During the last two years I've watched things go downhill fairly rapidly. For me personally it started with the HNQ debacle and the subsequent pandemonium that ensued. The common recurring theme I see is that anytime a post is made calling Stack Overflow out, we get the age old: 'We know we've been bad at communicating and we're working on that[...]' trope and it really isn't helpful. The community doesn't need to be told what we already know, we'd much rather know about what you are doing to gain our trust back. It feels even worse knowing that after so many years of contributing all it took for Stack Overflow to throw folks under the bus was a couple of Tweets and that really makes you feel cheap.

Another major turning point was the constant barrage of the "welcome wagon". How seasoned users were made to feel as though they were the cause of new users feeling "unwelcomed". I've been saying all along that this whole "welcoming" thing is a two way street yet only one side of it was focused on. I won't deny that some users can be heavy handed in their approach but throughout this process the new users weren't berated in the same way the old folks were with regards to the quality of their questions (the lack thereof) or how they shouldn't be upset by down-votes/close-votes and that they should expect nothing different if all they do is code dump or any of the other million things that people viewing the queues day by day see and to cleanup.

Finally, I feel as though people are just fed up - I know I am. More and more frequently I see that when issues are raised, they are somehow tied back to sexism/racism/<some-other-ism> and that just gets tiring. Case in point, Jon's comment seems to imply that the question regarding the emojis were raised because it was Julia that posted them (maybe I've misunderstood it).

Why is it that the worst motives are assumed about the users?

Why can't it be that a user is genuinely interested in knowing what the policy is or is trying to get a policy set?

And for that matter, why can't a user discuss a post of an employee?

Are we expected to tiptoe around people?

Maybe they're focusing on these newer (possibly trivial in your eyes) issues because the older issues have been gathering dust and even when someone tries to resurrect an old suggestion it gets slapped with status-declined, duped with 5+ year old posts, or is put in the pile of old suggestions to gather dust.

We have always scrutinised content, irrespective of who posted it.

It seems as though there is a serious disconnect between (some) employees and their understanding of meta.

During the last two years I've watched things go downhill fairly rapidly. For me personally it started with the HNQ debacle and the subsequent pandemonium that ensued. The common recurring theme I see is that anytime a post is made calling Stack Overflow out, we get the age old: 'We know we've been bad at communicating and we're working on that[...]' trope and it really isn't helpful. The community doesn't need to be told what we already know, we'd much rather know about what you are doing to gain our trust back. It feels even worse knowing that after so many years of contributing all it took for Stack Overflow to throw folks under the bus was a couple of Tweets and that really makes you feel cheap.

Another major turning point was the constant barrage of the "welcome wagon". How seasoned users were made to feel as though they were the cause of new users feeling "unwelcomed". I've been saying all along that this whole "welcoming" thing is a two way street yet only one side of it was focused on. I won't deny that some users can be heavy handed in their approach but throughout this process the new users weren't berated in the same way the old folks were with regards to the quality of their questions (the lack thereof) or how they shouldn't be upset by down-votes/close-votes and that they should expect nothing different if all they do is code dump or any of the other million things that people viewing the queues day by day see and to cleanup. Things are released without the consultation of the community and for some reason people are actually surprised when there is backlash, really?

Finally, I feel as though people are just fed up - I know I am. More and more frequently I see that when issues are raised, they are somehow tied back to sexism/racism/<some-other-ism> and that just gets tiring. Case in point, Jon's comment seems to imply that the question regarding the emojis were raised because it was Julia that posted them (maybe I've misunderstood it).

Why is it that the worst motives are assumed about the users?

Why can't it be that a user is genuinely interested in knowing what the policy is or is trying to get a policy set?

And for that matter, why can't a user discuss a post of an employee?

Are we expected to tiptoe around people?

Maybe they're focusing on these newer (possibly trivial in your eyes) issues because the older issues have been gathering dust and even when someone tries to resurrect an old suggestion it gets slapped with status-declined, duped with 5+ year old posts, or is put in the pile of old suggestions to gather dust.

We have always scrutinised content, irrespective of who posted it.

It seems as though there is a serious disconnect between (some) employees and their understanding of meta.

During the last two years I've watched things go downhill fairly rapidly. For me personally it started with the HNQ debacle and the subsequent pandemonium that ensued. The common recurring theme I see is that anytime a post is made calling Stack Overflow out we get the age old: 'We know we've been bad at communicating and we're working on that[...]' trope and it really isn't helpful. The community doesn't need to be told what we already know, we'd much rather know about what you are doing to gain our trust back. It feels even worse knowing that after so many years of contributing all it took for Stack Overflow to throw folks under the bus was a couple of Tweets and that really makes you feel cheap.

Another major turning point was the constant barrage of the "welcome wagon". How seasoned users were made to feel as though they were the cause of new users feeling "unwelcomed". I've been saying all along that this whole "welcoming" thing is a two way street yet only one side of it was focused on. I won't deny that some users can be heavy handed in their approach but throughout this process the new users weren't berated in the same way the old folks were with regards to the quality of their questions (the lack thereof) or how they shouldn't be upset by down-votes/close-votes and that they should expect nothing different if all they do is code dump or any of the other million things that people viewing the queues day by day see and to cleanup.

Finally, I feel as though people are just fed up - I know I am. More and more frequently I see that when issues are raised, they are somehow tied back to sexism/racism/<some-other-ism> and that just gets tiring. Case in point, Jon's comment seems to imply that the question regarding the emojis were raised because it was Julia that posted them (maybe I've misunderstood it).

Why is it that the worst motives are assumed about the users?

Why can't it be that a user is genuinely interested in knowing what the policy is or is trying to get a policy set?

And for that matter, why can't a user discuss a post of an employee?

Are we expected to tiptoe around people?

Maybe they're focusing on these newer (possibly trivial in your eyes) issues because the older issues have been gathering dust and even when someone tries to resurrect an old suggestion it gets slapped with status-declined, duped with 5+ year old posts, or is put in the pile of old suggestions to gather dust.

We have always scrutinised content, irrespective of who posted it.

It seems as there is a disconnect between (some) employees and their understanding of meta.

During the last two years I've watched things go downhill fairly rapidly. For me personally it started with the HNQ debacle and the subsequent pandemonium that ensued. The common recurring theme I see is that anytime a post is made calling Stack Overflow out, we get the age old: 'We know we've been bad at communicating and we're working on that[...]' trope and it really isn't helpful. The community doesn't need to be told what we already know, we'd much rather know about what you are doing to gain our trust back. It feels even worse knowing that after so many years of contributing all it took for Stack Overflow to throw folks under the bus was a couple of Tweets and that really makes you feel cheap.

Another major turning point was the constant barrage of the "welcome wagon". How seasoned users were made to feel as though they were the cause of new users feeling "unwelcomed". I've been saying all along that this whole "welcoming" thing is a two way street yet only one side of it was focused on. I won't deny that some users can be heavy handed in their approach but throughout this process the new users weren't berated in the same way the old folks were with regards to the quality of their questions (the lack thereof) or how they shouldn't be upset by down-votes/close-votes and that they should expect nothing different if all they do is code dump or any of the other million things that people viewing the queues day by day see and to cleanup.

Finally, I feel as though people are just fed up - I know I am. More and more frequently I see that when issues are raised, they are somehow tied back to sexism/racism/<some-other-ism> and that just gets tiring. Case in point, Jon's comment seems to imply that the question regarding the emojis were raised because it was Julia that posted them (maybe I've misunderstood it).

Why is it that the worst motives are assumed about the users?

Why can't it be that a user is genuinely interested in knowing what the policy is or is trying to get a policy set?

And for that matter, why can't a user discuss a post of an employee?

Are we expected to tiptoe around people?

Maybe they're focusing on these newer (possibly trivial in your eyes) issues because the older issues have been gathering dust and even when someone tries to resurrect an old suggestion it gets slapped with status-declined, duped with 5+ year old posts, or is put in the pile of old suggestions to gather dust.

We have always scrutinised content, irrespective of who posted it.

It seems as though there is a serious disconnect between (some) employees and their understanding of meta.