
The unilateral removal of comments by Jeff Atwood - omaranto
http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1990/the-unilateral-removal-of-comments-by-jeff-atwood
======
spolsky
The Stack Exchange community places a rather high value on "being nice." It's
an important part of our values and we think it makes the Internet a better
place. A lot of the Math Stack Exchange users came from Usenet's sci.math
where epic flame wars were the norm. That community has a few members who do
not consider "being nice" a requirement of public discussion, so naturally,
conflict ensued when Jeff removed non-nice things (as is the norm in the
larger Stack Exchange community), thus violating the "all public debate is
sacred and must never be censored" norm of a small subset of that community.

Personally, I like the "be nice" norm and I think it contributes to the
awesomeness of Stack Exchange. I think that in the long run it will make for
healthier communities. I think that the high norm for civilized discourse on
Stack Exchange is one reason that it has such a high signal to noise ratio and
it's why the mathematicians are on our site to begin with.

There was never any question of "censorship" -- the entire brouhaha took place
in the META site, the site ABOUT the site... nobody deleted any comments about
math on the Math site itself.

~~~
mpyne
> The Stack Exchange community places a rather high value on "being nice."
> It's an important part of our values and we think it makes the Internet a
> better place.

OK. That's a fair viewpoint, also espoused by many open source communities for
instance.

> A lot of the Math Stack Exchange users came from Usenet's sci.math where
> epic flame wars were the norm.

This, on the other hand, is kind of misleading. Is there some other threads
elsewhere with material from Prof. Clark that is of the "epic flame war"
variety? I ask this because I read Akhil Mathew's post in its entirety and
even if you claim that Prof. Clark was not nice in his mentions regarding Jeff
Atwood (a claim I highly disagree with by the way), his comments were in no
way flame war material. So unless he's actually done this elsewhere, why even
mention epic flame wars in association as it does nothing but confuse the
issue.

> That community has a few members who do not consider "being nice" a
> requirement of public discussion, so naturally, conflict ensued when Jeff
> removed non-nice things (as is the norm in the larger Stack Exchange
> community),

I have to ask: Is referencing a person's own quotes in support of a valid
position suddenly "not nice". This quite honestly reeks of removing comments
that only Jeff Atwood (and perhaps yourself ;) finds personally offending. I
understand from the thread that there is apparently some history between Jeff
Atwood and Prof. Clark -- I still don't think that justifies the response
given in this case.

> thus violating the "all public debate is sacred and must never be censored"
> norm of a small subset of that community.

I doubt that this is literally an actual community tenet even with
professional mathematicians. The fact that they apparently permit citing
relevant facts to support a point of their does not imply that they feel all
public debate is sacred and non-censorable. Akhil Mathew quite clearly
elucidated his position in my opinion, and I do not see where he claimed that
Prof. Clark's comments should stand merely because they were debate. It seemed
to me that he felt the comments should stand because they were _constructive_
in nature.

> I think that the high norm for civilized discourse on Stack Exchange is one
> reason that it has such a high signal to noise ratio

Civilized discourse is certainly good for S/N -- but this is not uncivilized
discourse from Prof. Clark by any reasonable definition!

> and it's why the mathematicians are on our site to begin with.

I'm sure the network effect of having other very high-quality associated sites
with stable working backend software had _nothing_ to do with that. ;)

> There was never any question of "censorship" -- the entire brouhaha took
> place in the META site, the site ABOUT the site... nobody deleted any
> comments about math on the Math site itself.

I hate to say this, but this is disingenuous. If you prevent someone from
talking constructively about the site then you are censoring him. Sure you may
not be censoring him from the _main_ site, but let's not split hairs here.

As an aside I operate in a few communities that enforce a conduct policy...
Prof. Clark's comments that were deleted would have been _well within_ the
bounds of decorum on any of those communities. You may want to ensure that
your Stack Exchange values are being consistently enforced to avoid the
appearance of impropriety, as the policies seem to be quite severe to me given
the actions here.

~~~
spolsky
Ha! I see what you did there! A classic, Usenet-quoted, point-by-point
nitpick, complete with UseNet style > quotes. I salute your ingenuity!

~~~
bandushrew
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem>

Joel, news.ycombinator has somewhat higher standards for civilized discussion
than you are exhibiting here.

Please either participate in a constructive fashion or confine your postings
to the roughnecks in the stack overflow forums.

------
zck
The author has since resigned as a moderator:
[http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/2029/my-
letter-...](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/2029/my-letter-of-
resignation)

As an off-topic aside, when I took Real and Complex Analysis in my senior year
of college, the author of the Stack Overflow post, Akhil Matthew, was in the
class too. He was by far the smartest student in the room. We used a
manuscript written by two professors in the department. Akhil was helping edit
it, and has credit on the cover as "with Akhil Matthew":
<http://www.users.drew.edu/capelian/rcanalysis.html> .

At the time, Akhil was fourteen.

------
Jun8
In summary Atwood has deemed offensive/unconsrtuctive and deleted two comments
by a big contributor to the Math.SO site, without consulting its moderators.
The community is now quite angry.

What he needs to understand is that not all these communities are like SO,
their demographics, especially for thightly knit, professional one like
Math.SO is quite different and they won't. Let him moderate their group in
such a heavy-handed manner. One way or the other, he elicits respect in the
hacker community (mostly), but he has no such clout among mathematicians.

~~~
microarchitect
I think you're being generous to Atwood here. I don't see how he has any
business deleting comments in a community that (1) he did not start* (2) he is
not an active member of. I'd argue that this statement is invariant across
communities - hacker or otherwise.

This really is a classic micromanagement fail. The original action was
motivated by a misguided sense of "being involved". The problem was then
exacerbated by an unwillingness to accept mistakes and a sense of outrage
fuelled by an ego-bruising.

*I do of course understand Atwood is one of the founders of the SE network of sites.

~~~
codinghorror
Actually, it's quite simple: off-topic, unconstructive, borderline rude
comments were removed from a meta post _on a SE, Inc initiative to support the
math community_. It'd be like you asking a hacker news question about how to
send HN regulars to a conference, and I replied "well, Hacker News isn't worth
supporting because Paul Graham has gone on record saying he's a bad
programmer, and has expressed exasperation with programmers".

I _wish_ I was kidding. I really do.

~~~
microarchitect
The community is upset because of your fly-by-night moderation tatics.
Clearly, Prof. Clark is a valuable and respected member of the community. If
you felt what he was saying was inappropriate, you best recourse would have
been to reply to his comment, or perhaps even send him an e-mail. Simply
deleting his comments gives the impression (whether warranted or not) of high-
handedness.

What I don't understand is your response to all this. All you needed to do was
apologize and promise not to delete any more comments. Prof. Clark would
likely have been appeased and the whole brouhaha would've petered out before
you could say Peter Clark (sorry, couldn't resist!). Instead, your continued
insistence on doing what _you consider right_ raises the very real concern
that you might, in the future, abuse your moderator powers in more serious
matters.

------
happy4crazy
The commenter, Akhil Mathew, finished third in last year's Intel Talent
search. He's a freshman at Harvard now.

I googled him after the announcement, and when I found his Math Overflow
profile, I remember being really stunned--the idea that a high schooler could
be interacting on such a high level with some of the best research
mathematicians in the world is amazing.

------
protomyth
Following some of the side discussion, it seems two examples of no-nos
happened in some of the responses. Never put quotes around a paraphrase /
interpretation of someone's comments. Never refer to a Dr. as Mr./Mrs./Ms. It
just isn't done.

Edit for link: [http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1990/the-
unilat...](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1990/the-unilateral-
removal-of-comments-by-jeff-atwood/1994#1994)

~~~
mpyne
> Never refer to a Dr. as Mr./Mrs./Ms. It just isn't done.

In fairness to Prof. Clark, it's not like he was pointing out that faux pas to
someone who _didn't_ know of his position. Jeff Atwood by this point would be
well aware of Prof. Clark's qualifications.

I'm not going to say that Jeff deliberately downgraded Prof. Clark's title in
his reply (as opposed to the entirely possible "I just call everyone Mr./Ms.")
but given Joel Spolsky's comment elsewhere in this thread about "being nice"
(note: direct quote! ;) I'm feeling some cognitive dissonance here.

~~~
codinghorror
Check the revision history on my post; that Dr. / Mr. thing was corrected in
under 15 minutes (22:07 to 22:22) ... whereas the reply referring to it was
submitted at 23:00, 8 minutes AFTER it was already corrected. But who needs
facts when you have drama?
<http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/posts/1993/revisions>

~~~
b0sk
I think you mean 38 minutes. To be fair, Dr.Clark's message was really long.
Maybe, he already had your post in his editor before you corrected it. I can't
fault either of you.

------
Tycho
Stack exchange is useful for finding technical answers, but the sense of
community I get there is not something I want to participate in (far too much
editing/screening of other peoples' content by people who really must have
something better to do).

------
b0sk
Reading the exchanges, it seems that Prof.Clark and Jeff Atwood had prior
exchanges wherein Jeff was asked not to privately email Clark. It seems to be
a classic case of power struggle.

But I'll say this -- Mathematicians are strange cats. My boss is one. His
emails seem extremely rude but he's one of the nicest guys in person.

