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Some of the content is unnecessarily verbose. I had pointed some examples out during the review of the draft (both when it was shared with moderators and again in the public review). The "Unacceptable Behavior" section is full of this verbosity. This level of verbosity hurts the readability - and this is coming from a native English speaker. Some of the presentation may be more difficult for non-native and less fluent speakers.

Some of the content is unnecessarily reactive to recent or current events. Although important, some of these examples focus on specific events. This makes the overall presentation less accessible to people who may not be aware of or fully following the events and their ramifications.

Some content is unenforceable with other recent policies. For example, the "Inauthentic usage policy" calls out plagiarizing content in a manner that violates our referencing standards. However, moderators now have limited options for dealing with content that is suspected of plagiarizing algorithmically-generated content. The "Misleading information policy" calls out the removal of "deep fakes", but if moderators cannot rely on users or themselves using detection tools, then this becomes impossible to consistently and reliable enforce.

None of these are new comments. Many comments have gone unresolved, yet the choice was made to go forward with publishing the CoC. The CoC was also not reviewed against more recent policies.

Lots of people take lots of time to create, curate, and moderate content here, and that includes additional time to give feedback. Yet the pattern continues whether it's neglecting feedback or simply not asking for it, the time of the people who work hard is not respected.

Why bother asking? And why should any of us bother to keep contributing?

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    I would tweak "Harmful political content policy", it sounds vague and contradictory. Like, it states that it may allow criticism as long as they do not otherwise violate this Code of Conduct, however it's also stated that it's forbidden to spread political misinformation or widely disproven allegations not supported by reasonable evidence to be promoted on the platform, but how do you even define reasonable evidence (I mean, it sounds for me, as a non-native speaker, as if you can criticize one people but not another, though in theory this limitation doesn't really make sense to me)?
    – nicael
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:16
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    (disclaimer: I may just misinterprete the following wording) - all these questions aside, why should any politics "be promoted on the platform"? There's not even a place for any politics to be promoted at all expect for specific SE sites which are directly connected to politics (such as Law or Politics)
    – nicael
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:18
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    @nicael - This clause is basically aimed at a very specific US politician.
    – Richard
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:20
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    @nicael Don't forget chat rooms. That's a driving factor behind some of those things that may be allowed in some places. There is also content that can be put into user profiles where things that may not be allowed on Q&A would be allowed. But I do generally agree.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:20
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    I think the idea is that a lot of people see them soliciting feedback and think "oh those guys are great", whereas only few will actually go through the effort of checking whether they acted upon it (and be miffed when they find they didn't). And they really seem to just care about the numbers these days...
    – Dan Mašek
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:23
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    The users using ChatGPT and other AI to get answers are going to steal all our reputation and activity and they will get everything. AI isn't the future. human minds are the future! (Collectively)
    – Big Joe
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:24
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    @BigJoe - Quora now has a ChatGPT box front and centre directly above every single human-written answer.
    – Richard
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:26
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    Didn't realize that @Richard I can't believe all the question-and-answer sites are doing this. Quora, SE, Reddit killing off third-party apps. WTF is really going on. It looks like all these companies are looking at their bottom line and what the investors want. The Execs don't realize that we the people are what drive their traffic. without us there is nothing!
    – Big Joe
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 19:43
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    The public version didn't address anything significant from the moderators' private feedback, either. Such a democratic process here from the SE community team.
    – Alexander Gruber
    Commented May 31, 2023 at 20:55
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    @Nij Look at the announcement post. Some things have "status completed" next to them. A lot of specific, actionable things have nothing. Having staff edit the post to add "status declined" and/or leave a comment would be appropriate. But not addressing or acknowledging that they have seen and considered the feedback is inappropriate. I'll also say that the feedback given by mods was very similar - low-hanging fruit was changed, but serious concerned went unaddressed and were apparently ignored.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 9:39
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    Again, it was made very clear that mjaor changes would not be contemplated, and yet there was still acceptance of total wording replacements with moderator-suggested text. You're complaining that the company did exactly what they said they would do, because it was not what you wanted them to do. Getting indignant about it, amongst everything else happening, really makes it seem like a petty personal complaint rather than a serious criticism of a major offense.
    – Nij
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 9:43
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    @Nij Not contemplating major changes was not part of the moderator review. The moderator review instructions said that they cannot promise to make "fundamental changes" but that they will "engage and explain" their point of view. I do not believe that this happened in the moderator review period. And I don't see why taking a few minutes to explicitly add "declined" in the public review period is asking too much. It's a third example in 4 days of how the community is ignored.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 10:01
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    An example of politically-driven Truth is the Covid lab leak theory. A few years ago, it was the rankest of Misinformation, but it is now on the way to respectability. Evidence tending to support a lab origin has been there all along. Why is it only now becoming acceptable? Don't think for a minute that it isn't anything other than political changes and the musings of those who wield power. In 2020 and 2021, Truth about Covid was whatever Fauci said. If Fauci said masks were ineffective, then wearing masks was pseudoscience and fake news. When he changed his mind, Truth changed.
    – Robert Columbia
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 11:39
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    @RobertColumbia Even more than that, identification of misinformation - whether it's done intentionally and/or maliciously or unintentionally - almost always requires subject matter expertise. Elected moderators do not have to be subject matter experts on the material of the communities they moderate, and staff almost certainly isn't. It's difficult, if not impossible, to enforce the policies against false or misleading content unless it's something that has been demonstrated externally and we accept those demonstrations as correct.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 11:40
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    @Thomas or, the very notion that I am too stupid and illiterate to tell apart truth from falsehood and need the Masters of the Castle to do it for me. That's paternalistic and treats me like a child who doesn't know any better.
    – Robert Columbia
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 11:57

1 Answer 1

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Stack Exchange Inc.'s management has consistently demonstrated that it places far more emphasis on appearing to care about the feedback of its community, than actually taking that feedback into consideration. In the earlier years of the network, when the goals of community and management were closer aligned, this behaviour was generally given a pass by the community due to the perception of oversight rather than malice - but that of course created a slippery slope, setting a precedent for later management to continue ignoring our feedback.

The problem is that the Stack Exchange community has failed to appreciate that its relationship with SE Inc.'s management has changed over the years. The community is still very much of the belief that it is, or should be, in control of the direction of Stack Exchange; whereas management has, via its actions, demonstrated that it has a very different conception of what that direction should be.

The cause of this disconnect is that SE Inc.'s management hasn't communicated these directional changes to the community. This is not negligence or oversight, but a deliberate and cynical strategy implemented because management understands that it needs the community to prevent its sites from descending into a worthless morass of chatbots talking to each other. However, making it clear that the community is no longer in charge would almost certainly trigger a negative backlash of sentiment resulting in wide-scale moderator strikes and/or resignations, which objectively hurts SE Inc.'s business.

In other words, being honest and transparent with the community is orthogonal to management's goal of having people work for them for free out of goodwill.

At the end of the day Stack Exchange belongs to its investors, not its community - but far too many in that community have deluded themselves into believing that's not the case, that the premise that the network was founded on is still true. It's not, it hasn't been for many years, and it's not ever going to become true.

What can the community do about this? Nothing, except find somewhere else to concentrate their efforts. Given the most recent AI policy doctrine, it seems that SE Inc.'s management has decided that a worthless morass of chatbots talking to each other is indeed the future of the network, and that's not a future I want to be a part of. Nor should you.

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    "However, making it clear that the community is no longer in charge would almost certainly trigger a negative backlash of sentiment resulting in wide-scale moderator strikes and/or resignations, which objectively hurts SE Inc.'s business." discord.gg/GkA5txn
    – starball
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 20:10
  • Excellent take on the topic. I don't know what's so hard for people to understand about the economics of these things. Regarding your "Nothing, except find somewhere else to concentrate their efforts", I would be grateful for suggestions for alternative technology-oriented Q&A sites (to replace SO and SU,, and SF, in particular). I also find it rather ironic that, until today, I was considering using the SE network as my replacement for Reddit.
    – Twisted Code
    Commented Jun 29, 2023 at 18:55
  • @TwistedCode You could give Codidact a try.
    – Ian Kemp
    Commented Jun 29, 2023 at 20:03

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