Remember when Stack Exchange and the Community worked side-by-side to "make the Internet a better place"? Can we go back to this please?

Question

I've been here for 10+ years now^*. Like for a lot of people, Stack Exchange isn't a random website: it's a major chunk of my life. Years ago, Stack Exchange and the Community worked side-by-side towards a collective goal:

Making the internet a better place is the #1 goal of Stack Exchange.
_{Joel Spolsky ♦, 2011}

Good days! We had an arrangement:

1. The unpaid communities curated questions and answers, and facilitated expert participation. Why do random people on the Internet provide a free service for a private company? Because we believe in making the Internet a better place. After all, random people don't mop the dirty floors at McDonald's for free.

2. In return for this free service, Stack Exchange provided us with the tools to make the Internet a better place. They edited the system to facilitate Q&A curation by the community, allowing everyone to participate through self-moderation. The provided SEO to attract experts and participants. They designed new sites for our favorite topics. They provided a stable platform where we can contribute without being HTML experts, etc.

   Stack Exchange ran some profitable services, employees had full-time paid jobs, and everyone was happy that Stack Exchange made enough money to stay afloat. But above all, it was a partnership: we were equals, and were in it together.

   Importantly, changes were predictable. We weren't surprised when features were implemented (even the ones we didn't like, e.g. mandatory arbitration), because we jointly discussed them first (months, even years in advance).

Q: Can we go back to this please?

Now is the situation is rapidly changing:

1. Stack Exchange are making unilateral decisions, as if they are the boss in our partnership. Consequently, community members are left wondering why they're mopping the floor at McDonald's for free.

2. Changes are now unpredictable, which leads to uncertainty: we don't even know if major sites will be shortly shut down. Thus, even if we continue mopping the floor, it might go to waste.

3. We also seem to be overlooking how much effort it was to attract experts in the first place, basically taking experts for granted now.

I think I'm like many people nowadays, I'm...

dejected: downcast, downhearted, despondent, dispirited, disheartened, discouraged, demoralized, low-spirited, ...

I truly want to continue helping making the Internet a better place, but with Stack Exchange making unilateral, unpredictable decisions, I'm now uncertain even if Chinese.SE will exist tomorrow. I've simply lost the motivation to mop the floor for free. I'm not going to rage quit, strike, or anything like that. Most likely, at some point I'll just unnoticeably stop mopping.

^{*(I have an inactive account as a result of transitioning.)}

Answer 1

No

The CEO (who has not spoken to us ever) recently stated in the press that this is "a new era for Stack Overflow" while hiring a Chief Product Officer to replace two Community Managers.

I really think that's the only answer you'll get.

Furthermore, Meta is an echo chamber: these questions will not be read by the executive. So there's little point in asking them and, honestly, the repeated attempts may be doing more harm than good.

Answer 2

Q: Can we go back to this please?

Time travel sadly doesn't exist. We can't really 'go back'. Things have happened, and as long as that's in the collective memory of a lot of people, they won't be forgotten. We can only work from here, but we can make a measure of working side by side with SE a goal to achieve, if that's what we want to do.

I'm pessimistic about working with the company as a whole, so whatever follows is aimed at working with the some of the public facing employees.

Stack Exchange are making unilateral decisions, as if they are the boss in our partnership.

In a way, they are, of course. We're using their platform, their infrastructure... and while it's all good fun and games for a company to sponsor a playground, in the end, they'll have to make money selling slides and swing sets.

We're volunteering to keep the playground running, in return for being able to play in it. And as long as the playground is full of play, it'll let paying customers see that investing in a slide or swing set might be useful.

A lot of people are used to a time where they were able to say 'You know what we would like to play with? Monkey bars!' and then get some monkey bars installed on their playground. This has changed.

For starters, the company is looking for people outside the playground too, to listen what it would take for these people to even consider playing in the playground, or not leave the playground after entering and not finding what they expected. This can also involve setting better expectations about what's on the playground, and doesn't necessarily involve changing the playground.

Also, the company now decides what we get to play with. We can still say we'd like monkey bars, but if they decide it's time to invest into some R&D of a seesaw, that's where we can still get our input. We can point out that red seesaws are much better than blue ones, or that we could break our bones if they make it so high it's dangerous to fall off of.

That's also where you can focus if you want to feel less like the decisions are unilateral. You can hope that one day they'll start working on monkey bars again, you can ask for it. But for now they're working on seesaws, so put your effort towards asking for the best seesaw you'd want. Of course, they are still the company and the few people that would like their seesaws to be red are disappointed when they're painted green... But it helps to remember that you weren't the only one asked about what color the seesaw should have.

Changes are now unpredictable, which leads to uncertainty: we don't even know if major sites will be shortly shut down. Thus, even if we continue mopping the floor, it might go to waste.

The sites won't be shut down, at least not tomorrow. So, I'd also advise against stopping the mopping. A building can decay after it's abandoned, but speeding up this decay by just neglecting it while you're still in it isn't a good tactic if you don't want to be evicted by your own neglect of the building.

Don't think of it as a waste of effort. Keep the playground clean, and keep the equipment intact. Keep pointing out the equipment that needs repairs. Keep asking for newer and better equipment. Keep asking for red seesaws, and provide solid arguments as to why they're better than green ones. Use the slide, use the swing set in the way that they're intended to be used.

And, if one day, suddenly there's a prototype seesaw on your playground, don't blame the seesaw for suddenly appearing. Try it out yourself so you can give feedback, or see how others have fun using it. If it's blocking the access to your favorite slide, ask for it to be moved instead of removed. At least that way, the final version of the seesaw won't be entirely unpredictable.

I do know that SE is working on some way of letting us know when they're working on the prototype seesaw so we won't be as surprised if it's there. But it's a hard process, because as soon as you tell a group of people you're looking into implementing some feature, they kinda expect it to happen and get disappointed if it doesn't. Or there's many arguments about why this feature shouldn't be done, and how 'other feature' is more important... drowning out the feedback about how 'feature' could be the best feature out there. So timing is important, as is the way we approach being told things about what's about to happen.

If we want to work together, it's a goal to achieve again within new limits, not something we can go back to. Right now, we can work together with the public facing side of the company within the limits that are apparently set for them by the not so public facing side of it. I think that's a fine first goal to try and achieve. Small steps and all.

Answer 3

Old Stack Exchange: The value is created by users solving programming problems. Our software should support them in doing so, collecting all their valuable programming solutions on our site.

New Stack Exchange: The value is created by the Q&A software. When users are using the software programming solutions fall out. Getting a higher absolute number of users is what needs to be done. Other will companies want to pay to use the Q&A software on their developers.

This is the fundamental disconnect. Users demand to be recognized for their value, because in their view they write the answers and do all the work while the software only sits idly by, waiting to store that work once it's finished.

In Stack Exchange's view a user is just one in a million and doesn't provide relevant value. If one user leaves you just need to find a new one, the Q&A software works with that one as well. If all the angry users finally left it would be easy to get more new users, resulting in a net positive.

To go back to the old way the company would need to reconsider their view, which they don't seem willing to do.