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  • 297
    Thank you and welcome to Meta! This seems like a positive message and I hope that y'all will be able to follow through on this. I am excited to see the first results of this work and I hope for a better community-company relationship from now on.
    – User that hates AI
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 16:03
  • 219
    That was quite a read - but a good one. One caveat and suggestion I'd like to voice, though: don't wait for the ex-moderators to come back by just going "hey, just apply for reinstatement". The process is neither transparent nor open, and I doubt any of them would go for it due to that. Take the first step and contact them; amongst other spots, there's a discord server a lot of them hang out in, along with a few SE employees. This would be a great place to start.
    – Sébastien Renauld
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 16:05
  • 93
    Thinking about it, one of the issues of this fiasco has been no real line of communication. I know I've had neutral feedback nuked from orbit for no other reason than "cleaning up", and I know for sure that I'm hesitant on posting anything anymore due to this; setting up an open DMZ to have honest, open communication would be a major step forward. Right now, the comms channels feel like shams (like the moderator reinstatement or the loop - which has glaring statistical issues on results published) or openly hostile.
    – Sébastien Renauld
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 16:12
  • 141
    Could you (briefly, very briefly) explain what your role in the company is? I understand you must be upper management, but I'm afraid that "Head of Product and Community" doesn't mean much to my business-ignorant ears. Would that make you the person ultimately responsible for the entire public Q&A network?
    – terdon
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 16:56
  • 71
    Have you also read the Lavender letter written from the LGBTQ+ segment of moderation and the community?
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 17:06
  • 142
    Well, Monica has left, but I'm sure you could contact her iff you really wanted. You would learn a lot, I'm sure.
    – Martin Schröder
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 17:36
  • 267
    @ReinstateMonica-M.Schröder if Teresa wants to talk I am certainly open to that. The agreement does not forbid it. She sounds sincere about wanting to fix things, and if so she should want to reach out. My contact info is public. (I was alerted to this post.)
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 18:13
  • 117
    @terdon My title is Chief Product Officer and I report directly to the CEO here. I have responsibility for Community with the Community teams now in my org. I have responsibility for all of the Products including Public Q&A Platform as well as Talent, Ads and Teams. Does this clarify while meeting the very briefly request?
    – Teresa Dietrich Staff
    Commented Feb 19, 2020 at 18:18
  • 173
    "Understand our Community" You just fired numerous veterans that already did this, and now you want to re-invent the wheel by discovering what those people already know? The leadership decisions in your company simply don't make any sense. Over and over, through the whole of 2019 to this date, the leadership decisions don't make any sense. This is the root of all your problems. It's far too late to fix things now. I don't want to hear what this company has to say, I don't want to deal with this company and I certainly don't want to be the customer of this company.
    – Lundin
    Commented Feb 20, 2020 at 7:50
  • 166
    @SaraChipps Respectfully, reinstating Monica would go a long way to reassure the community of your intentions. She should not be forced to re-apply, as she did not choose to step down. Prove us wrong. Thank you.
    – Boaz
    Commented Feb 20, 2020 at 10:29
  • 111
    This reminds of so many other corporate disasters. Corporations are more than willing to talk your ears off, to "communicate" with you. They always deny there is a problem, until that doesn't work. Then they'll deny the problem is serious, until that doesn't work. They'll be glad to setup committees, working groups, and so forth to study the problem and make recommendations. Assuming good intent for every one of these efforts is simply agreeing to be Charlie Brown every time Lucy offers to hold the football. If SO wants to improve then should do something substantive first.
    – President James K. Polk
    Commented Feb 20, 2020 at 14:18
  • 264
    The single thing that I am absolutely the most angry about from all this fiasco was the high-placed employee explicitly attacking a dedicated volunteer, by name, to the media. We, as individuals, do not have the kind of clout to answer back against such attacks. SO used the clout that they got from volunteer labor to attack a volunteer, and the person who did so remains a part of the future here without any apparent consequence. It's hard to reconcile, hard to accept, and hard to trust a company that is comfortable with this state of affairs.
    – Chris
    Commented Feb 20, 2020 at 14:55
  • 166
    @SaraChipps "We've been working on that internally especially given recent data unearthed by the team." Err... so, now when data shows that Meta users are not so insignificant, you are willing to pay attention... The problem is, not that you were not paying attention when you though we are insignificant, but that you have shown complete and utter disrespect to us, while at the same time you were repeating mantra "about building inclusive and diverse community". Even if original numbers were correct, your behavior was beyond unacceptable.
    – Resistance Is Futile
    Commented Feb 21, 2020 at 11:46
  • 93
    I've compared this problem to that of resource starvation in naive CPU schedulers, @resistance: when load is high (and it always is here), low priority "threads" never get a chance to run. Indeed... This algorithm was codified in at least one internal document when I left: concerns from people with low measurable influence were not to get a response. I hope this will change; there are more than a few skilled computer scientists whose knowledge could be brought to bear on the problem if only it were to be recognized by those doing the scheduling.
    – Shog9
    Commented Feb 21, 2020 at 15:54
  • 113
    Why is this getting so many upvotes when it's all about trying to move forward, rather than actually addressing the issues we've got around here? What we need first and foremost is to move backwards, to undo the harmful changes that have been made in the last few years. Until SE makes this the highest priority, it'll keep alienating the community. "We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. -- C. S. Lewis"
    – Mason Wheeler
    Commented Feb 21, 2020 at 16:27