Monica's situation continues unresolved. Is SE hoping the problem just goes away?

Question

This surfaced in the apology thread, but I believe it deserves more exposure.

The apology thread was posted October 6th, 2019. In it, the idea was expressed that SE, the company, had done wrong by Monica and were reaching out to try to mend that situation.

As has become habit the management of SE then went radio silent. Despite the company announcing a new CoC, Monica remains in limbo. No one has addressed whether she violated the CoC, and the new process for moderator reinstatement has not been announced.

I'm calling this out in an attempt to not let it wither and die in an ignored thread. Monica is one of our own and she deserves closure, as do we as a community.

It’s been 8 days, and the words in the apology ring more and more insincere with each day. The only conclusion I can reach is that the apology was an attempt to silence the controversy, and that the core issues (the debacle around Monica's treatment, and the lack of transparency and disregard towards community feedback reflected in the behavior of SE staff) will remain unaddressed.

What can we, as a community, do to get a response from the SE staff?

EDIT: SE Has now provided a process for reinstating moderators

However, the critical question, "What did Monica do that violated the CoC" has not been resolved. She remains unsatisfied, and the process that has been outlined presupposes the guilt of the person being reinstated.

While I appreciate the efforts taken so far on part of the SE team, I believe we as a community have an obligation to continue to pressure them until the issue is fully resolved.

EDIT2: Monica has replied to the reinstatement issue

EDIT3: The Situation remains unfixed and I am beginning to think that SE will not take action unless forced to.

EDIT4: It looks like Monica is being forced to resort to litigation to get an answer. You can find the details by searching Monica Cellio gofundme on google

Answer 1

I had been glad to see David Fullerton's post when it first came out. It sounded sincere, and exactly like the kind of thing that we needed. I was hopeful it was a sign of the situation getting under control and positive steps finally being made.

Since that post, however, I've seen no indication of any further action. I can only think that he either has no influence on the rest of the company (which I find difficult to believe) or that his words, while exactly what we wanted to hear, were devoid of any actual intent.

I've seen no indication of action on the following things expressed in the apology:

• Monica's situation being addressed fairly. (It may be in process, but the lack of any information makes that seem unlikely.)

• Working with the community. There's been a lot of feedback. It seems like none of it has been responded to in any real way. (Perhaps the feedback has influenced some things. But, again, the lack of any information makes that seem unlikely.)

• Policies around moderator removal and reinstatement. This was supposed to have have been shared and discussed with moderators four days ago. (Perhaps everybody was happy with it. But, again, the lack of any information makes that seem unlikely.)

In short, the lack of communication is continuing. Above and beyond anything else specific, this seems to be at the core of most of the discontent in general. Many things might be better than they seem—but there's no basis for us to assume that, because nothing has been communicated.

For such an important issue as this, I find it somewhat boggling that there isn't some level of communication from one or more staff members at least once or twice a week. If in no other form than to simply say, "Yes, we've heard your input on the following points and would like to acknowledge our appreciation of your concerns."

I am still somewhat hopeful that the well-worded apology was more than simple lip service, but that hope is slowly dwindling.

Answer 2

The moderators don't know either.

• We don't know whether Monica is actually going through the new process as discussed.

• We don't know the content of the emails sent between Monica and SE.

• We don't know what SE's take is on the situation.

• We don't know the formal reason for her removal.

• We (as moderators) aren't formally blocking the reinstatement process (many of us also want her back, I've not seen any calls for her to remain excluded).

• We don't know what we can do to expedite proceedings toward any kind of resolution.

In short, we don't know anything that we haven't learned from the public side of the network.

We are in the dark as much as anyone else, and not particularly enjoying that experience.

Answer 3

Ok, here's where we're at:

As noted in David's apology, we created a lot of the problems in play here by not following process. So now we need a process to follow for handling issues involving moderators that our existing process didn't seem right for, and also we need a process for what to do when a moderator has been removed and wants to come back. That last process is the process we need here - that's the big test, really: can we build a process that'll give Monica a fair shake even after all that's happened these last few weeks? Good question...

So we've written up two processes that we think will fit the bill here. And, we've given them to the moderator teams to review. This is delicate: we've tried to think of every eventuality, so these processes got complicated. There are things we overlooked, paths that don't make sense, and probably straight-up errors.

The mods have been giving us feedback for four days now; we're trying to incorporate that. Not everyone has had a chance to look it over, or time to really chew on it. We'll give them until the 18th - Friday - to finish doing that. Then we'll have to make sure we've actually addressed their concerns.

Yeah. That's a lot of work, and it's going to take a while. But rushing this stuff hasn't exactly been panning out, and I'm not sure anyone involved has the energy for more mistakes at this point. So we're gonna try to do it right.

Once we have these processes nailed down in a way that the remaining moderators feel are acceptable... We'll share 'em with the former moderators. At that point, anyone who wants to come back - anyone - can go through the "reinstatement" process...

...If we get that process right, then we'll finally be able to do something useful here. If we didn't, we'll likely keep circling. That's why, frustrating as it is right now, we're moving slowly.

Believe me, I know how stressful this is to watch, especially when so little is being said. There's a lot I want to say right now, but it would be careless of me to do so; and again, we've already been a bit too careless with what we've said in some situations, and hurt folks by doing so.

Thanks for both your patience, and your gentle prodding - it's folks like you being attentive to the work we're doing that keeps us focused.

Answer 4

The only response the community will get is from Shog9, Cesar CM, and other staff deleting questions and answers they don't want discussed any further on the site they control.

Stack Overflow, Inc is no longer going to react to Meta users, they've long stopped interacting with Meta users, and it's very, very likely that Meta.SE will be closed to new content shortly.

The community that developed here, which Stack Overflow, Inc tried hard to avoid in the first place, is not only not serving SO in any useful capacity, but is considered actively detrimental to the company and network as a whole.

SO will continue to provide pronouncements from their mountain, and we will get in line or leave. If the community doesn't adopt the intended culture then when they introduce their new bug/feature mechanism meta will ultimately be archived.

SO needed us early adopters. They needed a lot of good people to help them make the network, define the game, and tweak the system so it could largely become self-maintaining. The only thing they couldn't easily control without a lot of pain was getting rid of community elected moderators that were problematic. They now have a way they've justified to the communities to impeach those that don't fall in line, thus taking the final thing away from the community that allowed self-determinism.

They don't need us any more, and they have already concluded we are a liability. They know that shutting us down altogether will make waves that will be difficult to manage, but they've been seeding the message over the last few years that Meta isn't working for its intended function, which is bug reports and feature requests, and that they are working on a replacement.

They are fast-tracking that internally. They will not be interested in a debate, so it's likely that they'll release a blog post coincident with disabling of new content and the release of the new tool(s).

They feel they can control the message externally well enough that it won't affect the 99.8% of their users who fund the site - I don't think they're wrong.

Don't take it personally.

It's just business.

Answer 5

I am a mere user on SO, but

I've read it all, and I'm out.

Tomorrow I will begin voting to delete my own posts-- all of them, back ten years.

Surprised as anyone to read about recent events. I read original posts, apologies, chat room transcripts, lots and lots of answers and comments, and the newspaper article.

SE management's handling of this incident has been appalling. This was a professional-level screwup. Someone must lose their paying job. The person who needs to go is very, very clear. After that, Monica needs to be offered full reinstatement, no questions asked. Nothing less than these two actions would make me believe that management takes the problem with sufficient seriousness, and is resolved to fixing its community relationship.

But I don't think they are resolved. So short of that, I will do what little I can as a user to get their attention. I will begin liquidating all of my own contributed content, where able. I'll miss SO, but there are lots of other resources out there.

Jeff Atwood would never, EVER have permitted this to happen. His belief that we are all striving to be good meant a tireless willingness to forgive and try again. I've seen his spirit in a lot of what I've read the last couple of days (and I've seen it missing in a lot of places too). I miss you, Jeff; you were the conscience of SO.

Answer 6

The last thing that Sara Chipps posted was a comment indicating that they are working on a response to the letter that was signed by 500 moderators/ex-moderators/users. That comment was over one week ago, though, so the response is starting to feel overdue.

But perhaps SE doesn't think there's any problem. This Meta community is a tiny fraction of the overall Stack Exchange userbase. Most SE users don't know about this issue, certainly not most of the millions of drive-by posters to Stack Overflow who only care about getting their questions answered, and then once they do, they vanish until the next programming problem they encounter. Stack Overflow is SE's main source of revenue, and as long as traffic there isn't impacted (and there has been no indication that this situation has had any impact on that), then SE will feel free to do (or not do) whatever they want.

Answer 7

It has been clearly stated only problem as far as they are concerned is all the people complaining about what they did is that it was done on a Friday. And as far as they are concerned, they already apologized for shipping on a Friday.

That is the only mistake that has been actually enumerated and specifically mentioned so that is the only only one they really care about.

Given that, I am not sure what you are expecting from them?

Expecting an apology from them is like expecting Palpatine to apologize for issuing Order 66!

Answer 8

First: I actually don't spend too much time here. More during the last 10, 15 days ... maybe 30 minutes on average per day. But still: I get what is going on. I can look at the big vote counts, and clearly identify the issues that the community has.

It really feels like this meta community has turned into a one-way street. Stack Exchange Inc. occasionally dumps something here, and then walks away, following up their own plans and ideas.

Coming back to my first paragraph, I find that is strange. It really doesn't take too much time to get the key messages from the community. Thus: if I would call the shots at Stack Exchange Inc., I would have asked one full time employee to do nothing else but follow what happens here, to give daily briefings. To understand where things are going. To see what behavior would be considered helpful, and what exactly is behind the terrible negative feedback. (I see that shog9 is around most of the time, but he seems to be focused on moderating things).

But it seems: nothing like that happens!

Of course: every reaction carries the risk of causing more trouble, but heck: when you are in a deteriorated relationship then doing nothing (because of being afraid of doing the wrong thing) will not help.

Note: the above are observations and a bit of speculation on my end.

My real answer is: we won't get answers from Stack Exchange Inc. via the meta community.

Two choices left: we keep sitting here, talking to ourselves, and an "empty audience" ... or maybe we focus on using other ways to give feedback. There is email, twitter, facebook, ...

Thing is: there is a ton of (still!) polite and reasonable feedback given here that Stack Exchange Inc. should look into. If they don't read it here, maybe parts of that should be expressed, well, using these other channels.

Interestingly enough, the latest response by Stack Exchange Inc. claims that they intend to listen. But as said elsewhere: walk the talk!

Answer 9

Honestly? Yes, I'm guessing that SE is just hoping to wait it out. I think they are aware that some of us - or many of us - are unhappy, but we are replaceable.

Or it might be that they are completely silent right now because they and their lawyers are in the process of putting together a settlement for Monica.

Those are the only two options I (in my infinite lack of wisdom) can come up with.

But one way we can fight this and feel better about our voices id to give Monica a voice that will be heard. We can help her assemble a team of lawyers to make right the wrongs, or at least to slap a satisfying bandaid on the wound.

Please consider visiting Monica's GoFundMe page and contribute. Every contribution is a contribution towards forcing the much needed conversation between Monica and TPTB.

Answer 10

Citing Monica's answer with updates from here:

David said in this post, and in that email to me, that SE would develop a process for reinstatement appeals and I could go through it. I understand that a policy was announced to moderators on Friday, October 11, as indicated in the question here. I received no email about it, so I sent David email on October 13 at 19:30 UTC asking for the process and how to trigger it. I have not received a reply as of October 15 at 02:45 UTC.

The current state of affairs seems to suggest that Monica will only be told more once they finalize & publicize the moderator removal and reinstatement process. A draft of this has according to moderators been shared internally for moderators to review and comment on, although it is unknown how long this is from being published.

Answer 11

It seems to me, that if Stack Overflow really cared about the value of community (even if only in the sense of community being an important part of their profit model), and about the experience of transgender people, they'd have done a little more work up front to save a lot of pain later, by doing something like:

One. Post explaining the problem, and that a new code of conduct is working on.

Cue questions, both good faith and bad faith. Is this really that big of an issue (yes). Isn't it covered by "be nice?" (in theory, but it's become clear more is needed). And, you'd be able to see who flat out objected to any sort of policy about pronoun usage, independent of its details / manner of implementation. Monica's initial questions would be handled here.

Two. Use feedback from the initial post to modify the draft of the CoC, and present it

This is where Monica's requests for clarification would be handed. Again, there would be questions, both good faith and bad faith. Handle the good faith ones in good faith, and handle the trolls like trolls.

Three. Address concerns raised about the specifics in the final draft.

And then, hang around throughout the process to help deal with the fall-out -- rather than riling up the bigots, and then leaving the community to deal with them alone.

Instead,

they first fired a well-respected long-term moderator (!) without explanation (and smeared her to the press (!!) on a day when they knew she wouldn't be available for comment to defend herself (!)). Thus, greatly shaking the community's faith in their good intentions.

Next, they plopped the new CoC down, without feedback from the community it was meant to protect, and then vanished to leave others to deal with the fallout.

And what was up with the Monica firing?

If Monica were really a bigot refusing to call people what they want to be called, there would be evidence in her copious publicly viewable participation;

if SE's firing her was really just about trying to protect a vulnerable community, there are far worse people they would have gone after first, and they wouldn't have just dumped the new CoC and then gone silent.

If it were just a misunderstanding, it would have been corrected by now.

The only explanation I've been able to come up with that fits the evidence is that someone at SE has a grudge against Monica for unknown reasons, and that grudge is more important to them than the community -- and the good will of the person with the grudge is more important to SE than the goodwill of the community.

There may well be a more wholesome explanation for the firing; however, given the publicly available evidence, I've been unable to come up with such a wholesome motive thus far.

Answer 12

I would encourage contributions to Monica's legal fund in excess of the stated goal of $10,000 (as of October 30, 2019). A single motion could easily cost $15,000. If it is SE Inc's strategy to just wait everyone out here, it will be very surprising if they don't take the same delay and exhaust tactic in a legal battle.

Answer 13

The Monica situation continues unresolved. Is SE hoping the problem just goes away?

No, SE is not waiting for the problem to just disappear. They are actively working on it; they are not just silent about the issue, they are developing the solution to all this drama: the Loop. They will select (by race and gender apparently) the people they want to receive feedback from. Meta will no longer be needed. They've announced they have plans for Meta, but feedback is not probably in them.

What can we, as a community, do to get a response from the SE staff?

Move the issue to social media. Twitter memes aside, as long as the dumpster fire they have created can't be seen from outside they have no reason to do anything.

Answer 14

The new "processes" may well offer a way forward, but I'm not sure what to make of Tim Post's recent statement that "There are some former moderators that just can not, under any circumstances receive access again."

Hopefully Tim is referring just to those few mods removed at some earlier time for some seriously grievous behaviour, before the current debacle.

On the other hand, can I trust SO/SE do do anything right at the moment? Probably not. The weekly moratorium is one tool (amongst many) we can use to remind SO/SE management that their company's future is heavily dependent on how our user community assesses their reparations to Monica. An offer of reinstatement (as opposed to an invitation to Monica to apply for reinstatement) is a minimum condition.

Answer 15

is SE hoping the problem just goes away?

It's not just hoping "the problem" goes away, it is driving "the problem" away.

That is, driving moderators and users who are critical of SE Inc. actions away from the network.

(In case it's not clear, I'm being facetious here - I don't accept their view of critics as the problem.)

Answer 16

I've not been following all the action that closely, but it's clear from this question and its answers that it's basically back to "business as usual" in the SO corporate offices. It seems to me that the most glaring issue that keeps recurring is the lack of communication. Over and over again, SE users are asking for answers but getting little to nothing in return - not even so much as a "we can't comment on that right now" - from the "higher-ups". The moderators have been allowed (or have taken the initiative) to make some comments here and there, but that does very little to improve the perception that the people who are ultimately in charge and responsible for policies and such are actually doing anything. Sure, they're probably running around trying to put out the fires, but the SE community and volunteers need to at least have some idea of what's going on and what to expect. This far into it, we should have a much more concrete understanding of the overall situation.

While I was initially hopeful and appreciative about Mr. Fullerton's apology, the noticeable lack of ongoing and proactive "official" communication only serves to erode that hope. From what I've been able to tell, the only way that we know what's going on with Monica's current situation is her reply on Mr. Fullerton's apology post and speculative or incomplete comments from some Community Moderators. While I don't personally have any "skin in that particular game"^[1], the attitude that we are seeing from the SO corporate office is apparently (at best) one of general indifference to the community at large or, (at worst) a concerted effort to "sweep this whole situation under the rug"^[1].

Since being made aware of this situation/incident, I've gone back and reviewed some of the history of (to put it nicely) corporate faux pas made by Stack Overflow, much of which I had no prior knowledge. It seems the old patterns simply keep repeating themselves and SO (the company) either cannot or willfully refuses to learn the lesson the community keeps trying to teach them. SO corporate hasn't increased their level of communication with the community with respect to this topic, even though they've admitted that they screwed up. Instead, they've chosen to remain mostly silent as they've done in the past - especially on inflammatory or controversial issues, concerns, and/or topics of conversation.

---

Here's my suggestion:

In a corporate environment, pretty much any time you have an "official" meeting, someone is there taking notes. In many/most larger companies, such meetings have someone explicitly designated to record the minutes of the meeting. Even if there are other smaller and less formal meetings going on, I would assume that such is the case with at least some of SO's meetings regarding this particular topic. While I'm not necessarily suggesting that SO makes these minutes publicly available without any sort of approval, proactively allowing the community to see at least a redacted version of these minutes would be tremendously helpful in battling the growing perception that nothing's actually being done.

It's no longer enough to wait until someone asks "what's going on?" and then just let one of the Community Moderators give some vague or incomplete (through no fault of their own) explanation of what they've experienced or only the information to which they're privy. SO needs to enact the transparency that they've promised (sort of) and for which the SE community has been clamoring.

^[1]_{links to idiom definitions from the Cambridge Dictionary for those for whom English is not their primary language}

Answer 17

Monica started her GoFundMe on October 28th. As of that moment, Stack Exchange's legal staff has, as is the standard response in this situation, advised Stack Exchange to refrain from commenting on the situation while the specter of a lawsuit is hanging over them.

So, at this point this whole thing needs to be hashed out between lawyers before tho community is going to hear anything of it.

Answer 18

There are actually 2 questions you have asked:

The Monica situation continues unresolved, is SE hoping the problem just goes away?

and

What can we, as a community do to get a response from the SE staff?

Now, please note that the answers are my personal opinion on the matter. I don't think that there is a right or wrong answer, only speculation.

You may be right that they are waiting for the problem to go away, however, Monica was JUST a moderator, not a staff member of StackExchange. I fear that there is no such thing as wrongful termination in this case. I am not saying that what they did was right, but they sure can do it. And I am more than certain that they could just wait for this to blow over and come out fine. If they suddenly suspended Jon Skeet for no reason, it would create much more ripple, and then I doubt it would end well for them. The man has had an outreach of 284 million people on the most used platform - StackOverflow. Monica, on the other hand, was on Meta and Judaism, which are by no means as big.

What the community can do they are already doing - Actively participating in the discussion, creating commotion and clearly expressing their discomfort with how StackExchange is handling things. And I think that the community has done rather good so far. So if they can keep the tension high for long enough, perhaps StackExchange will address it properly.

At the end of the day remember - They really do not owe us anything, so moderate your expectations.