Staff are deleting dissenting answers on What is the network policy regarding AI Generated content?, with the justification that they "don't typically host answers on policy posts".
This question is intended to serve at a meta level as a place to discuss whether summarily deleting those answers is appropriate, separate from the core issue at hand.
whether summarily deleting those answers is appropriate
Definitely not appropriate.
First of all, the post announcing the change is tagged with discussion (rather ironically, given that it is a decree with no input from the community at large expected).
Secondly, the post has the "policy" lock applied to it, which explicitly allows answers and comments on such a post. Citing the official introductory post for this type of lock:
Answering, commenting, and voting will not be affected by this lock, though additional locks to limit these activities can be added to a post that already has a Policy Lock in place.
Lastly, even if all of the above wasn't true, deleting community responses under an extremely controversial policy opposed by a lot of moderators and dedicated users of the network is an utter failure to "read the room" on part of Stack Exchange, and can easily be interpreted as an attempt to silence dissent and make the policy appear to be faring better than it actually is.
Policy posts are for documentation of what the policy is. Opinions on said policy, positive or negative, do not belong on the policy itself.
Questions that only exist for documenting policy are a weird use of a Q&A engine, sure, but Meta has always been a weird use of a Q&A engine. We make do with what we have, and it mostly works.
A policy post that contains both documentation of the current policy and opinions on (potentially outdated!) versions of the policy is just a huge mess that doesn't help anyone. This is especially true where the policy is especially unpopular, resulting in the actual policy being at the bottom of the page, below all the answers responding to it. It also ensures that discussion on an unpopular policy gets buried off the front page, as the question promptly gets downvoted into oblivion.
We've regularly removed attempts to litigate policy from Meta Stack Overflow posts describing policy, used comment locks, etc., and instead told people to post a discussion post if they want to discuss policy. Such a post can also be upvoted to ensure that the important discussion is visible to the community so that they are able to voice their opinions.
TL;DR: Staff should ideally post a discussion post alongside a new policy. If they don't, someone should make one.
Definitely No.
Of course, a new policy to not allow answers on posts about policies can be now introduced (Too many policies, don't you think?). But this goes against my understanding of how communities here operate, and definitely against the best interests of the Stack Exchange community as a whole.
I also see deletion of posts in the discussion-tagged policies (however, I would argue a particular tag here is irrelevant) as a gesture of a strict top-down approach: "We set the policy, we post it, you follow it. Dixi." Not how I imagine a respectful interaction should be framed.
The ONLY alternative is to create a separate post for the policy discussion (example) that is:
But even that should be justified by, say, necessity to post several answers to convey the policy details.
Specifically on new posts made by staff tagged with mod-agreement-policy, I think this is fine.
This has already been happening with all questions tagged with mod-agreement-policy. There are three answers on When will CMs or moderators remove the [featured] tag from actively featured meta questions? alone that were deleted by staff (specifically staff, anyway - there are other deleted spam answers there). One of those was a garbage answer (i.e. spam or rude or abusive), but you get the idea.
Where we should get upset about censorship or the silencing of dissenting opinion is when questions about such posts are summarily deleted, or when answers to a feedback post for such changes are deleted without cause. I've yet to see this happen, so as it currently stands, I don't see a problem with this. Codifying moderator agreement policy in this way is fine...
... provided we're allowed a space to talk about it.
We were never provided a feedback post about such a change. From my understanding, moderators were told ahead of time, but the feedback that was given was seemingly ignored. The lack of a feedback post is the main annoyance here, and one that's fairly deplorable. It seems that, with this particular change, there wasn't even an attempt to care about feedback.
Making a "question" labeled with the [discussion] tag that is not locked to comments only, and then deleting all the answers (while still leaving it unlocked even, so that new posts can be made and then summarily deleted!) is a very effective way to convey how much they care about our feedback.
It ensures only one opinion, the one of the company, is accessible at that moment. If they need to feature their own answer, they can already use the "accept" button. This leaves no reasonable space for a discussion and responses to their policy. There's a lack of precedent of banning answers to posts labelled as policy and discussion, and in addition, they're asking us to create new question posts instead (see linked post). This scatters and shreds the discussion, ultimately putting a barrier to access that which is not theirs. If you land on a policy page, the new norm is that you only get to see that which was approved by the company, and nothing more. Discussions are disincentivized. This is effectively censoring the immediate access to opinions of an opposing kind. This is similar to a government-controlled newspaper presenting the propaganda of the government on the front page, and hiding away the responses and opinions of the opposition in small sections over a few pages late in the newspaper; those that aren't read by most people.
[policy] tag as a kind of game-changer, which I... don't understand why exactly. SE-the-company has always reacted in the same way to dissenting answers under their announcements ^W edicts in the past, and I personally see no reason for this to change, now or in the future.
Commented
May 30, 2023 at 23:51
Maybe?
Bad as this new policy is, we need a place where it is officially announced. If only to know where to point users when they ask us why we left the network. If we all go and post our own answers, the official one will be lost. Especially since the official one will be heavily downvoted, so all of the others will appear before it. So in this case, I can understand why it would be better to open separate discussion posts to discuss this aberration of a policy instead of posting answers on the main one.
In addition, the announcement was posted as an answer to a question. So the normal rules should apply: only post an answer if you are answering the question in the OP. In this case, none of us are going to answer the question. If we did post an actual answer to the question, perhaps our own interpretation or understanding of what the policy means, that could be different, but so far, all the answers posted have been answering the answer and not the question.
We are all, correctly, furious with SE for breaking their own rules and their own sites. Let's not do the same thing. Answers that are not answering the question shouldn't be posted as answers. I would rather have the local mods and/or community delete them, but I don't see why we should change the rules for this particular post and allow non-answer answers. No matter how much I happen to agree with what these answers are saying.
The purpose of these posts is to matter-of-factly present the policy. Discussion of the policy should occur elsewhere, preferably on a post that the community has more control of. The company of course can take action on any post they see fit, being the owners of the community, but at least if we're handling the discussion ourselves it'll be crystal clear what's going on if anything gets deleted.
I know it's uncomfortable and sometimes infuriating to have your content deleted. However, if you want to make an argument against a policy or toward a change in the policy, you need more space than a single answer can provide.
