackexchange
Moderators have been told more than once that they are not allowed to utilize the Twitter accounts ( Would allowing moderators to update their Stack Exchange sites' Twitter accounts improve visibility and offer more value? ) yet we see it done here instead of it coming from @stackexchange or @stackhq where CHAOS normally operates from.
I have not read the entire CNBC interview because to be honest it felt like a plug for Stack Exchange, though based on what @Lauren said here,
The CNBC interview is all about what big fans Seth and Brendan are of Steve Jobs - they only mention Ask Different to say where Seth is from. I think it's a very tasteful interview, and we don't intend for this to be an excuse for a promotion.
Without going for pitchforks and inspecting Seth's profile
https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/11241/seth-rogers
https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/11241/seth-rogers?tab=reputation
There are +4 points gained, two suggested edits.
0 comments.
0 answers.
0 questions.
No enthusiast badge (assuming he just reads all the posts)
Total reputation: 105.
Not to call out Seth he may have good intentions when saying he was from Ask Different but his public face on the site does not count for much and it just looks bad. This gets back to the whole getting notice to moderators in advance so they can step in the interview or at least be mentioned by Seth.
Who is @dr_brendan and why is there a promoted tweet for him, this looks like conflict of interest from the outside. Sure, have an interview, say you are best of friends but the moment you mention
FF @dr_brendan...
You are going down slippery slopes. You have officially endorsed @dr_brendan on behalf of Ask Different that's a no-non seeing that most of Ask Different doesn't even know who he is. (This goes back to informing mods in advance)
So in summary for next time I suggest,
- pinging in advance when working on a SE project (this should have been learned from the Battle of Sites incident)
- don't use the Twitter accounts if you tell the moderators not to do the same
- don't say you belong to a specific site, especially when the stats say otherwise. You belong to Stack Exchange.
Other than that I think it was a good opportunity to promote Stack Exchange not an exploit on Steve and CHAOS is still learning, so no pitchforks this time.
Oh, one more thing
Contact Moderators in advance! All of this would have been averted if you did.
Why is it so hard for you do that?
In response to point 1 Abby T Miller raised she is missing the point of what I said.
*Don't say you belong to Ask Different and you are an Apple fan in same sentence. I don't care that you don't have time but it's a lie to say you are from Ask Different. You may have an account there. I have an account on Cooking you don't see me running around saying I am from Cooking. Because I am not, I just have an account there. This is about representation and you don't represent Ask Different to put bluntly. If you were an actual fan you would have the decency to inform your fellow Appleboys about it. This isn't about deeply being involved but shoot at least something... and if not get advice. To me it looks wrong in every way possible, you say you are big Apple fan you work for Stack Exchange know about Ask Different yet you don't contribute. And you cannot count those meta posts, that's your job*
I sat down and listened to the interview now. How can you think up an idea,
well, seth and i got together and just -- you know, we were brainstorming ideas for a fun event to have for steve jobs' birthday. and, you know, we just kind of came up with the idea of, you know, handing out black turtlenecks.
And have Ask Different fall under the radar in notice. That just doesn't make sense. Don't play with words, you are leaving out the community and moderators out of these brainstorming session for reasons unknown to me and it's not by accident.
... Something at Stack Exchange and Ask Different we take that inquisitiveness ... it's really part of our culture
So Seth didn't explicitly say he was from Ask Different but the "we" instead of "the community" goes along way. Nevertheless I will play down the contribution issue.
Near the end you hear Brendan say we are just going to "wing it"
So I guess that's how the whole cancelled/not cancelled problem appeared.
So this event should have never been un-cancelled. You make moderators jump through hoops to get their promotion proposals to SE Inc. yet SE employees can wing it??!!!? Screw that.
In response to point 2 you fall in your own trap.
The goals of CHAOS per-each-site are a subset of each moderator. Moderators are unpaid evangelists for Stack Exchange because they invest heavily in their site to make sure it is seen and is high quality. The only difference here is that CHAOS has tools and resources readily available to accomplish the task, moderators do not.
There have been numerous occasions where moderators would become confused as to who promotes their site only to be redirected to some template answer by Comm Team about "Moderators can promote if they wish and get the community to help out, if they need more help they can ping CHAOS to see what they can do" The thing is you never know when CHAOS is assigned to your site, so you cannot depend on them unless you are booming with traffic or reaching critical mass.
In terms of Twitter/Social Networks
If something actually occurred on Twitter that a moderator/community member did not like, the solution occurs after the damage. So I don't see how it helps anyone.
There have been instances where the community did indeed try to make their presence known outside of SE via Twitter/Google+/Facebook only to be asked to slap unofficial
So you want us to promote but unofficial so it does not tarnish the name of SE. Ok get it, thus we end up as second rate versions of the Official ones where most users think the official accounts are where it's at only to see walls of bot text instead and the occasional once in a lifetime real person update
The point here is CHAOS is failing hard at communication with moderators, this is not the first time, it's not the second time, this has happened multiple times and the community would like to help out but you are not making that very easy to do
FIX THAT.
