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A moderator removed an edit I made to one of my answers to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It was a brief message, at the top of the answer, just calling for an end to the killing. Begging people who can do something, anything, to do so - protest, raise awareness, donate to humanitarian organisations. The complete original answer remained right underneath it.

To be frank, I'm not interested in what the moderators think. The ones still around have predominantly shown they're on corporate Stack Overflow's side and not on the side of the community.

I'm asking what you, the everyday users think.

Should we users have sovereignty over our own answers? Do you support this, a person, non-destructively, trying to raise awareness to a humanitarian crisis?

I'm not asking does this go against the 'irrelevant' edits clause in the code of conduct etc, I'm asking do you as users of the site, as people, support this?

Here is the private mod mail exchange for transparency:

Hello,

We're writing in reference to your Stack Overflow account:

https://stackoverflow.com/users/9067615/end-genocide-save-gaza

Your recent edit of your answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/65831759/ what totally inappropriate and as a long time user you should know better. Please don't do that kind of thing again.

Regards, Stack Overflow Moderation Team

No. What's totally inappropriate is the silence and inaction against this massacre. So many people have been killed.

Children are starving to death right now.

Why are you supporting this company which is exploiting its users and monetizing their years of volunteer labour to sell to AI companies to train their models for profit, over one of those users using their hard earned visibility on the site through that labour and years of helping others to make a vital humanitarian point? Trying to do what they can in the face of this horror?

Where are your priorities?

Over 50 people have been killed since you sent this message.

A hospital was bombed. A refugee camp was bombed.

Stand for something that matters, my god, there are more important things in this world than a few web pages being temporarily 'cluttered'.

(Nothing's been removed - the answer is still there if someone 'needs' it, there's now just one brief message at the start, a single stroke of a scroll wheel of 'inconvenience'.

These are my answers. I haven't 'defaced' anything any other person has written. I have only used my platform to say what I believe is so important. What I cannot in good conscience be quiet about.

Try thinking a tiny bit harder if you think this is 'totally inappropriate'. I'm not going to hand-hold you through this anymore.)

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    Counter question: what does the content you added to your post have to do with the "Unsqueeze" feature in PyTorch? Commented May 15, 2025 at 11:02
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    SPR (Sexual/Political/Religious) info/statements don't belong on a Tech Site... Commented May 15, 2025 at 11:06
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    Asking this, and then destroying a large number of your posts was probably not (read wasn't) a good idea... That is more likely to result in suspension. Commented May 15, 2025 at 11:06
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    Wrong place. You can ask objective questions about the Gaza crisis on the Politics site though. Commented May 15, 2025 at 11:16
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    "These are my answers" This is a common misunderstanding; you own the copyright and can post and reuse it elsewhere freely, however, you still licenced that content to Stack Overflow, and they own the site and the content on the site. You waived the right to destroy that content the moment you posted it on the site. Commented May 15, 2025 at 11:37
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    What should I keep out of my posts and titles? Commented May 15, 2025 at 11:39
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    Why are fellow users removing thank-you's from my questions?. Commented May 15, 2025 at 11:57
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    “I’m asking what you, the everyday users think.” - I think you vandalized your contribution and should be suspended for vandalizing your contribution. Your free to put anything reasonable in your profile. Anything that is offensive can be removed of course Commented May 15, 2025 at 12:03
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    As it's written, I'd say it's not going to be long term useful, if I'm honest, @Anerdw . If "we" want this to become a pillar/duplicate target then it needs to be generalised down; the post is less about protesting in general and more about the subject matter that they want to protest in my opinion. Commented May 15, 2025 at 12:13
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    I have sympathy for the situation in Gaza, a lot. But seeing other people vandalize their SO posts does not increase the sympathy. Commented May 15, 2025 at 17:05
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    "I'm asking do you as users of the site, as people, support this?" If you mean the general practice of editing answers for protest, then no, as explained in the answers already provided. If you mean the specific cause, then you are also off-topic here. One can easily get the impression that you are reacting to the moderator rebuke by trying to find additional inappropriate venues for your underlying message. I wouldn't expect that conduct to go over very well anywhere on the Internet. Commented May 15, 2025 at 18:09
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    Should we users have sovereignty over our own answers? No. Do you support this, a person, non-destructively, trying to raise awareness to a humanitarian crisis?. Not here, no. Commented May 15, 2025 at 19:12
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    The ones still around have predominantly shown they're on corporate Stack Overflow's side and not on the side of the community. [citation needed] Commented May 15, 2025 at 19:45
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    "a person, non-destructively, trying to raise awareness" How is that edit non-destructive? You're hiding the actual answer... Commented May 15, 2025 at 21:24
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    I'm sure you realize which floodgates would open if such messages were allowed. Others will choose other battles and causes. Don't confuse keeping a site on-topic with denying that atrocities happen. Commented May 18, 2025 at 12:42

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No, we do not support it. This is not the place to do it. You can put such protest manifesto on your profile but not in the answers.

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The others have already covered the part about whether adding protesting messages into posts is appropriate, so I will not repeat what they said.

I am the moderator who handled the initial flag on your answer and sent you the message you quoted.

We generally take vandalizing posts (adding unrelated content is a form of vandalism, regardless whether you preserved original content or not). By default doing any of such actions comes with one day suspension to prevent user to continue with immediate destructive actions and gives us the chance to clear up any misunderstandings.

If a new user account posted a content of similar nature or attempted to edit existing post via suggested edits (I am not going to discuss the validity of the cause, because we don't allow any kind of political or protesting content), they would most likely have such post flagged as spam or R/A and their account would most likely end up being deleted.

Since you are long time user and this was the first time you did something like that and it was on a single post, I decided to just send the mod message without a suspension.

When I came across that flag, I didn't have to much time to elaborate so the message was rather short. Again, because you are a long time, active user, I expected that you know at least some of the rules by now and that you will be able to reach out if you need additional clarifications.

I also rolled back the edit. I also haven't applied any lock on the answer, which is another standard action, because I expected that mod message would suffice and that there will be no further problems.

I am telling you all this to show the amount of good faith on my side when handling your case.

I was correct in the assumption that you will be able to reach out and this Meta question is a proof of that. However, that is not all you did. You went back, rolled my edit and added the protest note in multiple answers.

Another moderator handled flags that were raised again on the initial and other vandalized answers and issued the suspension. This happened solely because you decided to ignore the warning message and repeated what we asked you not to do. And I would have done the same if I were the one handling additional flags.

If you had just posted this Meta question, without editing the posts again, your account would not be suspended.

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I'll address just this part:

Should we users have sovereignty over our own answers?

No.

You contributed your answers under a Creative Commons license which allows us to use your answers as the community sees fit, so long as we respect the terms of that license. If you wanted to restrict the use or presentation of those answers, then you made a mistake by granting that license in the first place, but the license is not revocable.

The community has the right to display whichever revision of your answer we collectively think is most useful, because you granted us that right.

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No, you cannot protest via your posts on this site.

The Stack Overflow user interface is similar to Reddit and other social sites, where protests would be appropriate (and have occurred in the past), but our goals are much closer to those of informational sites like Wikipedia. The point of Q&A is to provide reliable, community-vetted information about programming problems. Protests tend to distract from that and are liable to be edited out.

If you want to protest on Stack Overflow, you can do it by changing your username or your profile, but the quality-driven model the community has spent so long building doesn't leave room for post-based protests.

Also -

To be frank, I'm not interested in what the moderators think. The ones still around have predominantly shown they're on corporate Stack Overflow's side and not on the side of the community.

Seriously?

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    Seriously. Such claims require no proof. They are clearly self-evident by the very nature of their self-evidential self-evidence. Commented May 15, 2025 at 20:35
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    Seriously. Evidently, not a single moderator has ever spoken out against SE corporate. Ever. For real. No cap. Commented May 15, 2025 at 21:29

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