What are the next steps we as a community should take?

Question

It has been near three months now since the tipping point of the community. Many of us are still very not happy with SE.

The situation with Monica is at an impasse SE has told us:

"We aren't going to re-litigate the past." - Sara Chipps

"We’ll be reaching out to her directly to apologize for the lack of process, privacy, and to discuss next steps." - David Fullerton.

Monica's "Last resort" post was over a month ago... in that post she says:

"I posted it here because I have exhausted all known private communication channels available to me short of legal proceedings. I would have preferred a private conversation, which I have asked for repeatedly. I remain open to that option." - Monica Cellio

"we are not able to respond to anything regarding Monica's situation. We will not be answering any questions or comments about that going forward." - Juan M

There was a GoFundMe page set up by Monica for the impending legal battle and links were removed.

Other actions SE has taken include making a "no comment" policy.

"Moving forward, we will release an official process around removing moderators." - Sara Chipps

Which they did in the Moderator review and reinstatement processes.

They completely rewrote the FAQ for pronouns

"Going forward, we will be working with the community to overhaul how we gather input and feedback from our moderators and members of the community to make sure that your voices are heard and involved in the process, not just informed after decisions have been made." - David Fullerton

In the spirit of better communication SE started a new blog series The loop explaining how they make decisions and gather user input.

In short SE's actions have been spurned this year, here is a screen shot of the lowest voted question on meta as of this writing.

Don't forget about another unpopular one that would be in second on that list.

Meanwhile scores of mods have left; hundreds of users have indicated support for Monica [1][2]; many letters to SE have been written; users have started to build alternative Q&A platforms. The community is not happy

So the question is what do we (as the unhappy community) do now? What are our next steps? We don't want to just sit here and hope everything gets better, or do we? Is it better to wait (who knows how long) for some legal decision between Monica and SE? Or do we finally say enough is enough and walk away?

SE has been rather clear about their next steps and actions, what are our next steps and can we take them?

---

Sorry for the original title, it was never my intention to mislead anyone or impersonate the staff (not that I'd want to), it was simply a play on two famous titles from this saga.

I did not mean to simply rehash old hurt and bring all those feeling back again. My purpose in asking this is because it is a question I'm asking myself.
A while after the mods of BSE went on strike, we had a talk in our mod room about when will it end, what do we do now etc. I still do not have a good answer. I know it is silly to think SE will "reinstate Monica" now (why I outlined the history above) so us users who took a stand against SE's firing of Monica - I have to figure out what are my next steps.

Answer 1

I think it's safe to say that nothing is going to change here. You can post as much as you like, but SE has changed and do not care for "the community" anymore like they did in the past. I doubt they're really listening to these anyway. They're not going to change anything because of these posts.

So it's time to redirect your energy, and find a new place to help. Discover a new site to work with. A New Year's resolution to just ignore SO will do us all good.

As for SO, just treat it like any other faceless Internet resource. Use it, but otherwise forget about all the behind-the-scenes stuff you used to know. It'll have to survive on its own merits now.

Answer 2

SE has been rather clear about their next steps and actions, what are our next steps?

The first thing would be to acknowledge: there is no "our" here.

The real "problem" (for us MSE followers) is: there isn't one community. Instead there are plenty of different groups:

• People like you and me, writing questions and answers here, or maybe sitting together in some chat on this site, and we would probably call that group the "community".
• But then there are thousands and thousands of users who rarely or never come here, who probably not even heard of what happened during the last months. And guess what: for those people "life" just continues. When you turn to the top users on Stack Overflow for example, you find: none out of that group suspended activity in order to support "the community". I randomly clicked on 20+ profiles. None of them even mentions Monica, or any other form of conflict that keeps "us" so busy here. And make no mistake: each one of those top users might contribute more "value" to SE Inc. in one day compared to what "we" concerned users get done in a whole week.

So, unfortunately (from "our" perspective): "we" the users aren't organized in a meaningful way. Thus the option space for us hasn't changed:

• You as an individual can still decide if/how you intend to contribute to MSE, or to any other site on the Stack Exchange network.
• You can still decide to contribute to the GoFundMe by Monica, or the other one about the licensing question.
• You could decide to completely leave here, and participate in alternative projects that try to establish something new, that works better for a dedicated community.

And that is about it. Your only freedom is how you mix the above options for yourself. And for me it is exactly that: a mix of the above options. I still try to make a difference here, but I also (somehow) contribute in other places.

If we would be in a real union, we would have some sort of meaningful way to come to a real consensus, and then a powerful community that has leverage to bring to the table. If "we" could create a significant drop of traffic going to the Stack Exchange network (namely: Stack Overflow), then there would be a chance of making us heard.

But we can't achieve that, thus we can only hope that SE Inc. also listens here, and acts on it in a positive way, even when they are pretty silent about that part.

And note: even the relatively small group of moderators isn't organized in a meaningful way (see here). If those folks can't get "some act" together that gets all (at least: most) 500+ moderators to "work together", to bring leverage to the table ... then sorry: don't expect the "users" to even get close.

Update edit: there is one option I forgot about: of course you can also closely follow what SE Inc. does about their new feedback mechanisms, and try to be part of that. Personally, I am doubtful what will come out of that, but still: it is the path that the company suggests will drive their future activities, so why not use that to express feedback?!

Answer 3

Thankfully the founders foresaw this possibility, when the company holding control of the site cared more for the shareholders than the community, that they provided an insurance plan.

We deliberately put the Stack Overflow community-generated content under Creative Commons and make data dumps of it available regularly as insurance... if Stack Overflow ever slips into the hands of an evil person who does evil things, the content of the site is freely available and someone else can set up a non-evil site. We did this because IMDB and CDDB both started out with "community generated content" which was appropriated by commercial companies trying to make a buck, and we wanted to insure that this could never happen to Stack Overflow.

• Joel Spolsky, 2010 (emphasis added, source)

Resources:

• How to download the Stack Overflow Database
• Stack Exchange Data Dump

It should only take 6-8 weeks to build, and users can "reclaim" their content by adding an ID number to their Stack Exchange profile, which the new site can use to verify ownership of the content.

Answer 4

We should take Elie Wiesel's advice, from his Nobel Prize Speech in 1986.

If you don't know, Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born Jew, American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor.

...And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

I would add many things to his list of things that should not make a person the target of persecution. For instance, national origin, sexual identity (Joel taught me this in his writing, long ago), or for taking sides.

The issues we face today are terribly complex. You have people like me, for example, who grew up in southern Texas where non-binary sexual identity was openly ridiculed when I was a child in the 1980's and some in the 1990's. I did NOT grow up enlightened. I had questions. I had (and still do have) things I don't understand, and awkward questions I must ask if I am going to understand what it must be like to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Should I not be allowed to expose my ignorance without ridicule? Should I be crucified for asking honest, sincere questions in an effort to understand people whose lives are fundamentally different from my own? The world has grown so polarized over these issues that I am afraid to take sides. I had high hopes, based on Joel's apparently excellent character and intelligence, that this would become a place where people could feel comfortable with one another, be free to ask and understand the answers to these questions, and perhaps aid in the resolution of these societal issues. Wouldn't a well-run lgbtq.stackexchange.com have been wonderful? Imagine all the open-ended questions and answers that could have been asked there, honestly, and how many people might've been enlightended in the process. Perhaps this could still happen.

Here are my practical responses to your question:

• First and foremost, take sides.
• Above all, be actively kind. We can hold everyone involved accountable without cruelty or condescension. Sara is probably upset. Joel is probably upset. Probably many others at SE, both those involved and those not involved, are upset. We know Monica is upset. They are all human beings on opposite sides of a terribly unfortunate incident that is now highly restricted by legal realities. This reflects on the sad state of our legal system more than it does on the individuals involved, though certainly an olive branch at some level is still appropriate.
• Protect yourself by anonymizing your user account, if you have not already.
• Do not allow fatigue, apathy, or fear cause you to desist in taking sides. Have faith in people, including those at SE. They are human beings. I strongly suspect they are generally decent, care as deeply about the community as we do, and feel deeply unsettled about any harm they have caused.
• Continue to hold SE (again, respectfully) accountable. Resist until a formal apology has been offered to Monica.
• If necessary, cease to participate in the community. Stop posting answers. Stop posting questions. Stop moderating. Limit your participation entirely to Meta until the situation is resolved.
• Support Monica, who appears to very clearly be in the right.
• Hold the entire situation in your hearts and in your prayers. Commit a little time and energy to seeing the right thing is done, whatever you believe that to be.

Answer 5

Personally, I'm someone who once wanted to further engage with SO, perhaps becoming a moderator down the line, and/or trying to land a job there.

After seeing the company's conduct surrounding Monica's situation (and through that, becoming aware of other controversies) the management culture there just feels toxic. Not Uber toxic, but toxic enough to trigger my gut feeling that it's turning into a place where management isn't going to feel at all accountable to the people that work there (whether they're paid, or unpaid volunteers outside the company).

Unless I see some genuine apologies and accountability (maybe accompanied by a voluntary resignation to make it clear the apologies are sincere), I'm going to back away from my engagement with Stack Exchange in general. Definitely not going to help triage when prompted to. And I'm going to try to use the help forums of specific products whenever possible, rather than contribute to the library of SO answers here. It'll be hard/impossible to stop all engagement, just like it's difficult to completely remove yourself from Google's/Facebook's ecosystem, but moving in that direction is the best thing an individual could do to help affect change.

Answer 6

People who want to leave are most probably already doing it or did it. They are unfortunately not part of the community anymore, but they might come back under different circumstances. One should not completely forget them.

People who are fine with the way things are now, don't need to do anything.

Those that remain and remain unhappy should indeed make up their mind, in order to advance the community. It doesn't seem like the company is listening anymore and discussions about how the past was better lead to nowhere. For example, suggest that a simple be nice policy would be sufficient and you'll quickly realize that this proposal is not going to fly at all.

Building a truly independent meta (aka a union) outside of the reach of the company would be very difficult and will likely fail because of missing reach outside of the network. Ghostcat does argue that very convincingly in a comment. It's an option though and maybe somebody would just have to start it.

Waiting for the legal dispute Monica Cellio vs. Stack Overflow Inc. is over now, but the resolution to her case is not satisfying to everyone; only a part of this is about her case anyway.

I can only urge people to not waste their time with unproductive negative voting or comment orgies. Some of them gets deleted anyway. Draw your consequences now and maybe make 2020 a fresh start, either by supporting the company or by spending time elsewhere. While a critical voice here may still be helpful, the intensity of the last months when projected into the future is probably not, for nobody. All or most of what needed to be said, has been said. The company has got all the important messages, but simply disagrees with many of them.

Does this sound like a farewell? I can promise that I will check from time to time, but the intensity of the activity will surely decrease.

Answer 7

The only reason for me to stay, and to keep Monica in my user name, is to give moral support to Monica in the hope that she will get a response from SE that she will regard as adequate, although it is very unlikely to be satisfying.

In the beginning, I hoped, and actually expected, a quick resolution and one that was generous. That hope is long gone.

I stay only because I would feel awful if I abandoned Monica (partly for personal reasons that apply only to me.) After the resolution -- and I know there may never be a resolution -- I may, or I may not, retreat to my niche in a very small number of sites which I value because of the information they offer, and because of a few people. That is, only if I can do so without feeling soiled by association with SE.

Answer 8

I suspect that this will be unpopular, but I really think that it is true and describes our situation at this point in time:

SE doesn't care very much about our feelings on this issue as a community. That's not to say that they aren't interested at all, but rather that our unhappiness has been clearly expressed over a long period of time, and that unhappiness is not enough to prompt SE to do anything other than what they already planned to do. It certainly hasn't prompted them to do anything to fix the damage they've caused to a particular, popular user.

This is not surprising. SE is a business looking to make money. SE's core product is our participation across the various stacks. That creates the content which draws visitors who see the ads purchased by other businesses who want those ads seen by the traffic that SE draws. As long as we continue to produce that content, SE will continue to be able to pursue that business model and make money.

If community unhappiness mattered to them, they would have done something to acknowledge that. They have, very clearly and repeatedly, declined to do so. There is no reason to think that expressing more unhappiness is going to matter any more than that already expressed.

There are two remaining ways that SE might be persuaded, as I see matters:

• The harmed user will be successful in some legal action against them. You can support this by donating to that user's legal fund.
• Users can make clear that they will affect SE's core product by visibly declining to post questions and answers. This could be absolute (I won't post again until X) or it could by more of a warning shot (until X, users that care about this issue won't post any questions or answers on Mondays, nor answer questions or moderate content posted on a Monday).

The latter is the only direct thing a typical user is going to do to express something to SE. And there are enough users that don't know or care about this issue that I doubt a full or partial participation strike will accomplish much.

We all have our own personal reasons for still being on SE, or for not being here any more. But beyond those two options, it's over for generic users that care about what has happened. The community has little leverage, and did not use what leverage it had to affect anything that SE cares about enough to change its behavior.

SE has by now demonstrated, definitively, that it can behave as it did in this case with no meaningful consequences to anything that matters to it.

If users feel the need to vent, then fine, by all means do it. But it's time to dispense with the illusion that this process is still happening, as opposed to having been decided, and that the community is both willing and able to induce any changes on these issues.

It's over.

Answer 9

My answer is an extension of laur34 “ idea to start a hashtag on Twitter”.

I suggest to use the #SOstopBeingStupid hashtag on Twitter, because the way how the current management is treating the community, moderators and even the most experienced community managers causes the major problem for the SE sites. They may be not obvious yet, but it will affect quality of the site in the nearest future.

I’ve considered an alternative #SOstopBeingEvil hashtag, but it may be less convincing. A business may be ok to be evil, if it helps to earn money, but they should not do the damage to themselves.

We can discuss other possible Twitter hashtags, but unlikely to come to consensus. A similar question about SE Meta tag, Should we have a tag for significant points in time?, didn’t come to a single conclusion.

As the majority of actions related to the conflict were done by the Director of Public Q&A or her subordinates (most likely by her order), it makes sense to address tweets with any concerns to top managers, in particular VP David Fullerton, https://twitter.com/df07, or CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar, https://twitter.com/pchandrasekar. You can tweet to https://twitter.com/StackOverflow, but the tweets are less likely to be delivered to the management. Or tweet to anyone else, who can influence SE policies.

Tip: ensure that your Twitter account is public, otherwise only your followers can see your tweets. My account by default was private.

The idea to use Twitter (Twitter-driven development) was mentioned in a few places:

maybe we focus on using other ways to give feedback. There is email, Twitter, Facebook,

By GhostCat salutes Monica C.

Spread the word via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,

By Apollys supports Monica.

It is obvious that the only way to get the company's attention is to twitter. Posting on meta is pointless, they just ignore that or censor it.

By Amarth.

If you have any energy left to deal with this (I know I don't), I highly encourage you to take to Twitter. It seems to be the only thing they'll end up understanding.

By Zoe - account abandoned.

Answer 10

I think the next step we need to take is the same step that we have been taking: Keep the pressure on them. In the past three months the SE team has:

• Communicated with us more than they have in a very long time
• Expressed a desire to be more open about how they solicit feedback
• Been passing changes by moderators for input before finalizing decisions
• Rolling out updates to the UI on a fairly regular basis
• Changed the reputation associated with question votes
• Updated the CoC and wrote and revised a FAQ based on user and moderator input
• Created a policy for speaking to the press
• Formalized the procedure for removing an reinstating moderators
• Implemented changes in the mod only chat room
• Moved forward with their desire to provide moderator training

You may not like some of these changes and the changes may not accomplish the goals SE wants, but they are doing things. We can complain about the things they have not done. They have not reinstated Monica or publicly apologized to her. Apart from adding two sentences to the CoC, they have not really done anything to make SE more welcoming to minorities. If those types of things are your bar, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed. If however, we compare what they have done over the past 3 months to what they did over the preceding 9 months (unilaterally change the license agreement, roll out third party ads, and remove the beta label from sites), I think the change in their behavior is obvious.

I think the view that it does not matter what they do if they do not reinstate Monica does not help us forward. Instead, I think our next step needs to be to keep telling SE what we want and keep their feet to the fire to deliver on those things.

Answer 11

Just do what makes you feel happy.

It sounds simple, but for many of us it means different things and has nuances. If you're interested in exploring this a bit more, read the following and see if your thoughts resonate with mine.

When I google something about code or technology or computers, I want to either learn some piece of trivia, or I want to solve a problem. For trivia there are a couple of sites that can also answer my questions (such as Reddit or Wikias), but for problem solving Stack Exchange sites are kind of the best. With topic and scope limitations, but still.

When I want to solve a problem, I want to find the solution that will be the most cheap, quick, easy and will last forever. Don't we all? And sometimes when I solve my problems, I find that nobody has posted that solution in a place where I could find within the first page of search results. So I add it myself. Someone else will be happy to find it in the future just as I have been happy to find the solutions to my problems in the past. This is what my vision is for a Q&A site or a "knowledge base" that the Stack Exchange platform has allowed its users to build.

Now it is important to draw a clear distinction between the platform and its owners and the users. At the beginning our paths were similar, but today the divide is immense and it is impossible to ignore. What used to be an endeavour for the betterment of humanity, has forked into a secondary objective, while the profit earning has taken the lead. The users and the company are now working towards different goals. If only the world around us was designed so that the monetary gains were less important than the betterment of humanity... but alas, we live in a different reality.

And so you can choose -- to stay and observe the deterioration of this platform and slow but inevitable departure from its original course... or, just as when it was built roughly 10 years ago (in response to a similar issue we are facing now, which is ironic), find other such platforms which have the same goals that you have, and start using those instead!

I cannot feel happy using a platform which I know does not have the same goals as I do. I know it will ignore my efforts when it suits it. It has been thoroughly demonstrated. There is no question about it. I want to feel content with where I publish my findings and solutions to various problems, that it will not get sidelined or ever go to waste.

Just as everyone now knows that Wikipedia is the place to go when you want to get acquainted with virtually any topic, and sometimes learn a lot of in-depth information, perhaps one day there will be a Q&A search option right next to the "W" icon for a site like that. I don't suppose it will link to this site though.

Answer 12

1. Pressure the company to create a separate non-profit organization to run the open network of Q&A sites. The non-profit would use the company's software, would contain the entire existing collection of Q-As, and would be self-governing.

   Possible ways to do this include "Contact Us," letters to the editor at appropriate newspapers and online publications, a petition, articles and studies in academic journals, US labor law administrative complaints (this is not litigation), requests for mediation through JAMS, in-person visits to the SE offices, phone calls to the SE offices, back-channel pressure via personal contacts within the paid staff, twitter messages, and getting the word out at each local Meta, with a featured link in the sidebar.

2. I understand why many moderators suspended their moderating work, or resigned. However, that has had an unintended effect, of making SE a less nice, more stressed-out place.

   As long as we are working in parallel on item 1, I don't think it's unethical to contribute to the site, as a community member and/or moderator -- if one wishes to do so.

3. We can double down on being nice to each other. This has been a painful period. By being nice, even when someone has said something hurtful, we can help each other heal, and keep up our courage to continue to plug away at item 1. It's okay to make an I-message if something is bothering us, but let's try to avoid escalating things when tensions rise.

4. Those with writing, drawing, musical, etc., talents, can make comic strips, political cartoons, internet memes, etc.