Time for a major shift in strategy and approach

Question

This post is addressed to the people who still believe they have a future at Stack Exchange, and who still hold out some hope that there can be a way out of this mess. If you have no such hope left, I can certainly understand that and don't begrudge you. I myself am not sure, but I feel compelled to try, at least.

What we've been doing clearly hasn't been working. Stack Exchange isn't interested in listening to meta feedback in the way it is currently addressed. Shog9 confirmed yesterday what I'd been suspecting for a while:

My former colleagues have an amazing skill: they are able to understand what people are trying to say. To read between the lines and see, not just what is written, but what is meant, what is felt. And to respond accordingly, with care and empathy. They can communicate.

And right now, they are being told not to use that skill. Told that they MUST not use that skill. I know this because I was told this. It has been ratcheting for over a year now: more and more "musts" and "must nots" - "say this AND ONLY THIS."

At this point, they are operating under an unbelievable amount of pressure. And you have seen the results of this: "they gulped out fine folly about dignity and acquiescence".

You may think, in expressing your anger, that your words will reach and influence those behind the scenes, those calling the shots, writing the words that MUST, eliding those that MUST NOT. But know that the influence takes only one form: yet another click of the ratchet.

Your anger will be held up as evidence of toxicity. Your frustration as evidence of noncooperation. Just as it has been for so many months past. My dear ex-colleagues will be blamed for failing to control you, and another rock will be laid on their backs.

Right now, what we're doing on meta is actively sabotaging our own goals. I know this is not fair, and I know that this situation is a kind of Kafkaesque trap, but if you're still here and still harbor some hope that the network, that our communities can still recover from this mess, it is time for a shift in strategy.

It seems evident that we have to make the first step here, or everything is just lost. It sucks that we got this far, and it sucks that they won't extend an olive branch on their own accord, but we have the truth in black and white now.

The only thing we're currently actually in control of is our reaction to this.

There are still employees in SE that believe in the people here, and we still have some support in the company. Right now, by acting out our (justified!) anger here, we're making their lives harder, and making their position harder to justify internally. If all this is anything more than an exercise in catharsis, we have to change our strategy. To that end, I would propose:

1. Stop the angry rants on meta. It is natural to be angry, and lord knows we have plenty of reasons to. But it's also obvious that, not only is nobody that they're addressed to reading them, but they're actively undermining our position here. No senior manager at Stack Exchange Inc. (SEI) will be swayed by an angry rant, if they ever read the post at all.

2. Engage with the feedback mechanisms they provide. This one is trickier, because you might think that they'll just ignore it. Truth is, they still might. But we don't know that for sure. We do know for sure that our current approach is being ignored. So in the absence of better approaches, this seems to be our best bet.

3. Reward positive behavior. Right now employees who still dare to come to meta are super scarce. When they do, and when they engage with us here and act constructively, we need to encourage it. Negative reinforcement via sustained criticism has not worked out for us, in fact it has done the exact opposite. Everyone is human, and everyone has their breaking point. If we want to maintain any sort of relationship with the employees, we need to stop piling negativity that is not their fault (but the fault of management) onto the employees who still talk to us.

The most bitter pill to swallow

I know many of you have no hope left that anything can be salvaged, and I understand that feeling and am nearly there myself, then there is the most bitter pill to swallow. I know many of you still hold some employees and contributors in high regard, because they've been kind and professional in the face of all this. They're currently being hurt by our approach. It is clear to me from what Shog wrote, and from his plea for our assistance, that the pressure resulting from SEI's perception of our actions is almost unbearable.

I know it is incredibly unfair, and I know the onus should not be on us to control how a corporation perceives us.

I know none of us meant for this to happen, but it is happening. We know about it now, and all we can do at this time is control our response to it.

So, for all of you who have lost respect and faith in SEI leadership, but still have some faith left in the CM team I echo Shog's plea: Don't do this to those who remain. Like us, they didn't sign up for this. Like us, they've been mistreated badly by the company. But unlike us, they don't have the luxury of walking away. This is their livelihood.

Answer 1

You're wrong.

I sympathize with those working at SE who have no control over the apparent craziness that management at SE has become, but that doesn't mean users don't get to complain.

Engage with the feedback mechanisms they provide.

There are none. Meta was all we had as a feedback mechanism and it is being completely ignored by management.

They have ignored mass resignations (ongoing) by respected moderators who provide a huge amount of free labor to SE.

SE management is ignoring feedback in any form. Tell them to start listening.

Reward positive behavior.

We're not employing them. What the community regards as positive behavior was what Monica Cellio and Shog9 (and others) did. They have been punished by SE for that positive behavior.

It seems that SE management and the community have, in reality, diametrically opposed views on what "positive behavior" is.

No senior manager at SEI will be swayed by an angry rant, if they ever read the post at all.

So you are suggesting what? Give in and go along with the madness? That achieves what? We start telling them what they want to hear so they have no reason to change. How will that help? I don't see how it can.

But unlike us, they don't have the luxury of walking away. This is their livelihood.

This is not true. They can walk away, just as any employee can leave any employer. I've done it myself. I'm not encouraging this, but let's not try and guilt users into supporting bad management like this by a false argument like that.

What you describe as "rants" are a reaction to what I'd described as "rubbish" from management at SE that seems to tell us how rosy everything is and how there is no problem at all and that no mistakes are being made. And having read a lot of posts and responses, the so-called rants result in many, many posts that contain constructive and well thought out advice for fixing the problem.

There's only one group that can stop this: SE management.

How can they stop it: start acting rationally.

They run a community based enterprise. The new "Team" products depend on companies being encouraged to use the product and the existing community are the people who SE ought to be hoping to encourage that use in their workplaces.

But instead of engaging with that community who might promote their product, they're treating us like dirt that has served it's purpose and can be ignored now. People are (unsurprisingly) deserting the sinking ship and no one is going to be promoting SE Team products to their own employers when they have no faith in management at SE. Why would anyone promote a product from a company that ignores complaints from it's users ? I'm not going to be the employee who puts that proposal forward to my bosses. That's common sense.

SE is biting the hand that feeds it precisely when it ought to be begging its user base to promote it to their employers.

That's not going to happen as things stand, IMO.

That rank and file staff are in the firing line is unfortunate, but it's their choice to work at SE and they have the right to stay or move on - that's their choice and I wish them well either way. But users have the right to complain.

Frankly if an employee at a company behaving like SE posted a question on Workplace SE asking for advice, it would almost certainly be "polish up your CV and bail before you're axed". If SE has become a poisonous workplace, it's not the users who are to blame, it's the management. The normal advice to employees at a company with a poisonous internal culture is "leave on your own terms, not theirs".

That, from my point of view (on the outside, looking in) is SE as we start 2020. It brings me no joy to say it.

So you're wrong. We cannot fix what's wrong at SE, and the only hope it will get fixed is if people complain as much as possible. Silence will be treated as acceptance by management as SE. Only complaints stand a small chance of redirecting this train before it's a complete wreck.

Answer 2

My dear ex-colleagues will be blamed for failing to control you, and another rock will be laid on their backs.

If so, then everything has been said. Then it is time for SE Inc. to just shut down all metas, and for us community members, to turn around, and never come back. And of course find out whether the dubious re-licensing that happened in 2019 gives each community member the legal ground to send in a DMCA request, asking for content to be deleted.

Huh, what is the cat talking about? About: failing to control you.

If SE Inc management (even remotely) thinks that the job of its employees is to control us, and worse, that we the community, better play with that, to prevent said employees to get into trouble, if that is all that is left, then nothing is left to further talk about. Because nobody who came here to contribute content and moderation work expects to be treated like a sheep that needs dogs controlling it.

But honestly: I actually trust those SE Inc. staffers we still interact with in that regard. When I read what Yaakov or others are saying, they want to work with us, not control us. Maybe the day comes when even that changes, but I don't think that we have reached such a low point.

And, as many others say: sure, there are upset people. But the discourse is still extremely polite in tone. Insults or name calling get singled out quickly, and sanctioned, too.

Meaning: anybody who thinks we have a "ranting" problem ... go visit Quora or Facebook or Reddit and remind yourself how "ordinary" Internet people "talk" to each other when ranting.

Answer 3

I still have (a bit of) hope, because hope dies last, but I also think that the proposed action here will not help at all and here is why:

• There are not many rants as far as I can see. The moderation is very efficient in that regard and even does more than necessary at times. Meta is not toxic (on average) and never was. That's unfortunately more like a myth in my opinion. The downvotes are mostly just disagreement. We could stop displaying them below a certain threshold though, that would be fine by me. But in general, I'm impressed by the civility here. And we still have the "be nice" policy that in my regard still applies; always.
• The Loop is rigged. It's nontransparent and doesn't allow for the back and forth discussion that's so valuable. The way it's conducted is not clear and oversight is missing. Anything can come out there and the trust of the company is low. Using it would mean legitimizing it. I don't want to be part of that now. Sorry.
• We always rewarded positive behavior but lately there hasn't been much positive behavior. I wouldn't know what to reward right now.
• Mature people would speak openly and make compromises, meaning that both have to make steps. If instead you double-back on your own beliefs and make steps unilaterally, it just means you are completely in the hands of the other party. If the other party is not benevolent (and it doesn't look like it is) it will exploit this incongruity of power and abuse the relationship. Before you can think twice, you just do what others want. Don't do that.
• Signalling that the community is ready to compromise is nice, but isn't this clear already? This is not the first question that asks what else can be done. It's also not the last. We are signalling all the time.
• The mature way is being open and clear, arguing about positions and then seeing what compromises are possible. And if none are possible, get over it and move on.
• My little hope left is that the company sees reason and we both can make steps towards each other. I want to wait a bit more for it to happen, but not much. And this I will do with all the courtesy that is possible. One should not mix disagreement with impoliteness. In the end, if the goals of the company and my own goals cannot be reconciled, I will just go somewhere else. I think this is the only civilized way to solve the conflict.

Answer 4

Yeah, no ...

this is not sad denial anymore; it is just sad stupid at this point.

I deleted all 69 accounts on all sites because the company blamed the community that contributed all their content for 10 years (me and you) for the "perception" that Stack Overflow had of being "unwelcoming" whatever that means. It still has never been specifically defined, in spite of the fact that the millions of hits a day, the endless stream of questions were getting larger not smaller contradicted this "unwelcoming narrative".

If their "unwelcoming" narrative was actually factual and true, the number of people asking questions would be dropping, instead it is going up and the quality is not even dropping anymore, it hit bottom a long time ago.

I quit because I came to the conclusion that my contribution here was enabling them and my huge amount of "rep" on the site lumped me into the "unwelcoming veterans" that they demonized by their silence at first and then directly with their blog posts and retweeting of toxic accusations of random Twitter users.

I created a throw away account just to respond to this, I have been watching the dumpster fire engulf good people, and by Internet standards "saints", with popcorn and a train wreck fascination.

Wake up. They said you are the problem, and they continue to say you are the problem because they say the current situation is your fault because you drove them to this action with your "unwelcoming" behavior that a couple of random Twitter twits tweeted their internalization of their own victim mentality.

This proposal is just perpetuating and promoting that they were correct, which is empirically factually incorrect. Their propaganda against those of us that made the company what it is today with our contributions are evil, ****phobes and misanthropes is categorically insane to accept.

How can people that dedicated hundreds and thousands of hours of free support, guidance and knowledge be that terrible and evil? They can not be and are not. It is completely illogical and plain out gaslighting propaganda to placate someone/group that is secret.

If you are going to "be quiet" then just delete all your accounts!

That is the only way "silence" will convey the correct message.

Answer 5

...No. When you have a product or service that you paid for, and it doesn't work, you call tech support.

If you're angry, then the tech support will get an earful from you. Are they accountable for the product being broken? Of course not. Does that mean you should just fix it yourself? Of course not.

They're the interface between the company and the customer, and if you have complaints, that's the direction where you can aim them.

Because, let's face it, people work for a company because they're paid. Sure, they might choose one company instead of the other because of other things, but in the end if the company I work for suddenly told me they'd not pay my salary anymore, I'd leave them, no matter how much I like it here.

The point being: if you're being paid to do a job, you do it. The job sucks? I get it, I've been there, but you do it anyway.

Telling customers (yes, we are customers and we pay with our time spent here) that it's their approach that's ruining things is just not acceptable. Do you remember the "You're holding it wrong" thing? That's what you're saying.

Answer 6

The only thing we're currently actually in control of is our reaction to this.

Our reaction is being controlled. If we get angry, we are toxic. If we don't show anger, Stack Exchange believes they've solved their problem. At that point, there is no way for the community to make their voices heard on this platform, unless it's praising the company.

I very much disagree with all three of your proposals.

1. Angry rants. Constructive rants. Righteous indignation. Well thought out arguments. All of these have been ignored. This goes back further than September 2019. This goes back years and years. Stack Exchange, outside of the community management team, took a giant step back many years ago and let us run ourselves. We had the CMs around as a guiding hand, but effectively, the "built and run by you" part of the tour (second sentence) held up. Then the company came back to the table, saw all the nice sand castles we'd built and wanted to make them better. Except they showed up with something other than sand and chiseled away at the communities we've been building. They got upset that we were upset...after all, we're in their sandbox. Decorum spiraled from there. At this point, we are past being able to criticize the company. If something reflects badly on Stack Exchange, they don't want to see it any longer. For this reason alone, Meta is on its last legs.
2. Feedback mechanisms that are provided include meta. They also include occasional video chats. I'll give you one guess which former employee was a member of most of the ones I attended. Feedback channels also include chat rooms, moderator chat rooms and a Moderator Teams site. I've seen feedback in all of those. They are ignored. Or worse, acknowledged and given a pat on the head, then ignored.
3. Rewarding positive behavior is good, but it shouldn't be done to the exclusion of calling out things we don't like. Employees are worried about coming here. I'm not entirely sure why. I mean, every official, publicly posted thing done in the last few months has been a giant legal blob of nothing. The actions we've seen don't align with the words and values preached. I am more than willing to talk with employees (and frequently do), but that can't erase the pattern of behavior we've all seen. Promises to work on a task. Updates to a project that is then canceled. Beta periods of features that never get implements. Removal of site customization and uniqueness. Words matter, but not as much as the actions. Stack Exchange either is not telling the employees that come to the site and engage with us what is actually happening, is promising way more than it can deliver, or just doesn't respect the community and thinks we will say nothing.

I have complaints about Stack Exchange. I am, currently, free to express them here. When I don't have that freedom, I won't be here any more and will express them much more forcefully elsewhere.

---

I propose an alternative strategy to getting through this:

1. Bring the new CEO forward on Meta to answer questions from the community. I have not seen anything from the CEO since they started in October. At least, not on Stack Exchange. I've seen a fair number of reports in the press about them. Come forward with your thoughts and present them to the community. Defend them to the community. Present your roadmap for Q&A, Teams, Jobs and anything else that impacts everything we do.
2. Stop saying "legal action" and providing lawyered language for the CM team to parrot back to us. Someone who is actually giving the orders needs to come forward and say it themselves or it needs to stop. The community can smell it from a mile away and every time it's posted another round of this begins. So, let the people you pay to manage the community actually do their job. They are here to build bridges and support our growth. You are crippling that. The distrust you've built up is very rapidly making this a situation that can't be resolved in a way that keeps the meta community around.
3. Select a project or two the community really wants to be completed and complete it. Rebuild some of that lost goodwill. There have been plenty of betas, announced projects, half demos, collaborations and "good ideas" over the last decade to write a book. Pick something that is feasible, non-trivial, and is wanted. Work from there. Knock a few of these out and watch that support rebound.
4. Stop issuing edicts without justification or further communication. Just stop. I, as a moderator, am not going to be the next person to parrot your words.

Answer 7

I echo Shog's plea: Don't do this to those who remain. Like us, they didn't sign up for this. Like us, they've been mistreated badly by the company. [emphasis mine]

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Shog, and his plea tugs at my heartstrings, but I'm afraid this is bogus. It is casting us in a pathological triangular relationship that we absolutely do not fit in. We cannot be rescuers here. We are not "do[ing] this to [them]". We do not have the power to cause or to prevent any abuse that is being inflicted, and we should not act as if we do. That delusion will only cause more hurt.

I will not accept blame for another person misinterpreting my words and using that to justify hurting a third person. I will do what I can to help -- and sure, one thing that can help is doing my best to prevent misinterpretation. But accepting the premise that "you're making me abuse ${PERSON}" only strengthens the abuser, and I won't.

Answer 8

A lot of people are saying here that it's not fair to expect us to be reasonable and calm when we've been faced with utter disrespect and contempt.

I agree. It's not fair. It is totally unreasonable and unfair to expect that a crowd of people who have been ignored, called names, and treated with contempt will treat the people who have given them this treatment with respect and a calm demeanor.

But if we want to have any chance at all... any chance of regaining a smidgen of what we've lost... we have to try.

It's totally unfair to ask this of people, but I'm asking anyway. SE holds all the cards. We have no real power. We're being ignored and tossed out.

When someone is being ignored, sure, shouting and screaming will get attention. But it will only lead to them being removed from the premises.

Since we collectively would not like to be removed from the premises, so to speak, we need to swallow our pride and remain calm. Not shout, no matter how deserving they may be of it. While it's tempting to spit in someone's face, and they may totally deserve it, it's not going to improve things.

Yes, I know, we've tried this in the past. But now... we have nothing left to lose.

Shouting and screaming is not going to get Shog and Robert back. It's not going to solve the ongoing issues. It's only going to get the people still there in more trouble.

Catija, Tim, JNat, Jon, and all the rest deserve better than that.

It's time to show SE management that we are capable of not being a screaming mob. We need to be an orderly delegation. Because the only thing a screaming mob is going to do right now is hurt people that don't deserve it.

I don't like it. It's unreasonable and unfair and a slap in the face to ask the community to be nicer after the way they've been treated. But it's the only way to protect the people who need it right now.

Answer 9

There are two emotional responses fighting in me:

being passive aggressive or being aggressively passive

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Personally I have given up on Stack Exchange Company. It becomes more and more apparent that they just don’t see us as a main asset that needs maintenance and grooming.

I still think that we should provide feedback here — not for SE, but for any project that will fill our needs to learn from SE's mistakes. Of course we can try to police the tone of our feedback — and we should, as it might make the days of those employees still visiting meta less horrible.

But make no mistake: talking more carefully and nicer will not change anything about our situation. This community is in the midst of being lobotomized.

I will use SO as a working tool for the foreseeable future, just out of necessity. But I am prepared to abandon ship as soon as real community-driven projects will emerge out of this mess.

Answer 10

A famous saying is Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results. This saying's core concept makes a lot sense, at least to me.

Like many (I believe most) of you, I'm not happy with what has been happening here recently, especially over the last 5 or so months. I don't really know what, if anything, we can do to change it. However, it seems quite clear to me that our current approach is not working very well (actually, it's basically not working at all). My interpretation of Shog's blog post is that what we've been doing has actually mostly had the opposite effect of what we want to achieve! For example, it's put more pressure on people, like Shog, who are (or were) in the best position to possibly work with & help us to achieve what we mutually want.

I understand & agree this is not fair or reasonable. Also, the only responsibility I assign for this situation is to the SE management people who have been involved with causing what we're not happy about. Nonetheless, logically, if we care about the SE site(s) we're involved in, believe what the company is doing is not in the best interest of not only us, but also the general SE community and the company's long term interest, then what should we do?

If we keep doing what we have been doing, is it reasonable to expect to somehow get different results than what have occurred? If you believe it's not reasonable then, regardless of how illogical or unnecessary it may seem, I suggest we consider alternative approaches. Offhand, I don't have any ones in particular to offer myself, apart from that you think about what the OP has suggested (note I'm not yet sure which ones, if any, would work best, but they mostly seem like reasonable ideas to me). I will update this post or write a new answer if I come up with any possibly useful suggestions myself.

I, at least, will consider what I can do myself to achieve what I want, regardless of to what extent I feel I should be doing something else instead. It most definitely might end up being basically a waste of my time, but at least I would have more hope that my actions will, even if only in some very small way, help lead to positive changes occurring.

Answer 11

No, you are wrong.

Stack Exchange Inc. is toxic. This is obvious by now.

I will not accept any blame for the abuse that Stack Exchange Inc. is bringing on its employees. That's the sole responsibility of the Stack Exchange Inc. management!

Is the solution to not anger them, so they don't abuse their employees that much?

No! The solution for the abused employees is to find an non abusive employer. If you work for Stack Exchange Inc., polish your resume, start looking for better jobs. Leave the sinking ship before it takes you with it to the bottom.

Answer 12

Meh, this is just a money based approach now. Fighting it is a losing battle.

Just wait til the exchanges that don't produce ad revenue, private teams revenue, or jobs revenue all get shut down ;)

We must be nice to those in our community - and of course that includes the current set of CM's and to be honest most (clearly not all) SE employees - but that has always been the case.

Be good to each other, and enjoy it while it lasts.

Answer 13

Right. Of course it takes quite a lot of courage to say "Dear Company, we still think you're running the place all wrong, but we're still going to put up with it anyway, because there's no better option. As long as some people on the staff consider the opinions of the community valuable, there's still hope that things will improve in the future. And as the community, we can still pull the plug any time we want to."

However, the only alternative is to stick to the current trench warfare, which will inevitably lead to the following:

• The leadership of the company will keep ignoring the "toxic" community.
• Those staffers who cared for the community will find themselves in an environment which permanently disagrees with their views, will be unable to change anything and will gradually get fed up and leave (or be shown the door for "not being aligned with company values").
• Valuable contributors will gradually leave the community, which will gradually fall apart.
• The company eventually goes under, taking the whole network with it.

See? Even if the community is right in the end, the SE network still dies. Millions (or billions?) of hours invested by the community go poof. (Yes, everything is CC, but does anyone really think you can fund a SE clone with the volume of traffic it gets?)

Answer 14

Stack Exchange seems to be changing from being a purportedly a community-run resource to not being so community-run.

That's a change - some would say something of a bait-and-switch. It's not unreasonable to expect some people to be rather cross about that.

If it's taken as a given that change is happening anyway, then some people may have a decision to make about how much time and effort they want to continue to invest in the site. But that's a hard decision to make if you're in the dark about what further changes might be coming.

Realistically if you want people to be positive about the future, it's necessary to paint a picture of a positive future. Give an idea of what the communities are going to look like in 2, 5, 10 years. What's the vision? If it's not the old vision, what's the new vision?

1. Stop the angry rants on meta.
2. Engage with the feedback mechanisms they provide.
3. Reward positive behavior.

I think these suggestions make a lot of sense - but I can only see them helping if we are given reasons to be cheerful.

Answer 15

No...

Stack Exchange needs us much more than we need them....

what is harder? to develop and host an Q&A website, or to get great professionals of the entire world to spend time and give high quality answers for free?

we should move on to another site (or build or own) and just wait for SE to slowly fade... Lets see how they will like they welcoming and politically correct bullshit when no one gives right answers and everyone asks "do my homework" type of questions...

Answer 16

No.

You must provide your feedback, negative and positive in "as is" form. If community and analyst teams are comptent this will be better for them, because it's raw data which is much more suitable for processing and making decisions than any "prefiltered" one.

If they are not competent -- nothing will save them and us.

Yes, "CM is also human", but he must leave his humanity before he enters office: for them our "anger", "disappointment" etc are metrics which we show/not show etc. If we will start hide them -- we will just start lying to our CM team, which is not good.

Say truth, whatever it would be.