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  • 51
    Hey, I'd love to sign the open letter but I can't without a Stack Overflow account. Is there any possibility to make some alternative sign-in method? I'd be happy to use my SE account or my Meta SE, for example. I'm active in moderation on three sites to varying degrees, and I anonymously edit many posts (mostly ELL and HNQ), so that's what I'll be stopping.
    – bobble
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 4:35
  • 26
    @Andreasdetestscensorship Please add an option to indicate that someone supports removing the policy but doesn't want to participate in the strike. I'd like to sign the letter but due to its current phrasing it would state that I'm participating.
    – Sonic -misses Shadow- Hedgehog
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 7:46
  • 33
    I am surprised nobody has leaked the stated-in-private policy yet.
    – user3840170
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 9:34
  • 168
    Stack Exchange moderators take their commitments seriously, @user3840170, and leaking private information is a massive breach of trust. Just because the company has broken trust does not mean that we will stoop to the level of leaking confidential information.
    – Mithical
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 9:37
  • 34
    @Mithical I think the OP would consider leaking the information as whistleblowing, which has different ethics from just sharing confidential information.
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 12:00
  • 81
    Although I agree with you, I'm really skeptical about the strike's effectiveness. Based on the company's actions in the last few years, it's pretty clear they don't care about quality or the community anymore. And the community members who still care are seen as a burden they have to deal with. With the strike, SE has the perfect excuse to remove all diamonds and make new elections, making sure that all new mods will be aligned with their goals.
    – hkotsubo
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 13:50
  • 45
    @Caimen - Moderators do not rely on AI detectors to determine if a post is AI-generated. There are other heuristics used instead, and action is never taken solely because a purported AI detector claimed it was ChatGPT or whatever.
    – Mithical
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 14:16
  • 47
    @Caimen Nobody has been banned. Suspensions have been doled out based on the basis of human moderator review of posts that have been flagged as potentially LLM-generated.
    – Ian Kemp - SE killed by LLMs
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 14:16
  • 27
    @Caimen See the comments under their new policy answer. SE staff is lying to you. Do not trust the point of view which they have presented in that answer.
    – Israel is evil
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 14:22
  • 14
    If you want to sign the letter but don't want to create a stack overflow account, DM me. I can add you manually @bobble
    – mousetail
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 16:59
  • 25
    While I certainly agree that SE could and should have done better in 2019, that "debacle" does not rest solely on their shoulders - a substantial number of community members and moderators were being openly transphobic, to the point that the only way to make the sites friendly to nonbinary people (among others) was for the company to step in. I'm absolutely all for demanding better on the actual core issues here, but let's not weaken our position by tying those important issues to cases where the company was ultimately the grownup in the room, and it was us that couldn't be trusted.
    – Cascabel
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 18:45
  • 29
    @Cascabel Most of what you said makes perfect sense - I saw some blatantly transphobic posts here on this site at the time. However, I disagree with your point that the company was "ultimately the grownup in the room" and that the community "couldn't be trusted" - many of those posts were being nuked by the community, not by staff.
    – Sonic -misses Shadow- Hedgehog
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 18:49
  • 24
    @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Many of those posts were being made by moderators. I was on the receiving end of a significant amount of abuse from moderators. Attempts to shift policy starting from discussion among moderators were uniformly shot down. Yes, there were also community members moderating well, but the overall point stands.
    – Cascabel
    Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 18:50
  • 9
    @user202729 I don't really feel comfortable getting too specific, but to try to rephrase my previous statement: collectively, both full communities and the internal moderator community came to conclusions that were inconsistent with the policy that was ultimately published. To try to steer back to the original point: holding SE accountable, great. Suggesting that it's always just been them who's out of touch, and the issue is purely "they're not doing what we say": meh.
    – Cascabel
    Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 1:32
  • 13
    @Someone to be more precise, everyone on strike does what they choose to, there is no official "guideline" on how to behave (apart from the general rule of not doing something that would be considered a punishable offence under normal circumstances anyway) - we are not SE, after all. Some chose to abstain from any and all activity, some - only from moderation duties (VTC/VTR/VTD/reviews/edits). Some chose to stop on all sites, some decided to continue moderating meta sites.
    – 0Valt
    Commented Jun 8, 2023 at 2:01