I'm resigning as a moderator from all Stack Exchange sites, effective today | Hacker News Reader

I'm resigning as a moderator from all Stack Exchange sites, effective today

meta.stackoverflow.com

As far as I'm concerned this (the whole controversy, not this individual moderator resigning) is good for the internet. Stackoverflow has been a fantastic resource, but concentrating all the "knowledge-power" (for lack of a better word) into the hands of one entity and hoping they remain benevolent has always seemed dangerous. I've been expecting something like this for years. Especially it they are adding a CoC, that always seems to be a clear signal of decline in a project.

Hopefully some new sites (with better culture) will start up and we can consign stackoverflow to the internet archive, or force SO to become competitive again.

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/389906/im-resigning...

tone-deaf outrage-inducing corporate response award goes to...

This is what happens when the focus changes to being all about the money.

PR departments are amazing creatures, fine crafting a narrative to convince others that "it is we who have made it out ahead" while the average attention span is depressingly...

What is unsurprising is that this is occurring due to a CoC.

I liked what the moderators and their teams did to make SO and SE sites interesting to read by keeping away lower quality contributions. But at the same time, I don't think think the sites were very welcoming to newer members/contributors. Recently, I have started visiting some of the microsoft sponsored forums/developer communities. They have no problem if the exact same questions have been asked many many times already. The use of downvotes button should also be minimize. Rather, a short reply to something you disagree is actually quite friendly. Downvotes can sometimes hurt someone feeling because you have no way of knowing why he/she is upset at what you posted.

Culture is made by people. If the people who made SE the way it is are leaving, maybe I'll feel comfortable contributing in the future.

I'd be curious to hear what the proposed ToS changes were that lead to this, if anyone knows.

There's still not a lot of public information, but a little extra can be found here [0].

> What changed is this: now it isn't enough to not be rude to people you disagree with, the new policy forces us to positively affirm things we don't agree with. Even disengaging has been ruled out as an allowable solution, since that's discrimination and potentially hurtful. That avoidance of potentially compromising scenarios is not allowed has been directly affirmed by staff members several times over the weekend.

> If person A comes along and demands that I refer to them by their "preferred pronoun" (even if it is a mismatch for their genetic sex or the grammar of the language being spoken) and I refuse, that's considered an insult. Now if I avoid pronouns altogether by sticking to proper names or disengaging from the individual, that's being considered an insult too.

It seems like the new CoC requires that not only you don't disparage another's belief, which is fine and everyone agrees with, but you have to actively show that you agree with their point of view as well. You can't remain impartial.

[0] https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/b...

Wow, positive rules in general sounds like a dangerous path to head down. Thanks for the background.

Call me crazy, but yeah, that's an insult. Not a deadly one, but that's like someone insisting I call them "Doctor" - I may think they're a pretentious ass, but it's an insult if I don't follow that small, easy request. And the tone I read in the above (which, granted, is a tone I'm reading from text) where they say "even if it's a mismatch for their genetic sex or the grammar of the language being spoken" tells me they intend it as insult.

It's similar to those that refer to Beto O'Rourke as "Robert Francis" or that always dropped in "Hussein" when they mentioned Barack Obama - they are using something technically "correct" as a social attack. And that's insulting.

I understand there are nuances, and I don't fully know all the issues involved, but this did not give my sympathy for the author. I read this as "I don't get to be snide and I'm going to try to raise a reasonable-sounding case and raise the specter of thoughtcrimes in my outrage".

Being polite when you don't want to is basically the DEFINITION of being polite.

I'm not active on SE sites, and this author probably did great work in supporting things...but this doesn't sound like an attitude that is a terrible loss for any site that involves many people interacting.

To me, that sentence is first stating a current fact, not the problem. The problem is in the following sentence.

That is, they acknowledge not using the pronoun is an insult, but SE has now changed it so that avoiding a pronoun by referring to someone in a different way is now also an insult.

Like, for example, I haven't referred to you by a gender-specific pronoun. If you asked me to refer to you as, say, 'she', I would probably still not refer to you using a gender-specific pronoun. I'd continue to use 'you' or 'ergothus'.

That would not be acceptable under the new rules coming into play.

TLDR; you gotta snort the happiness kool-aid on SE

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