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There have been several cases where SE staff has removed the tag from per-site Meta posts in relation to the strike, despite no (public) statement from SE regarding that.

Unless there is a legal aspect that I'm unaware of (I'm not a lawyer), I don't see any good reason for SE doing that beyond trying to control the narrative by selectively featuring their statement across the network, but forbidding mods from doing the same for the strike announcement.

Furthermore, SE has a policy tagged with that unambiguously states

[...] CMs will work with Moderators first before unfeaturing and should it be necessary to get a post removed from the featured list sooner than it would naturally age out of the cache, moderators can request help from the CMs to do so.

Removing the tag from moderator-endorsed posts doesn't really seem like "CMs will work with Moderators" - it seems much more like SE working against the will of the moderators.

Why are SE staff members un-featuring posts about the strike and violating SE policy?

*A diamond moderator left a comment on MSO indicating that staff were un-featuring these. That said, this was not shared by staff themselves?

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17
  • 43
    It's increasingly feeling/looking like that's just what this platform is now
    – Clive
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 19:59
  • 20
    Examples: Academia | Server Fault
    – CDR
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 20:00
  • 2
    @CDR: Re Server Fault: See also this one.
    – Kevin
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 20:06
  • 5
    @CDR: a complete list can probably be found here
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 20:07
  • 56
    The obvious answer is: they don't want people that don't know to know. kind of limiting the traffic to what is going on, on meta
    – machine_1
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 20:12
  • 12
    Shhhh! Nothing to see here.
    – 41686d6564
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 20:41
  • 2
    I can only say that SE has mentioned about this specifically to us mods... or perhaps I shouldn't say this and risk my diamond 👀‎
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 2:19
  • 8
    @MetaAndrewT. Wow, so another secret policy? I'd say SE aren't being transparent, but to be honest we can all see what they're doing.
    – kaya3
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 2:23
  • 6
    My hunch is that they rather have their own statement featured.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 6:04
  • 8
    Can SE stuff really violate SE policy in any meaningful way? They would then according to the rules need to review their own actions and judge themselves. I sometimes think people mistake companies for democratic governments with power separation when they are really more like monarchies. I'm fine with the observation but the expectations seem to be unrealistically high often.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 6:32
  • 1
    Related post - I argue that your reply is the same as my reply: they are trying to artificially contain the userbase awarness of this change and the related moderator strike.
    – ꓢPArcheon
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 7:51
  • 7
    Monarchies still have rules, @Trilarion. Monarchs that ignore their own rules are generally called "Dictators", and that's not a comparison I'm willing to make quite yet xD
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 7:52
  • 3
    They haven't hammered my clearly OT post on the main Academia site academia.stackexchange.com/questions/196930/moderation-strike even though it has been at the top of the HNQ for a while now.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 11:57
  • 3
    @Trilarion I argue the converse. Too often, people seem to equate "corporation" with "masters of their own domain" and use that as an excuse to not hold them accountable for anything. Corporations are not gods. No, they're also not democracies, but there are lots of things that are not democracies and still have rules. This, this whole strike, all of this right now, is the accountability. We are holding them accountable for the bad decisions they made that led to this moment.
    – Silvio Mayolo
    Commented Jun 8, 2023 at 18:25
  • 2
    @SilvioMayolo It may depend a bit on what you mean by accountable. I mostly see the company and the user community as co-dependent and therefore everything is negotiable, but at the same time it's their site and ultimately the only freedom is to leave. I just want to see it as it is. We all make a lot of noise in order to impress the company. But ultimately if the company gives in to something then because they want to. We cannot directly force them to anything.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jun 8, 2023 at 19:18

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