Timeline for Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 17, 2023 at 12:07 | comment | added | Rui F Ribeiro | I stopped being active between the pronouns brain washing and "moderating bad English is harmful" witch hunts...IMO the only SE goal is amassing visitor numbers to show to investors, without worrying they are real numbers, or for the quality, or for we not being all 20s something USA residents. SE suffers from the "too big to fail" syndrome. +1 vote | |
| Jun 25, 2023 at 0:45 | comment | added | Marco13 | @HippoMan The strike may negatively affect users, e.g. users who flag an insulting comment that is then not removed - i.e. the users who care. That's perfectly in line with what I said. But it differs from your view of the strike: The strike does not affect the company or its operation from a purely economic perspective. They have same click counts (if not more). The same ads being served. SE is an oil tanker on the Atlantic, and will keep heading straight towards its goal, even with the crew on strike. (Sure, it will crash, eventually, but ... that's the point of that metaphor...) | |
| Jun 24, 2023 at 19:24 | comment | added | HippoMan | @blackgreenonstrike: "What you fail to acknowledge with this overly cynical take is that moderators/curators striking means that there is the potential for unchecked abuse on the site". Any strike against any organization will always hamper the organization's ability to function while the strike is in effect. This is why striking can be effective at motivating organizations to reconsider their policies. And it's no reason to prohibit, discourage, or avoid strikes. | |
| Jun 13, 2023 at 17:45 | comment | added | liakoyras | Maybe I should have phrased it as "ought to care". I took the strike as a taste of what the sites would be without moderation (and by that I don't only mean the actual mods, a lot of other active users participate too). If the quality falls, users will stop clicking (as I already do with Quora for example). The quality is based upon the best efforts of the community, whether through QA or moderation. I think that long term, lowering of the quality will be bad for their business, but only time will tell. | |
| Jun 13, 2023 at 14:48 | comment | added | Marco13 | @liakoyras People will do websearches, find a few bad Q/As, and maybe one of the answers solves their issue, and maybe not. Where do moderation or the strike come into play here? Maybe someone flags a comment, and the flag is not handled, but that affects only people who care about stuff like that, and is totally unrelated to "(technical) quality". When "the community" is defined as "people who strive for quality", and SE does not care about quality, then it does not care about the community. (Sure, that's oversimplified, but ... too little space for too many management failures here) | |
| Jun 13, 2023 at 10:30 | comment | added | liakoyras | Of course they don't care about the users/mods, but not caring about the quality of content (which they don't rn) is not a sustainable practice for such a website. Threatening to make the quality even worse (which is what the strike essentially does) is probably the only way the moderators (and users) have to pressure any change. | |
| Jun 13, 2023 at 3:55 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Marco13 I guess I'm naturally optimistic. I just don't want to believe yet that the company pulls an Elon Musk and fires everyone who isn't agreeing with them. But it may happen if course. Having a team of highly efficient mods is valuable, but maybe not that much. | |
| Jun 13, 2023 at 0:21 | comment | added | Marco13 | @blackgreenonstrike You mentioned your "cynical" part and the "other" - what is this "other part"? (I could ask whether that other part is "naive" or "idealistic", but ... my cynical part would say that these are not necessarily different things ;-)). But seriously: You've been here (on Meta) for 2 years. You replaced a mod who left after the 2019 debacle. That mod replaced one who left after 2015. And if you leave, you will be replaced, by someone who doesn't complain as much as you. (I'm playing <strike>devil's</strike> SE's advocate here, I hope that's obvious...). | |
| Jun 13, 2023 at 0:13 | comment | added | Marco13 | @Trilarion You've been involved in Meta so long that I'm surprised to see that optimism. SE does not really need a "community" (roughly: "a group that shares goals and values"). It needs visitors and activity. I also don't see any risk in replacing mods with new ones. Each new generation will have the choice to swallow the poor treatment, or leave (and ... people will (have to and be willing to) swallow a lot). So imagine the striking mods went away now (and I share your doubts about that): What then? New ones will be elected, and stoically moderate auto-generated content... | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 11:35 | comment | added | blackgreen | @SPArcheon perhaps you are correct, and the cynical part of me somewhat agrees with that idea, but the other part doesn’t. I wouldn’t be striking if I thought the company doesn’t care as much as painted in this answer. Although… I probably would strike anyway because even if they don’t care, I do. | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 8:14 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | The company doesn't really care - it's not a human being. But you can negotiate with it. It's not like it's not dependent on the mods or existing community. Sure it could try to find new mods and new users, but that is risky by itself and may fail. The striking mods however, must be prepared to walk away if necessary (not sure if they really are). That's the situation, in a nutshell. | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 7:59 | comment | added | ꓢPArcheon | @blackgreenonstrike I don't think he meant that. I read this post as a quite realistic claim: even if every current moderator was to resign now, there is plenty of other users that are ready to take their place either because they don't have yet realized what the situation is or because they don't care. So the company will in a way always be able to find someone who will "polish the turds" to use shog9 old words. This seem to be tangential to my post here | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 11:29 | comment | added | Marco13 | @blackgreenonstrike I acknowledge that insofar that I considered to bring up another point: Who would even notice this strike if it wasn't announced publicly? Out of the ~5.5m daily visitors of SO, how many of them require moderation action, and notice when the action is not performed? An random (but high) guess of 1% would still mean that they have "99% customer satisfaction"... Yes, it may sound like "cynicism", but that may just be an expression of my disappointment, based on actual observations that I made here in the past ~10 years. They. Don't. Care. | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 10:12 | comment | added | hkotsubo | Totally agree, the company doesn't care. And I'm afraid that they will do exactly what I commented here | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 6:34 | comment | added | user3840170 | "We hear you, from now on we will inconsistently and capriciously ignore, mistreat, and malign volunteers" | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 3:03 | comment | added | Largato | One thing that I can't understand right now. Let's imagine that the strike becomes effective and SE answers "our" demands. Who will fix the whole mess the day after? | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 2:35 | comment | added | blackgreen | What you fail to acknowledge with this overly cynical take is that moderators/curators striking means that there is the potential for unchecked abuse on the site, which is even worse than spam. And abuse often doesn't surface with red flags that employees can go and check every once in a while. Delaying handling those situations can have real repercussions on the people involved (racism, harassment, bullying, etc.). Once it spreads the perception that the platform is unsafe, it's game over. | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 2:13 | comment | added | Marco13 | @starball Taking that statement literally was a dramaturgic device. They are either going to "tolerate" this treatment, or be replaced by others. The company can do whatever it wants. They may see the public announcement of the strike as a minor nuisance, because now, they have to wait for the dust to settle and open a fresh can of apologies and promises. But they don't really care about the people who are striking. | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 1:43 | comment | added | starball | I'm pretty sure the intent was more like "we (the signees) are not going to tolerate this treatment"- not literally "you can't treat us like this" | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 1:20 | history | answered | Marco13 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |