
An Update to Our Community and an Apology - SnarkAsh
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to-our-community-and-an-apology
======
xupybd
Some useful links to the situation. (You can find all these in the responses).

Monica Cellio's account:
[https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-...](https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-
overflow-inc-sinat-chinam-and-the-goat-for-azazel)

A news paper article on the situation:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_cont...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/)

A list of mods fired or resigned:
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-
mods-...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-
forced-relicensing-is-stack-exchange-still-interested-in-cooper)

A mods reasons for leaving:
[https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/b...](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/brothers-
i-must-go)

~~~
MauranKilom
I would like to add that I found
[https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5765/moderato...](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5765/moderator-
resignation) a very comprehensive and faceted summary.

------
lesstenseflow
Reading some of Monica’s commentary on this, it pains me to conclude that she
doesn’t know just how bad the situation is. She appears to have approached the
issue in question respectfully and highlighted her concerns diplomatically,
and she believes there must be a “big misunderstanding” because of the extreme
response with which she was met. Surely all parties are interested in reaching
an outcome everyone can live with, right? Wrong.

The reason her questions and were met with summary punishment was due to the
fact that the moral crusaders she was attempting to engage with _do not
tolerate ideological noncompliance._ There was no “misunderstanding.” Chipps
and the rest could detect that she was likely to continue to ask questions
about the policy, and anyone who dares question such policies is clearly a
“bigot” and a “transphobe,” and why would you want someone like that to be a
moderator?

Word to the wise: people like this (moral crusaders) will not hesitate to burn
your organization _to the ground_ if they don’t get their way. They’ll run
coups (like this), condemn you on Twitter, and scare everyone into first being
silent, then leaving the org, either out of fear of being the next to be
condemned, or just the exhaustion of dealing with it all. I have seen this
happen to non-profits, conferences, even private school boards (take a look at
Oberlin for an example). If you get crusaders like this in your org, you
should consider it an existential threat.

Well, off to delete my Stack Overflow account.

~~~
Flow
I just deleted mine. Then I discovered on that delete page that you have to
separately delete the accounts you might have on other exchanges. This is bad
UX.

I searched the net for a bit and it seems the way to do it is via:

\- [https://stackoverflow.com/contact](https://stackoverflow.com/contact)

\- Select Other in the drop-down list,

\- Then you enter a message that you want them to do delete your accounts for
you.

------
djsumdog
-542 before it was locked. That's incredible.

People are really really afraid to talk about this particular topic (which
they don't mention in the statement), because this type of call-out to be
banned happens a lot.

The book "The Coddling of the American Mind" is an amazing book that documents
how this is happening in academia, and it's happening on the software world
too. Most people in our industry, in the US, EU and others, tend to be
moderate and/or centrists. We don't want to rock the boat; politics is fun to
talk about but when that one guy and/or girl goes off in the office, everyone
wants to change to topic or go back to their desks and code.

But under the surface, no one agrees with extremism; both extreme fake-left or
extreme fake-right. I'd like to think the majority of people just want to live
and be kind to each other, but that can lead to ambivalence when people with
directional agendas want to push a narrative at the expense of everything
else.

If people start talking about the hard issues, but do so respectfully and by
making arguments that are sound, we should have clear, rational and reasonable
debate. A decision might be made we don't agree with, but as long as the
discussion happens, everyone can learn from it and we can agree to disagree
and move on.

The polarization of groups of people over ideological lines has never ended
well.

~~~
xenocyon
Saying that most people don't agree with extreme positions is a bit of a
tautology, since positions are defined as "extreme" if few people agree with
them. There is therefore nothing universal or fundamentally meaningful about
this label, and the same position (e.g. support of interracial marriage) may
be considered a perfectly normal or a radically extremist position depending
on the time and place.

~~~
pariahHN
Eh, in some instances you can define extremeness relative to alternatives, not
number of believers. Execution as a punishment is more extreme than a fine
regardless of how many people favor execution over fines. I would argue that
generally a position being extreme results in fewer believers, not that fewer
believers results in a position being extreme.

~~~
K0SM0S
Agreed. This is how we use the term in political science anyway. Even if an
"extreme" opinion becomes majoritary, it remains just as extreme on a supposed
"spectrum" of possibles. "More" than "extreme" usually takes you off-spectrum,
e.g. anarchy (which is often considered beyond extreme right, at least in
Europe) or "hive mind" would fit beyond extreme left ideas of collectivism (a
sci-fi concept of unified minds and thinking, like colonies of ants but next
level. lol.) Both are off the political spectrum though, can't describe them
using the same elements.

Reality is obviously much more "blurry". Most political experts would argue
(rightfully so, imho) that most "extreme" views are in fact not "left" or
"right" of moderate ones; they sit in a different "plane" so to speak, a third
space distinct from left/right (you'd indeed find a lot of right-ish and left-
ish ideas mixed in with most "extreme" ideologies; you also find lots of
moderate and extreme views in otherwise 'normal' (statistically) parties).

Left/right itself, or moderate/extreme, are also pretty poor and unsubstantial
ways to define any idea or anyone, it's a poor man's shortcut to summarize _a
context_ , not ideas themselves. Most people today would sit far left of
anyone in past history, for instance, while being much more individualistic at
the same time.

Reality is complex. The media don't like complex (is media plural? shall I
call it something else in pronoun?). Hence, theatric storytelling of the left
versus the right, and/or moderates vs. extremes, iced with a general
misunderstanding of statistics. I will now refrain from making any conclusion.

~~~
anoncake
> e.g. anarchy (which is often considered beyond extreme right, at least in
> Europe)

Anarchists are leftists, Ancaps are on the right.

------
forgotmypwd123
>Last week we made an important decision for our community. We removed a
moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being
unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change their behavior.

Hang on a sec...

>their behaviour.

Wasn't monica fired for suggesting she used gender neutral pronouns generally?
Because they said she should use the preferred gender specific pronoun when
known?

And now "Sara Chipps" is doing exactly that?!

~~~
jodrellblank
> Wasn't monica fired for suggesting she used gender neutral pronouns
> generally?

In the comments to the linked question, Monica Cellio says StackOverflow have
not told her what parts of the CoC she was violating. I don't think it's
public knowledge why she was demodded.

(Is 'fired' an appropriate word to use, when Monica wasn't an employee?)

~~~
detaro
The most direct statement seems to be from
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_cont...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/)

> _Asked to confirm that Cellio was the moderator in question, a company
> spokesperson said, "Cellio (she/her) would not use stated pronouns, which
> violates our current CoC …_

~~~
lesstenseflow
Also from that article:

 _> Cellio, for what it's worth, does not include any preferred pronouns on
her Twitter account._

Yet, when they refer to her, Stack Exchange puts pronouns next to her name,
clearly against her own “preferences.” It’s like they’re literally forcing
onto her an ideology or worldview which they know she does not share.

What bizarre, hypocritical, vindictive behavior from Stack Exchange.

------
sam_lowry_
The title is misleading, this is not an apology.

As a former operator of a (much smaller) community website, I understand the
motives behind SE actions. They want to avoid discussions about gender-neutral
pronouns and other contentious topics completely. There are only risks and no
benefits for SE business in such discussions.They actually do not want
discussions, just questions and answers. Jeff Atwood once wrote a blog post
about their effort to stiffle discussion on SE sites. Notice how their
comments are difficult to use and see.

Unfortunately, SE is many people with different goals, someone made the move
to update the CoC, and now SE management has to tame the public outrage.

IMO, the right management decision is to silently fire or move the person
behind the CoC update, remove moderator status from Monica forever and
publicly define limits to SE discussions in future annoucements.

~~~
kjaftaedi
Curious why you would remove moderator status from Monica?

From my understanding it appears that she was demoted for merely posing
relevant questions.

As I don't believe SE has even made any specific claims backing up their
decision, I'm curious as to why you suggest this is the correct decision to
make.

~~~
stefan_
I think they should remove many many more moderators, for no reason other than
not doing so risks turning their site and resource into a Wikipedia 2.0, a
place where cliquey moderators hang out to discuss their favorite flame bait
topics all day, populate gigabytes of meta pages and lash out at unwitting,
novel contributors. Wikipedia think a lack of a fancy SPA editor is the reason
behind their editor demographics, and they couldn't be further from the truth.

Ideally start with just straight up removing half the current moderators. Pick
at random.

~~~
wincy
The Thanos plan for fixing StackExchange, really?

------
guardiangod
Is that an apology? It reads more like "I am sorry that you are angry, but we
did nothing wrong so suck it lololol"

I don't know if the SO mod (Cellio) is in the wrong, but they did not give any
explanation why Cellio was removed. I am unconvinced by this update.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
If a corporation ever admits doing something wrong, it's admissible evidence
in a lawsuit against them. That's why corporations never admit any wrongdoing
regardless of how obvious it is that they did.

(And before anyone post the usual " _corporations suck_ " rant, the exact same
principle applies to individuals. Anybody who ever watched James Duane's
"Never talk to the police" video knows why. Why would it be any different for
a corporation?)

~~~
cc81
That is an odd statement. Corporations admit wrongdoing or mistakes all the
time and not to mention there could never be any lawsuit from something like
this.

It is just that they introduced a rule and still feel it is a correct one.

~~~
MauranKilom
Them introducing (in the future) a rule (which we don't know the details of as
of yet) is more or less orthogonal to claiming that Monica violated the
current CoC.

------
thelazydogsback
It's hard to be believe that people who are brave enough to deal with LGBTQIA
issues in their own lives and face actual in-your-face challenges would
actually give a crap what pronoun someone used on a technical forum, and it
seems absurd to regulate such behavior. If I don't want to be a dick and am
aware of the preference, then I will try and use the person's preferred
pronoun - but I'm certainly not obligated to do so on SO or even in person.
The other person can take offense or not, it is their/his/her own choice. I
suppose the problem can be solved by just always using the person's name, or
using other anaphora such as "the OP", or @username, etc.

~~~
effingwewt
So, the solution you proposed is exactly what the moderators asked to do.
Seems fair enough to me. They were told that not playing the pronoun game is
the same as harassing whomever they are speaking to.

The whole situation is ridiculous to me. How have we come to a point where not
only do people think I care in the slightest who or what they have sex with
(or don't, whatever), but they demand I call them by some word they made up to
classify themselves as something? Don't tell me what I can or can't say, and I
wont tell you who/what you can and can't screw.

How do fascists not realize they are being such? "You don't have proper
thoughts on matters so you aren't allowed to speak".

~~~
McGlockenshire
> How do fascists not realize they are being such?

What an outrageous level of hyperbole. It is not fascism to ask others to not
intentionally misgender people.

~~~
AgentME
Agreed. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading most of the commentary here
on HN or elsewhere about this.

I get that there's some details about this case that are a bit ambiguous, but
it doesn't seem obviously worth a witchhunt of SO. If it seemed to SO like a
moderator was looking for loopholes for not enforcing a CoC, then I don't
think it's wrong for them to consider the moderator as working in bad faith
and not moderator material.

~~~
SeanBoocock
Likewise. I am shocked by the lack of empathy expressed by many here and on
SO. Pronouns may be a small thing for a cis person, but for others they are a
way to reclaim an identity denied to them. To deny anyone that basic level of
respect is unconscionable, regardless of whether a code of conduct enforces it
or not. A person tasked with enforcing community norms who is unwilling to do
that and more, who subverts drafting a policy in bad faith, has no business
being a moderator.

------
personjerry
Out of 5 paragraphs of text, the only "apology" was "We’re sorry for the
confusion and uneasiness that caused." which is the equivalent of spitting on
someone's face and apologizing with "I'm sorry you felt spit on."

I feel like we're watching one of the pillars of modern software development
crumble.

~~~
markmark
Why would they apologise? They aren't sorry they sacked this moderator. They
fully stand by their decision.

~~~
personjerry
Well, the title of the post is "An Update to our Community and an Apology" so
we should expect an apology in there.

~~~
markmark
Yep, and they're sorry for the uneasiness and confusion. I'm saying they
aren't going to apologise for the sacking itself, because they stand by it.

~~~
humanrebar
Sorry has multiple meanings in context. I can be sorry you got the hiccups
during a speech. That's not an apology.

------
reccanti
Some of the responses to this article showcase opinions that I see a lot on
Hacker News and which make it really hard to be on this site as a trans person
sometimes. There’s a lot of attention being paid to the people who resigned,
or whose moderator status was revoked—and how accommodating they may or may
not have been—but it seems like very little of them are focusing on the people
who this preferred pronoun policy was designed to help in the first place.

I know lots of people in my life who are genderfluid, or who use nonstandard
pronouns. They aren’t the caricatures that some of the people in this thread
are making them out to be, they’re real people who are out there doing their
best and live as themselves, and it’s really difficult seeing this thing they
struggle with every day be labeled a “political” issue.

~~~
asdjlkadsjklads
Sometimes i consider myself lucky that i don't know anyone seeking special
pronouns - because i imagine i would repeatedly use what i visually see, not
what they request.

These days i seek to find a gender neutral word i can get into the habit of
using _(it, or they, or something similar)_ , for fear of mis-nouning someone.
Though, i also have the fear that if i use something neutral, when someone
requested a specific non-neutral pronoun, i may be negatively impacted.

As someone "on the spectrum" social norms are already difficult. All of this
talk just makes me nervous.

~~~
henrikschroder
Think of special pronouns as names. All the etiquette we have surrounding
names apply equally to pronouns.

It's not expected to remember someone's name if you've only met them briefly,
but the more you've interacted with the person, the more embarrassing not
remembering their name becomes.

Mis-naming someone intentionally, repeatedly, is rude and quickly moves into
harassment territory.

But the flipside is also true, if someone demands to be called a long and
complicated and unusual name, then that person is rude, and can't expect
others to comply or remember.

Pronouns work exactly the same. If someone tells you they prefer a pronoun
that is different from the gender they present as, it's polite to remember
this and use this when talking about the person. But if you forget, it should
be treated like if you forgot that persons name.

If you intentionally and repeatedly mis-gender someone, it is rude and quickly
moves into harassment territory.

And, finally the flipside, if someone has an onerous or complicated preferred
pronoun, _that_ person is rude and can't expect others to comply or remember.

~~~
humanrebar
> ...if someone has an onerous or complicated preferred pronoun, that person
> is rude and can't expect others to comply or remember.

To the extent that there is any controversy here, it's in this guideline. I'd
just soften 'rude' to unreasonable.

1\. I have not seen any code of conduct make room for this scenario. It's
taken as a given that pronoun preferences are reasonable.

2\. Some people think singular 'they' and 'their' falls in this bucket.

3\. Some people think writing in passive voice, etc., should be considered a
good faith effort to be accommodating.

Pedantically applied, most codes of conduct make room for the judges and
queens to insist on "his honor" and "Her Majesty" as pronouns, at least in
some contexts.

I honestly wish some people would decide that this whole thing is too
complicated to legislate completely and institute some sort of jury system, at
least on appeal, to decide what counts as reasonable.

~~~
baggy_trough
You cannot compel people to talk in a certain way. To do so is totalitarian
and evil.

~~~
henrikschroder
If we work in the same place and if I consistently and intentionally call you
a different name than your actual name, I'm harassing you, I'm bullying you,
and if the place we work at has decent HR policies, I will get fired.

So I am absolutely compelled to call you your actual name, I'm compelled to
talk in a certain way if I want to keep my job, and this isn't totalitarian or
evil, it's simply having manners and treating each other with respect.

~~~
sverhagen
Agreed entirely with this. But it's also just an evolving social norm that
these HR rules are based on. (As a few generations back, I assume, males got
away with maybe calling their female colleagues "missy".) So, with that, I'm
just curious where the average HR stands on pronouns.

------
xupybd
When you get militant about subtle behaviours this happens. There is too much
nuance in human interactions for policing them to this degree. You will always
offend someone. They had a choice of offending those who didn't like gender
neutral pronouns or those in the SE community that supported that mod.

I don't really have a horse in that race but I don't see a way they could have
come out of that without offending anyone. If we're going through a culture
change that changes the way we address people so be it, but it's going to get
messy once we start enforcing new social rules.

------
adambatkin
Stack Exchange as an organization might (somehow) be prohibited from releasing
all of the background information that they have used for their decision
making. But I am surprised that they haven't released _any_ information, given
the serious allegations made against them. And I haven't read anything
corroborating Stack Exchange's "side" of the story, whereas a large number of
people seem to be standing up for Monica.

I see three possibilities: 1\. Monica telling the complete truth, there is a
terrible misunderstanding, but SE doesn't want to lose face by backing down
2\. Monica is lying 3\. Monica is terribly confused

At this point, we all have to assume it's #1. If it's #2 or #3, SE really
needs to come out and say something (beyond "we stand by our decision but our
process needs updating") for the good of the communities. Stack Exchange is
nothing without the community, since 100% of the content on SE was directly
contributed by the community.

~~~
cmroanirgo
In one of the comments, by Monica it seems, she's not convinced of any wrong
doing:

> "repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct": citation needed. "CM’s
> repeated requests to change": citation needed. – _Monica Cellio_

And later she clarifies that she doesn't know the specific thing that caused
it:

> @Randal'Thor let's start with them telling us exactly what part of the
> current CoC they think I "repeated violated". There's a lot of discussion in
> that email including of deeply personal identity-background stuff, so I want
> to know what the charge is before I decide if that response would help. They
> didn't even tell me what they think I did. – _Monica Cellio_

Edit: added 2nd comment by Monica

------
tmp20191006cars
I've never seen a code of conduct that makes calling someone by the wrong
first name a bannable offense. So why is it so with pronouns? IMHO it's
because this issue is politically unsettled -- it is not universally resolved
across society. A fair percentage of people do not accept the concept of
transgenderism, and instead see a transgender woman as a mentally ill man (and
vice versa).

While this issue is politically unsettled, it cannot be correct to enforce one
side's view by banning people on the other side of the argument if they don't
tacitly concede the argument via enforced pronoun usage.

[Personally I hold no strong opinions about transgenderism, I just hate to see
society splitting apart.]

~~~
damnyou
It is completely appropriate to enforce a trans-affirming policy. A view that
considers a group of people -- other people that participate on the site --
mentally ill, has no place in workplaces, large-scale online forums and polite
society in general.

~~~
tmp20191006cars
I'm not among this group we speak of, but I will never accept that view of
them. They are not malicious, they are just different, and we should be
tolerant of them even if they are not tolerant of transgenders.... in the same
way that we are tolerant of Islam even though Islam is not tolerant of women's
rights.

I consider them (Christians) to be mentally ill what with all that christian
god stuff they preach. Do you therefore think I also have no place in
"workplaces, large-scale online forums and polite society in general" because
I consider this "group of people -- other people that participate on the site
-- mentally ill"?

I think this way leads to a Oberton window that only narrows, like a boa
constrictor. I prefer broader thinking and more tolerance for a wider set of
views.

~~~
damnyou
The goal should be to _shift_ the overton window towards greater justice, not
simply broaden it.

Yes, a view that all Christians are mentally ill has no place in workplaces
either. This does not mean that you cannot privately hold such views, but that
you should not act in the workplace in ways that show you hold those views (so
you should not misgender a trans person, for example).

~~~
tmp20191006cars
My mother is in her 70s. She won't willingly knowingly recognize a trans
person to be of the "gender" they claim, because she honestly believes deep in
her mind that doing so is a sin against God and man, and she would be
forfeiting her place in heaven. She wouldn't hurt a fly but she's between a
rock and a hard place. The only emotion she ever expresses is guilt. I think
she is delusional (mentally ill) and I blame religion. If some website decided
to kick her off because of a silly pronoun, even though she was behaving
entirely sincerely, because IMHO they are intolerant of her viewpoint (and she
is not an isolated case), then I would be inclined to leave said website as
well.

I will not reply to anymore of your comments as you have expressed your view
that I shouldn't be allowed to, and I don't want to offend you any further.

~~~
damnyou
Your premise is wrong. A pronoun is not "silly" to a trans person! If your
mother was misgendering a dog that would be one thing, but it's a _person_
we're taking about here. A human being. Your mother does not simply get to
hurt other people's feelings because of her religion.

It is still inappropriate to call all Christians mentally ill. I know plenty
of Christians who have no trouble treating trans people with all the respect
they deserve.

------
pjc50
This is sad, but I feel it was an inevitable consequence of allowing religion-
orientated stackexchanges to be created in the first place. It's practically
inviting a holy war. The people running them would likely be those who care
deeply about doctrine, and the chances of a headlong collision over LGBT
doctrine were always high.

~~~
jeegsy
Allowing? Why would you not allow them in the first place? In any case, there
shouldn't be any collisions if they are separate network sites except in the
case of fiat decisions from the top.

~~~
garmaine
The nature of SE is that each site has a very specific topic. The SE company
approves which sites / topics are allowed. So yes, by consequence of how the
system works they would have to explicitly approve a “Christianity”,
“Judaism”, “Islam”, etc. stack exchange.

------
tylerl
This is pretty bad. It would have been way better to post nothing than to post
this.

If you want to have a community, then treat your community like intelligent
humans. And to be clear, you absolutely _depend_ on the good will of your
community. This is non-optional.

Admit your mistake and fix it. And if you think that your mistake was the
timing, then talk to someone who understands the situation.

~~~
P_I_Staker
This is what makes me pessimistic about the world will live in. It doesn't
matter. SE will probably be just fine. Not enough people will leave for it to
matter.

------
fencepost
This _really_ seems like a "respect mah authoritah!" situation followed by "oh
crap it's blowing up, apply more power! This will not be re-litigated."
Looking from the outside as someone who's mostly ignored SE for the last few
years, this feels to me like something personal combined with _making_ an
opportunity.

I can't help but feel that the current "Director of Community" at the core of
this will be moving to a different non-community position before long. It
seems like a poor place to have someone who's managed to drive out a
significant percentage of the volunteer moderators for the whole network.

And _my_ preferred pronoun this week is blergl.

~~~
shadowgovt
You may have been making an interesting point, but the "preferred pronoun of
the week" bit at the end kind of kills it.

Have you ever met someone who changes their gender identity weekly, or asks
people to use a derivation-free nonsense word to refer to them?

~~~
mattigames
Yes, they proudly call themselves gender-fluid and state that they change
pronouns frequently.

And many state to use non-existing words as pronouns such as xhy, requiring a
mental effort to remember a new word they invented and also to remember to
whom that word is associated, so the satire of using blerg as pronoun is spot-
on while also offensive to some.

~~~
fencepost
_Ahem._ "Blergl," not "blerg." I've expressed a preference for a pronoun,
please make the effort to address me in the appropriate manner.

------
ameen
SE’s actions seem heavy-handed to say the least, and to be fair it is a
private platform dictated by their own rules - but what this will lead to is
disillusionment within the community and honestly I feel this has been a long
time coming.

If neither the mods nor users feel heard, who does this “platform” serve?

~~~
thredj3941
why does the stack network (
[https://stackexchange.com/sites#](https://stackexchange.com/sites#) ) have
any advantages?

I see a lot of complaints, about questions closed as redundant etc, and about
moderation, but what keeps someone from putting a better version up? In
particular unlike quora, the reputation of the person answering doesn't seem
as important. most people would accept anyone's answer as long as it works.

so what's the important network effect here?

~~~
rmilejczz
I’ve been wondering the same thing myself lately, the only advantage I can
think of this accumulated information on the site (in the form of Q&As). I’d
imagine a majority of SE traffic is people reading old questions, though if
anyone knows this assumption to be wrong please correct me. I also wonder if
scraping the Q&As and posting elsewhere would be some sort of legal violation?
It would be fairly trivial to host the current body of knowledge up to this
point on a static site and then start fresh.

~~~
luckylion
> I also wonder if scraping the Q&As and posting elsewhere would be some sort
> of legal violation?

The (unilateral) relicensing was another recent issue, but generally not. All
user contributions are licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 so I don't see legal reasons
stopping you. Google won't send you any traffic, though, because it will be
duplicate content and the original has a gajillion links pointing to it.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
And a gajillion comments on code

# see [https://stackoverflow/something](https://stackoverflow/something) to
understand the next two lines

And then one day SO closes.

(I saw some software build pipes explicitly looking for SO comments and
rejecting the code)

~~~
BlueTemplar
I link to websites when I copy someone else's code, for attribution. How do
these "build pipes" expecting me to do it instead if the code is from stack
exchange ?

------
strenholme
One way to handle these kinds of contentious moderator debates is with
freedom. Since Stackoverflow/Stackexchange does not open source their code,
there are a number of Free Software clones which handle questions and answers
Stackexchange style.

I will link to just one: [https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-
devel](https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel)

Point being, there is nothing stopping someone from hosting this code and
making their own Q&A board with their own moderation policies.

------
wendyshu
Their aim was building "a more welcoming and inclusive network". The first
step towards this is... excluding people, apparently.

~~~
MauranKilom
Directly from the stackoverflow.com homepage:
[https://i.imgur.com/XB1ORxW.png](https://i.imgur.com/XB1ORxW.png)

Very ironic.

------
seanmcdirmid
Does anyone really think that the use of gender neutral language (using they
rather than he or she) is mis-gendering in the absence of knowing someone’s
preferred pronoun set?

~~~
toofy
If they honestly don’t know the persons gender then it isn’t clear to me why
they would choose a pronoun to begin with. If I don’t know someone’s name I
don’t just start calling them Bill, I ask them their name and when they say
“Hi I’m William but I prefer Bill” and move on with my life knowing to refer
to this person as Bill, not William.

If it was a genuine accident I personally see no problem with it and from my
personal anecdotal experience the only place I’ve seen anyone get upset over
an accidental misgendering or accidental dead naming was on outrage pieces
done by outragePorn news sites just looking for ways to clickbait vulnerable
anger-prone clickers.

If someone _intentionally_ misgenders another I personally just assume the
misgenderer is an asshole, just as I would if someone intentionally and
repeatedly calls someone by the wrong name.

~~~
mattigames
The problem is that in many cases you can never know for sure if someone is
_intentionally_ missgendering or if it was just a mistake (e.g forgot their
pronouns or if is confusing them for someone else), which is extremely easy to
do in online forum because we lack a lot of social clues present in real life
that help us remind who are we talking to, like their faces and their voice;
more-so because internet moderators interact with hundreds of people on a
daily basis and is completely reasonable to forget some details of each
conversation they participate in.

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
The weirdest thing about this whole kerfuffle is that _gender is entirely
irrelevant_ on Stack Exchange. Due to the Q&A format where each answer is
supposed to stand alone, there's rarely if ever a need to refer to other users
in content. If you do need to, eg. in the comments, long-standing convention
is to use @username instead of pronouns. And if despite all this I wanted to
use pronouns for some weird reason, it's genuinely difficult to figure out
which ones, because most usernames are non-gendered and there's no
obvious/mandatory place to look them up for a user.

~~~
thinkingemote
The point of the issue was that it was stated that to use gender neutral
pronouns was deemed to misgendering in itself. One couldn't just be neutral.
By not using any pronouns at all would be the same thing ( I guess? ).

Consider the hypothetical case of a user using @usernames for some users and
the preferred pronouns for selected others.

~~~
Waterluvian
Sounds a lot like trying to force my speech. I'm going to say "the individual"
or "they" and if that upsets people then I guess I'm someone who upsets
people.

------
djsumdog
There was a thread on this earlier today too, but it fell off the main page
really quickly:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21149770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21149770)

~~~
dang
That one got both a software penalty (flamewar detector) and a moderator
penalty (similar). But there have been so many submissions about this that it
seems there's a community interest in discussing it that is more than just
latest-routine-outrage. So we rolled back the clock on this one and put it in
the second-chance pool (described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)).
Not sure if that was a good idea or not.

~~~
guardiangod
Thank you for doing this. I thought i was stuck in a time loop aka Groundhog
Day when I saw the thread in HN's front page, and my post was timestamped at 7
hours (instead of 2 days) ago.

I believe this is an important issue. Regardless of whether SO is right or
not, they do owe their community (of which I am not a part of) an explanation.
Unlike the Google's gender controversy, SO is mostly operated by unpaid
volunteers. If you are a paid worker, your share of responsibility and the
expectation from/to your company is very different from community driven
projects such as SO.

tl:dr SO needs to be held to a higher standard than your usual commercial
companies.

~~~
dang
(Yes, the software relativizes the timestamps on a thread while re-upping a
submission; see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20169818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20169818).
It's confusing but keeping the original timestamps is worse and we've yet to
figure out a better way to do it. I suppose this needs to go in the FAQ.)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't understand why you don't have banners, on stories that have had
editorial changes, to say what the editorial changes are. For example (not
suggestions for text) "story reposted with different timestamps", "title
changed from 'X is the best thing eva'", "link changed from
'www.superspammy.co.net'", or whatever.

Is transparency of editorial actions bad somehow?

~~~
dang
tptacek's reply is correct. The other thing is that we try to be careful about
not compromising HN's minimalism, which would be so easy to do.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
"no discussion of moderation" (like the rule on not discussing downvotes)
seems to handle the first part.

Often, but not consistently AFAICT, a moderator (such as yourself Dang) will
add a comment to the effect that a title was changed or a link was rewritten,
it's just hidden in the comments; that's a strange thing to do if you fear
discussions devolving towards meta topics.

Problems arise when people comment on a story when the substantive parts of
the story then have been changed.

As for the second part, surely optional features (as there are already, eg
"display dead") don't _compromise_ minimalism.

------
nsoonhui
To me, the most interesting thing about the whole episode is that the post was
locked and unable to be voted upon after massive downvotes from users.

~~~
MauranKilom
Keeping the debate even moderately civil requires constant vigilance from the
moderators and community managers. There is a constant stream of nasty
comments - you don't see them because they are removed quickly. There were
times where no one was present to moderate, so the post was _temporarily_
locked. It has since crossed into the four digits of downvotes.

------
appleiigs
I don’t know about who, what, where, when or why... but the “don't ship on
Friday” comment in an apology statement regarding the handling of firing
someone is completely brain dead / tone deaf. In the very few official
statements I’ve worked on, they are reviewed by so many people (so many that
even _I_ had to vet it). Unbelievable that “don’t ship on Friday” got through.

~~~
xupybd
Looks like the mod that made that post is a developer. No offence to other
developers but my personal opinion is we developers are best to leave the
delicate communications to the marketing team.

There is every chance she is better equipped than most but I know my expertise
do not extend very far into the realm. I've not met many devs that do have
expertise in those sort of PR fronts.

On that note, I'd suggest this indicates more of an organisational issue than
anything that should fall on this one person. I don't think they were (as an
organisation) prepared for this sort of thing. Maybe there isn't even a
dedicated PR person there?

~~~
sah2ed
> _Looks like the mod that made that post is a developer. No offence to other
> developers but my personal opinion is we developers are best to leave the
> delicate communications to the marketing team_

Not correct. Perhaps she used to be a developer, but the poster is currently
“Stack Exchange director of community Sara Chipps”, according to TheRegister
article linked to in this thread.

------
GolDDranks
> If we have to remove a diamond in the future we will follow a published
> process.

Asking as a non-native English speaker. Diamond surely doesn't refer a jewel
here. Is it a simile for a valuable thing (which surprises me; are moderators
that valuable?) or some other figure of speech I'm unaware of?

~~~
jffry
Like you I was curious. Turns out community moderators get a small diamond
symbol next to their names on StackOverflow:
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75192](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75192)

~~~
GolDDranks
Ah, that explains it. Thank you!

~~~
zahllos
A long time ago I used to moderate on stackexchange (with a diamond) so I'd
like to add some important details. That meta post covers it if you know the
site well, but it might not be so obvious.

Any user with sufficient reputation can vote for some moderator action to be
taken on a post. For example, 5 users can vote for a question to be closed.
Users can edit. Sufficiently high reputation users can vote to delete and
undelete posts as well as closing and unclosing them and get special tools to
review questions.

Diamond moderators are a level above this. Their votes are immediate and
binding (if a diamond moderator votes for something, it happens straight away
with the exception of up and down voting, which behave as normal). They are
also empowered to email users and suspend them, including practically
indefinitely, and can lock a question or answer so users cannot do anything to
it (even very high reputation ones) and thus have a lot of responsibility.

To get such a diamond, there are two routes: be picked to do it on an early
stage beta site (where SE staff select users to do the job temporarily) or run
for the job in an election. It's a thankless task, which involves dealing with
the very worst of SE's users. You can also be employed by stack exchange.
These users also seem to have a "staff" blob on their profile now too - very
early on in the site (when it was just SO) they had two diamonds, I think, but
that was removed to make the distinction between staff and community not so
obvious.

On sites like reddit and here, when users complain about "the moderators" they
very often mean ordinary site users using the functionality that comes with
their reputation and not specifically the moderators with extra power and a
diamond after their name. SE's definition of "moderator" is only those users
with diamonds.

"Hand in my diamond" has in an SE sense become like "hand in my badge".

------
Waterluvian
Did something happen to this post on HN? I swear I read these comments like a
day ago. And now they're all 1 or 7 hours old. I'm honestly having a bit of
sanity questioning going on here.

~~~
tomp
See dang's reply here. TL;DR: you're not wrong.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21167710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21167710)

~~~
Waterluvian
Thank you! Didn't see that among all the comments.

------
MikeGale
I've observed that Stack Exchange is worse now than when it started and that
the points award system moulds and warps respondents.

Now that it has gone overtly commercial they face issues which may not be
solved.

What will programmers do to fix this, will they come up with an alternate
architecture?

I guess programmers could take the questions they've answered. Reformulate
their answers (and hopefully update them in many cases) and publish them in a
distributed way, under their own control.

------
Havoc
What an awkward post. Reads like a network outages post mortem

------
protomyth
Did they actually do _We learned (or were painfully reminded, rather) to never
ship at 6 PM (EDT) on a Friday._ to a practicing Jew?

------
chii
is there a summary of events that occurred? There's lots of confusing accounts
and it's impossible to piece together the facts.

~~~
DanBC
It's a bit confusing because a mod was removed, and a bunch of other mods
resigned in support, and then it came out that she'd been removed for refusing
to use people's preferred pronouns.

Stack Exchange is perceived by many people to be unwelcoming. There has been
persistent concern that SE is even more unwelcoming to people with protected
characteristics.

SE have made considerable effort to fix this.

Recently they've been looking at codes of conduct.

The most recent version of this includes a request, or maybe a requirement, to
use a person's preferred pronouns.

Some people refuse to do this because God tells them it's wrong to do so.
Other people refuse to do this because, well, I dunno I've never understood
why calling someone "he" instead of "she" is such a burden.

Stack Exchange is telling those people that their refusal to use a preferred
pronoun is not compatible with being a moderator at SE, and so they removed
one mod.

She posted her version of events to one of the SE sites, and this caused a
bunch of other mods to "resign" their posts in support of her.

EDIT: I've tried to word this as neutrally as I can.

To respond to a couple of comments: Bob says "please use 'he' when talking
about me, and Ann says "No, I can't do that because God tells me it's wrong.
I'll use 'them' instead." \-- I don't see how this can be anything other than
Ann refusing to use Bob's choice of pronouns. Note that I haven't used the
word "misgendering".

~~~
steve_taylor
You conveniently omitted that the definition of misgendering had been
reinterpreted to include using “their” as a gender-neutral pronoun, which
(until now) is a common practice intended specifically to avoid misgendering.

~~~
oh_sigh
As a person who is 100% supportive of trans choosing he/she pronouns to fit
their identity, and someone who hates the idea of "non-binary" people
demanding a "they" pronoun, - I can kind of see a point, depending on how
singular they is used. If it is always used regardless(as the demodded person
claimed they do), then I see no problem with it. If it is only used to avoid
someone's preferred pronoun, then I can see it being discriminatory behavior.
E.g. every cis female in a class is referred to as she or they, every cismale
is referred to as he or they, but every trans male or female is only referred
to as they.

------
hitekker
[https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334399/summing-
up-t...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334399/summing-up-the-main-
issues-the-story-so-far/334417#334417)

A supposedly neutral timeline of events.

~~~
BrissyCoder
> 13\. A copy of the TL transcripts was leaked.

Anyone have this?

------
phnofive
There’s an apology for ‘causing confusion’ due to bad timing and a promise to
update the community, but no news here. Just seems like a link to a heated
fight.

~~~
boring_twenties
I'm sorry you feel that way.

~~~
uberman
It seems like a correct observation to me. A nothing / false apology that
seems to serve little other than to kick the hornet's nest.

I'm curious, how do you see it?

~~~
tylerl
Ya...that was a joke. "I'm sorry you feel that way" is the classic apology-
free use of the word "sorry". It means "I pity you for your plight" rather
than "I recognize my mistake".

~~~
chrisweekly
agreed. using quotes and/or appending an ascii wink might have helped

------
RickJWagner
How much easier the world would be if we just:

\- Don't offend people

\- If you are offended, be the bigger person and ignore it

~~~
mikroskeem
1) easy, theoretically. See below for practical. 2) no matter how you these
days, someone is __always __offended. Either because they are unable to create
a proper perspective for themselves (I am sorry if this is wrong pronoun for
you reader, I am not aware what you prefer), or they don 't want to create
one.

------
wendyshu
It really sucks that if you run a site where people talk, you take on the
responsibility to police what they say. The legal system seems to handle scale
relatively well but community standards of niceness may not be easy to
formalize/scale.

------
luckylion
I'm amazed by how professional PR/Community Management/marketing people can be
so tone-deaf. Especially when they don't post this by themselves, but on
behalf of, and most certainly with a lot of discussion in, the company.

~~~
unionpivo
There is no good way to post that. (They are essentially doing nothing, but
had to say something)

That is why it's usually short, neutral and has little details.

Anything else just adds more fuel to the fire.

PS: I am not saying I agree with them.

------
XPKBandMaidCzun
Since this is quasi-political, using a throwaway

But I noticed StackOverflow in 2016 made a really good choice: Having their
code snippets in MIT: [https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271080/the-
mit-lice...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271080/the-mit-license-
clarity-on-using-code-on-stack-overflow-and-stack-exchange)

But based on this drama: I'd consider SO a platform to stay away from.

Let me be clear: Acting like a professional and an adult is an essential when
communicating with me. Regardless of what the subject is or how dear it is to
you. If someone had an opinion on mere speech - they could take a walk and
understand other people have feelings and lives to live, not just them.

I wish we began to make a standard for people to keep their composure and
communicate better. I see two sides: People who are willing to spoil
relationships and burn bridges over political nuance of the week, and a
voiceless majority who have the same exact problems, but are willing to take a
breath and work it out.

------
jrnichols
This sounds like exactly the same slippery slope people were concerned about
when Coraline Ehmke's "Contributor Covenant" showed up.

People are starting to get pushed one direction or another, and it might not
necessarily be the decision that they really wanted to be pushed.

------
kater_k
I would like to point out the obvious.

Say you are a girl, but you really would rather be a boy. Your real, legal,
name is Susi, but you prefer to be called "he" and "him". So you create a
Stack Overflow account. Why not just call yourself John and not tell anyone
that you are a girl? Is it really so important to let everyone know you're
"transgender"? If you call yourself "John", no one will say "prove that you
have a penis. I don't believe you". How could they? We just see a screen name.
Or do you rather have a name that implies you are a woman, but still want
people to "see" you as a man, although if they look with their eyes they will
see you are a woman, your name says you are a woman, but then you want to go
by the pronoun "he". It just seems like you're trying to be complicated.

I cannot understand what people are talking about when they say "hey, it's
really bad if you assign the wrong gender to people." Heck, we're talking
about an internet community! I cannot assign a gender to anyone who doesn't
assign it to themselves first. If you call yourself Gabriella, be prepared
that I think you are a woman. If you call yourself Peter, be prepared that I
think you are a man. If you call yourself Andrea, you're a woman. If you tell
me you're an Italian, and Andrea is a male name there.. okay, I can accept
that.

Making up pronouns and saying "i only feel good if people call use klu/kla as
pronouns" \- that is ridiculous. I learned my pronouns because my parents told
me what they are. There is a form of humbleness when you accept that you are
not the center of the universe. End of story. I don't like people who feel
entitled to make others worship their whims. You are not the center of the
universe.

There are only usernames!! It is irrelevant to discuss here if it is
legitimate to equate physical appearance with gender, because that's not an
issue when all you see is a screen name.

------
geodel
Seems the theory I read somewhere that over time Euphemisms become dysphemisms
and dysphemisms become euphemisms is getting applied here.

------
amrrs
Another Mod's post:
[https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/b...](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/brothers-
i-must-go)

------
nabdab
When did the US start weaponizing pronouns? From a European standpoint this
all seems extreme to the point of absurdity.

~~~
dwaltrip
I don't know the details of the stackexchange case linked above. But, in
general, it doesn't seem that complicated to me. The language you are using --
"weaponized pronouns" \-- is pretty distorted.

If one is aware of how someone prefers to be called and the preference is
completely reasonable (such as a trans individual preferring their
transitioned pronoun), then one is simply being an asshole by refusing. Not
only that, they are doing so to a group that has historically been treated
terribly by most of society -- essentially kicking someone while they are
down.

Innocent mistakes are one thing, but stubborn refusal to treat someone
decently is inexcusable.

P.S. I understand a very small number of vocal individuals may take things
past requests for treating people decently, but let's not throw out the baby
with the bathwater.

~~~
nabdab
Why would someone, care at that others refer to them (sorry I’m talking about
a hypothetical person so I don’t know preferred pronoun) by name or gender
neutral? If you know that I prefer to be addresses “their royal highness”(I do
btw), does that make it rude of you to refer to me by name or as OP? I get
calling someone who prefers he, she is insulting. But that’s not what the
supposed crime was here. It was a moderator preferring gender neutral, which
seems completely reasonably.

And the language is perfectly fitting. Someone used preferred pronouns to get
a moderator canned for just discussing the merits of the rules, not even
breaking the yet un-published rules. That is a weapon.

~~~
ictebres
You can’t refuse to use someone’s preferred pronoun just because you want to.
If someone wants to be called he, using them is insulting and demeaning. You
would be literally not accepting how he is. Obviously this is not the case in
generic writing. But I don’t think that is how 2 people want to communicate.

~~~
braindeath
Yes! I absolutely can refuse to use someone's "preferred pronoun." I summarily
reject your assertion that using the gender neutral and grammatically correct
"they" in place of "he"/"she" (not them) to refer to anyone is ever insulting
or demeaning. You can say it's insulting and I just don't agree that is true
in general. Yelling loudly and with outrage doesn't make your claim stronger
than mine.

I am not rejecting anyone's gender, I am simply not acknowledging it because
it is usually _not_ germane to the discussion. It's not that I don't believe
people deserve respect, trans or otherwise. I just don't think it is an
appropriate point for discussion in most instances.

If a white man says they wish to always be referred to as "the white guy" am I
also obligated to do so? Is it not "accepting" of their whiteness if I don't
use language to refer to it everytime? Especially so if they are on the
internet and I can't even see them?

I don't know what color you are. I really don't care. I have no interest in
referring to your race when addressing you, likewise your gender. I
communicate with people everyday and gender, race, creed, and nationality just
never come up.

And if someone insists on sharing their pronouns or their race or creed
unsolicited, that is on them. That should not obligate me to do anything with
it.

Edit: I've been downvoted. But would anyone actually like to explain how
referring to someone in a gender neutral way is somehow more insulting than
referring to them in a race, religion, ethnicity, or any other identity-
forming aspect neutral way? Things we take for granted all the time when we
use the neutral (not just gender) pronouns them/they?

~~~
bchanudet
As you said, race, religions, genders and so on are all about identity. And
people are defined by their identities.

If you know the person you're talking about is a cisgender woman, using the
gender-neutral pronoun will feel insulting, because by assuming she may or may
not be a woman, you look like you're not accepting her as a woman.

It gets yet more offending if you're doing this for a transitioning person.
The change of pronoun is their first way to make their transition known, well
before having expensive surgery or getting a court order for having their name
changed. Refusing the use of their preferred pronoun means you don't accept
their transition nor their new gender.

Whether these people are here to see your messages or to hear you talk doesn't
matter.

You could be as insulting when talking about ethnicity or religion, in some
way. But gender is special because it finds its way in every conversation at
some point. Pronouns are used everywhere and every time, you cannot escape it.

Finally, it all boils down to what it costs _you_ not using the preferred
pronoun of someone, when you know it. What are you winning for doing this?
What's the expected outcome of this "active and voluntary refusal" for you?

I don't think you assume all people you encounter on HN are bald and blind
just because you don't know the color of their hair or their eyes. Why would
you be so adamant doing this specifically for their gender?

~~~
anon12345690
[]

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines—quite
egregiously—with flamewar and ideological battle. Doing this will eventually
get your main account banned as well, so please don't do this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
mieseratte
Perhaps the most striking thing here is the surety of all these responses,
it’s all nefarious, lies, sleight of hand.

I can at least sympathize with not being told what you did wrong, but this is
still a he-said-she-said case. Until either SE or Monica releases details, the
only two people who know are SE and her.

~~~
rando444
Monica already posted everything from her side here:

[https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-...](https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-
overflow-inc-sinat-chinam-and-the-goat-for-azazel)

Or is there some specific piece of information you feel she is withholding?

~~~
mieseratte
She posted her side of the story, with no material backing information making,
as I’ve said, a he-said-she-said tale. We don’t know anything material of the
exchange. Yet everyone feels compelled to assume bad faith on SE’s part.

~~~
simonh
This is basically guilt determined by a closed court in which the accused has
no representation and no reason is given for the judgement, and in fact even
the rule they've been found guilty of isn't disclosed, even to them.

So what is it exactly that they've done to earn any benefit of the doubt?

------
jlgaddis
I miss the good old days of the Internet, when men were men, women were men,
and children were FBI agents.

------
mytailorisrich
How much are SE moderators paid?

Should I understand that people do that for free and then that this drama
ensues when they are thrown away? If so, I'm not sure whether my reaction
should be to laugh or to cry.

