To start: thank you Aaron and Prashanth for taking the time to meet and compare notes; I think it's a unique opportunity for us to share ideas with each other directly.
I'm not sure if Mr. Chandrasekar will read this post, but I would like to offer an observation to help diagnose the disconnect between SE and users. There's a bit of irony in the wording of this goal from SE:
Authentic voice of the company: action over words.
...as that is precisely how we arrived at this point today. In fact, I think it's this statement that will baffle (or anger) people the most. To put the obvious out there: actions are worth more, and words are worth less. The actions shown recently are the very things sinking the ship, and I have to say that there are a lot of questions that feel like they got non-answers. I see this particular setup and inevitable process meltdown happening more and more:
- An action happens which is very much against the community's will.
- SE cannot, or chooses not to undo/modify the action to fix the wound, and:
- SE cannot, or chooses not to give any words to explain or placate the lack of response.
- Bonus points: SE does a new $thing or writes $post which makes it significantly worse.
There are a lot of interesting talking points in the above transcript summary, but if we're being honest I have a feeling that they will be overshadowed by the two largest issues which the community wants closure on (Monica and the CM's). Sadly, both of these fall into the above "cannot change, cannot comment" bucket, and if you truly cannot give us an action, and you truly cannot give us any words (justified or otherwise)...what do you have? There's not much. To reiterate:
I genuinely hope that this can be a turning point, but the sheer number of non-answers is going to make it an extreme uphill battle to restore any sort of trust.
