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Earlier today, we had a 1-hour session for folks to talk candidly about whatever site concerns they wanted to in The Meta Room. We'll be doing two more tomorrow, Thursday February 26th. One at 9am ET (2pm UTC) and another at 3pm ET (8pm UTC) to give folks an opportunity to join.

This isn't about requesting feedback from you all (which has been given often, so thank you!). This is about being here to listen to whatever you're concerned about on the site.

Some folks may be past the point of wanting to talk. That's okay. Others may have quite a lot to get off their chests. That's what this is for, so you're encouraged to come and do that.

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    What is the point of this? How is giving concerns not giving feedback? We can & do already communicate concerns in questions & comments. In the chat hour you somewhat suspended the CoC. Is this how you see the chat hours as different? How is allowing rudeness supposed to help? Commented Feb 25 at 22:07
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    "This isn't about requesting feedback from you all (which has been given often, so thank you!). This is about being here to listen to whatever you're concerned about on the site." Wait, what's the difference? Commented Feb 25 at 22:17
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    Re "rudeness", ironically coincidentally stumbled over researching UX aspects of the SO redesign: M3 Expressive: Design with emotion Build more usable and engaging products with emotion-driven UX. M3 Expressive adds vibrant colors, intuitive motion, adaptive components, flexible typography, and contrasting shapes. Commented Feb 25 at 22:33
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    I can see folks feeling that way, that it's all the same. If you do, the main difference then would be a live, real-time conversation instead of posting in threads. You're welcome to join. Commented Feb 26 at 2:52
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    As I already tried to explain, one of the countless problems the company is having is that you keep asking for feedback, over and over and over and over again. And then ignore it. We had it with speaking with various middle managers. If I want to speak with a polite person who can't do jack to change anything, I can go speak with an AI. Or the wall. Commented Feb 26 at 8:01
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    This almost feels like you're trying to bait peaceful protestors into saying something that would invalidate the efforts Commented Feb 26 at 10:01
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    'Some folks may be past the point of wanting to talk. That's okay.' This sums up companies general tactic — ignore feedback until the user base simply keeps using whatever new trash is rolled out, or leave the site. Commented Feb 26 at 10:20
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    Can I suggest if you were continue these sessions you create your own room for them? the first 13 minutes of the session earlier was people continuing their conversations about apples and potatoes (or something?). Reddit's AMA posts would be a good example where questions could be primed ahead of the session too Commented Feb 26 at 15:29
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    @sayse Just saying, that the apples conversation was started by the office hours start announcement itself: "[...]talk about [...]your favorite fruit" I don't see many messages trickle over from previous conversations if any. Commented Feb 26 at 16:32
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    @T3H40 - Thanks, I missed that, albeit its own room would still be better imo Commented Feb 26 at 17:31
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    @Sayse I like the suggestion, thank you. No promises we'll go that route (we don't for the moderator CM Office Hours), but we'll definitely discuss it. Commented Feb 26 at 19:59
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    I was not able to make these ones. Do you plan to do any more? Commented Feb 26 at 21:54
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    @Starship Chances are high, though I can't promise anything at the moment. If we do, we'll give more notice than 15 minutes (the first one) or a day (like these two were) so folks have more time to plan. Commented Feb 27 at 14:40
  • @Dalmarus Okay, thank you. Also, any plans to bring in non-CMs? Commented Feb 27 at 18:18
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    @Starship Can't promise anything at the moment, but it's definitely being discussed. Commented Feb 27 at 18:46

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I do like this idea, but it would be nice if we could actually talk to the people who are making the decisions. At least from my point of view, it seems like the CMs are generally aware of what the community thinks. In one case and possibly more often, you’ve literally been betting on how long it will take someone to bring up a given complaint on an announcement post.

Somehow, though, this information doesn’t seem to be reaching the people actually making decisions. Despite the CEO’s claims to the contrary, I sincerely doubt any of them are reading our feedback (to senior management: if I’m wrong about this and you are reading this, please comment so). It would be helpful to be able to communicate directly. One example of a non-CM staff member who has done this is EmmaBee, and it seems like it was a win-win situation all around.

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    The issue is not awareness/reading; I'd doubt if they haven't heard about the backlash if not read them firsthand by now. They just believe in different goals, and even then, they pick the worst route. Honestly, if I believed they'd get the engagement they're chasing like this, I wouldn't be as mad. Yes, they'd still very much be killing the site we cherish, but at least I'd tell myself that any corporation would put the shareholders above everything else. But I don't think they'd even get there, alas. Commented Feb 26 at 0:54
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    @M-- Which one of the 10-20 backlashes in the past 2 years are you talking about? There is not one isolated incident that causes everyone to leave the site. Rather, there are so many that I'm having problem explaining exactly why I finally left SO. I would have to write a long list of all the things that were/are handled very poorly. Commented Feb 26 at 7:55
  • @M-- It would be nice to be able to discuss with them directly though, without 3 intermediaries. If you look at old unpopular meta posts by Jeff Atwood, you’ll see that even when there was disagreement, at least there could be a discussion, and often times one side would actually convince the other. Commented Feb 26 at 12:08
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    Back when the Monica thing happened, an ex employee posted some info about the insider mail messages the top management sent to the employees during the strike. Those messages were borderline WW2 style propaganda "strike does not exist", "numbers are inflated", "the community is on our side" etc. Based on this, I am pretty sure said top management knows quite well what we have been saying for years, but is also quite deep into brainwashing the employees into thinking those issues are just bull made up by "a vocal minority that does not represent the site userbase" Commented Feb 26 at 12:41
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    This is probably also the reason historical, well known and trusted CM were downsized and removed: they were guilty to be "on the community side". It is easier to brainwash new people that never saw the old scandals and make them think those are just overblown made up thing by bad actors among the users. Commented Feb 26 at 12:43
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    @SPArcheon I think communication with the company is worse than it was in 2019. At least then, I’m confident in a number of CMs that they were sharply relaying the message (that’s presumably part of why some were fired). Now, I’d imagine it’s just hints and whispers being delivered. The CEO has claimed that they recognize my username from reading my posts and meta and talk to every staff member personally. Form your own opinion, but I personally think that’s a lie Commented Feb 26 at 12:59
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    @Lundin Backlash is now a proper noun on SO; death by thousand cuts. Commented Feb 26 at 14:17
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For the next 60 minutes, you're welcome to let it all out, free from Code of Conduct violation (as long as you don't post slurs, anything illegal, etc.). Swear, vent, ask WTF is going, etc. You can vent about whatever you want. It's all fair game.

You folks and me have a very different idea about office hours.

It would be nice if someone were to a) actually listen or b) admit not to listen. Simply adding expletives isn't going to change what we have to say.

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    Emotion is the foundation of the Material Design touchscreen consumeruser new SO UX (an)aesthetic. Commented Feb 25 at 23:19
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    That piece may or may not make the transition to tomorrow's sessions. Probably not. We do office hours with the mods a couple times a month and giving it a go with the SO community. With everything going on, we want folks to know there's somewhere they can have a live chat with staff and we're there to listen. Commented Feb 26 at 3:16
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    @Dalmarus you (as in, SE) were "there to listen" for all of the replies to the announcements of the last years as well. It didn't make any difference and anything the company did not want to hear was entirely ignored, or at best addressed in a noncommittal way if the community pushed hard for an answer. What exactly is going to be different this time? My assumption from your post and the current state of SE interactions with meta in general would be: absolutely nothing. Commented Feb 26 at 12:24
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    @Dalmarus I really don't know what to make of these sessions. First it was extra swearing. Now it's extra favourite fruits and odd jobs. Is this really what you want to talk about? Is it really what you think users want to talk about when they complain no one listens? Commented Feb 26 at 17:49
  • @MisterMiyagi It's a lighthearted way of starting off the conversation and explaining that we're there to talk about whatever the community wants. Reading the conversation, it's easy to see that we responded to member's thoughts in the room - we didn't impose anything. It's an easy way to open a conversation. Commented Feb 26 at 18:44
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While I couldn't make it to these 'Office Hours', I've read through the chat transcripts and really didn't see any real answers to most of the questions that were posed. The responses I saw from staff seemed to fail into one of the following categories:

  • We can't speak to that
  • We aren't sure yet, wait and see

Please let me know if I missed some questions about the site that weren't answered in one of these two ways.

I guess I fail to see the point of these if you (CMs) aren't allowed, or don't know the answers to the type of questions that are going to be asked. Maybe the next one (if there is a next one) should include some of the people actually driving these recent decisions, and who have the authority/knowledge to answer them.

That said I do appreciate the time put in by staff that did attend, and do not mean any ill intent to the answers they provided. It just feels like any contact we have with staff these days if very diluted and restrained.

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    Oh there were absolutely zero answers to anything. And almost nobody showed up for the 'event', just the regulars who happened to be in the chat room anyway and who were already ranting about the latest poorly-executed experiment anyway. Might as well go rage in the prompt to MS Clippy and that will have the same impact. Commented Feb 27 at 12:04

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