I appreciate the answer but I will refrain from voting in either direction because while I agree that something must change you didn't actually say WHAT should be hammered and WHAT should we changed, so I can't really say if we agree on that too.

@CesarM Andras already told you why many fell like monetization of the network knowledge content it the only goal for the company, and by this I mean Prosus. But I want to ask the opposite question instead. If it is not a goal of profit that made Prosus buy the network, then what was it? Believing in that "making the internet a better place" thing Jeff had when creating the site? Because in that case I would question... wouldn't turning Stack Exchange in that independent NO PROFIT entity many dream of be the best proof they never intended to use the network just for profit?

@Slate "SE was never set up with this kind of archival and preservation quality in mind" Does this mean that you think it never had the goal to do this or it never had the actual means to do this? Because it we are speaking about the goal, I am pretty sure Jeff would have something to say about how THEY intended the datadump to help with this issue and how the new management borderline sees the public availability of data a menace. If you instead means that the solution was always half baked I can agree but... well, I'll take a half baked archive over having to jump thru fire rings every day.

So shines a good take in a weary world....

I don't think this is caused by a lack of focus, more by an excess of focus on "profit", that in turn switches around the goal whenever the monetization plan changes. Currently, AI just happens by sheer chance to be the current "big seller" bubble that someone expect to make big $$$ of, and Google is playing the role of the lamb to what is seen as an easy-con job, but that could change if a new smoke and mirror tech emerges. I don't expect the company to really believe the AI buzztalk, I just expect the company to be "acting out" the AI evangelist role for "Ezy muney"

For sake of disclosure, I have downvoted this post only because I don't approve the "I sent this post draft to a small handful of community members". I already daily get the felling that the company is more willing to talk to users (or mods) that have an history of supporting them. Because of this, your choice here sadly only seems to reinforce the "fastest gun in the west" problem - the more answers a post get, the less likely it is that someone will spend time to post their own. Therefore I don't feel the need for a cherry-picked first round of early answers.

To be fair, @Slate I would instead say that you are severely undervaluing how long users have been felling like this. It should not take hours to know how you have been felling for month, so I don't think you can honestly handwave Starship answer by saying it came to soon. The issues some users seems so obsessed with "to speak in strong absolutes" aren't something that was born in the last few days. I have purposely avoided wasting time posting an answer here because I expected something like this, but it is not like I would have needed thinking for hours about what has been worrying me

@MetaAndrewT. seems both your and MadScientist answer kinda confirm what I assumed. The concept has been discussed, the "implementation" wasn't disclosed.

@Makyen little issue with that is that apparently only some moderators have been made aware, and I suspect not even all moderators of the specific site were included given the "mods who are open to considering the test" thing. This has the potential to change the whole network, so IMHO discussing the experiment with a few cherry picked friends is not enough. I think it should be clear to everybody that there are multiple mods posting on this question that first discovered this thing now.

Others already commented about how foolish this feels, so I'll instead focus on a different question. Exactly when did the company plan to disclose this "experiment" had not yet another meddling user ruin the plan? Didn't the spirit behind the mod agreement (please, spare me the wording technicalities...) required some sort of discussion at least in the Teacher Lounge?

@Zoe-Savethedatadump "always hallucinate". Interesting paper, but I would keep it even simpler. The current probability based LLM text generation can ONLY produce probabilistic "hallucinations". There is no "understanding", no "intelligence". What makes the tech kinda work is that the hallucinations often hallucinate right, but that is just because usually it is more probable that the training material weights point at "1492" as the next word in "America was discovered in" than... "Tofu"

@Mast read the linked post, it is the next point in the formula. I quote "Corollary: whenever possible, the user base is expected to get only an incomplete picture of the issue. If applicable, mods will get some full guidance that contains the more controversial parts that they will be required not to share."

@NoDataDumpNoContribution I think that is covered by the "Animal Farm Clause": "All AI bot are equal but our partner bots are more equal than others"

"What is this", you ask... Congrats, @cocomac, you just started the standard network scandal workflow. To quote myself: "The staff announces some controversial changes out of nowhere. The announcement is usually made on Meta.SE and it is carefully crafted to be as invisible as it can imaginably be to the rest of the network. Optionally, the post is made because some meddling user caught the company red-handed". Expect an official announcement to follow up in the next hours, you annoying meddling kid.

It is not just yours questions @AMtwo. Anything that doesn't work for the company current campaign gets ignored or even called out as rude/not nice. We should NOT see a mod that have to start a post with "Since SE decided to respond to everyone except me on the internal announcement".

Just wondering. As an ex-employee, did you by chance notice any correlation between the "let's kill everyone else" and the "these are now our partners and best friends" campaigns in the past? Despite the current employees best attempt to tell me these are just coincidental and unrelated, I can't help but think the opposite.

@AndrasDeak--СлаваУкраїні - nice to see someone else remember that concept. It is the foundation of basically any modern DRM system: hinder paying customers and doing nothing against evildoers. Works beautifully every time. NOT.

I block every cookie with the exception of 1st party ones from the few network sites I use. As far as I know, I am blocking the imgur cookie. This is a "strictly needed cookie", yet I never experienced any issue with imgur images on the site. I think "strictly necessary" here needs some though.

@wizzwizz4 problem is, if this is how transparency looks like (ie: a bunch of text that is almost but not completely unlike an informative note) this is less about transparency and more about smoke&mirrors. See your other posts about the cookie purposes.