An Update to our Community and an Apology

I believe that the new policy was made with good intentions, to protect a vulnerable group. But:

1. Based on the previous statement, people may suspect that Monica is transphobic. Assuming that she isn't (I haven't seen evidence of her being that at all, neither in the moderator room nor elsewhere), doesn't she deserve a public statement explaining that she is not (suspected to be) transphobic? If you do have evidence, show it to the community, with Monica's permission; if she should object to this, then tell us so.

2. Will Monica be allowed to go through this new process, and have a chance at not losing her moderatorship? That would seem only fair?

3. As Snow says above, there is an existing process for demodding a moderator from a site. The site's other moderators are an important party to the process, as they should be. It is a very formal, conscientious, and meticulous process. Why wasn't (some variant of) this process followed? Or was it? If so, please give us more information.

4. This post is only announcing the new process. As most big companies do, the rest is all SE's saying how everything was due to miscommunication. But that is not (mainly) the problem; it is SE's acts.

As to the policy change in question and its effects, I think people should consider voting for or against this answer above: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/334266/156039

While conducting this postmortem and deciding what to do better, I'd suggest it would be useful to keep communications open with the mod team, rather than leave us feeling abandoned. Give us status updates - they really help. Respond to some of the key queries (especially the heavily starred ones!)

We had no updates, no actual evidence that you were even listening.

The handful of CMs who tried to help couldn't provide us with info - they did their best and were definitely appreciated, but to us as a group it even felt like they were abandoned, pretty much.

Seriously, you need to involve an incident handler who understands communications, both with internal stakeholders (mods and CMs) and external stakeholders (members of the community, and the media and public) because as a company you keep hurting people with the way you do this.

I honestly think that this update is completely unacceptable. It seems extremely superficial.

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior.

Can you please tell us what in the current CoC she violated and how she was unwilling to accept repeated requests?

From what I've seen (and I'll go as far as to admit that I've read the leaks to try and understand the whole situation) she was asking questions, not outright saying she wasn't going to follow any of the proposed CoC.

But we must also acknowledge the way in which we implemented it and our communications surrounding the decision could have been much better.

Nope, sorry. We've heard this spiel many many many times before. Each time we've been assured that this will be the last or that you're working to improve but you've never followed through.

[...] but this is the first time we’ve had to suspend a moderator for a Code of Conduct violation

Once again, like your canned responses, you're throwing shade at Monica's character and actions regarding her violating the CoC but are unable/unwilling to provide any evidence/examples of it. It is totally reprehensible behavior, especially in an "apology".

We’re doing a postmortem internally on how we can do better next time. As we build a more welcoming and inclusive network we’ll continue to learn and to improve.

If you want to do better, it's simple. Folks have been repeating it for years. Communicate with us. I wrote a question on MSO regarding this very topic and would you look at that, it was ignored. You don't build a more inclusive site by completely isolating, ostracising, and disparaging your power-users.

We never wanted to leave people wondering about their future in the sites they've worked very hard to moderate.

You say that yet we had to find out the details from the scraps we could find (such as leaks or news outlets) and all we got were your canned responses.

In all honestly, this "apology" has very little substance. You've really not addressed any of the real concerns raised by the community during the period of radio silence.

I don't know about others, but what I really expected (after this long) was a complete breakdown of the what/why/when of the whole incident (anonymized, if need be). What we actually got is a poor apology and an attaboy.

Everyone has been cautioning each other to not throw fuel onto the fire over last couple of days and in all honesty I agreed with the sentiments at first but now you've gone an emptied the whole barrel.

You really don't seem to understand this community, your community. I'm insulted to think that you'd believe that we'd be satisfied with this.

FYI folks, it's a Thursday today, so expect radio silence until next Thursday I guess.

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior.

I was there in the debate from the start and we discussed the new term of a new CoC to be more inclusive. Future tense was used.

I personally see it as an argument between two person that went bad and out of control, but her argument was valid. I never used he/she/they when I moderate, I always talk to the user directly. The debate started that way, simply.

I agree with you that a pronoun misuse would be against the be nice policy and Monica too agreed to that, but the debate was more than that in the end, it was talked to force the use of they or such pronoun.

Please publish that new CoC

I'm not sure how to take this to be honest. I can see that there's a willingness to learn from this and to be more transparent about this process going forward. I can see there's a sense of regret for not being better this time around.

What I don't see is an apology to Monica, and to the moderators who have felt they've been let down in trust from this whole issue.

You admit that you got things wrong. You really need to send an apology to Monica for doing things wrong. You don't have to reinstate her - you just had to admit to her personally that you treated her badly.

And you treated us badly in treating her badly.

And I continue to feel bad because you're not owning that fact.

"repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct": citation needed. "CM’s repeated requests to change": citation needed.

– Monica Cellio

While you're at it, will you please consider instituting an official process for reinstating moderators who have been removed? Such a process is sorely needed in this case, in particular.

We didn’t follow that rule last week and as a result there was a lot of confusion over the weekend

Not just weekend. It's been a week since things started happening.

Still Stack Exchange didn't released enough details, which will clarify what led to removal of the moderator. As a company, you have the right to keep it confidential and we, users don't have any right to ask you to publish it. But Monica, gained a lot of trust among users across all SE sites she moderated and among other moderators. The tsunami of resignations you've seen is because of that. Thousands of people voted to elect her as a mod and she tried to reach up to their expectation.

You people took 1 week to release an official (incomplete) statement.

While you claim the site is moderated by the public, this isn't the right way to treat the users or mods. Even if you have the right to do whatever you want, you should understand that moderators are people, who have their own things and still they spend a lot of time to keep the site clean, without expecting anything in return.

As mentioned in one of my other answer, Monica didn't get anything by moderating this site. She may raised concerns regarding the new & yet to implement CoC. But she's a moderator on many sites and she may have to respond to queries from Millions of people in the community. It's not just her voice. It's the community's voice.

When she ask you something as a mod, she is not representing herself. She's representing the entire community

This isn't the right way to treat them.

You're making some very serious accusations about Monica. You wrote:

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior.

Monica has presented her side of the story on various platforms by now, so I would expect Staff to release concrete proof (sanitized if it must be) about what exactly led to the removal.

Moderators generally scrupulously avoid casting aspersions on community members without presented proof, and do usually present proof if the target of a suspension makes a Meta post or presents their side of the story. If that is not the case, they usually refrain from casting any aspersions.

I would expect SE staff to abide by higher standards of behavior, so I expect some proof to be forthcoming. I'm not taking your word on this, as I've known and trusted Monica for a long time and she is directly contradicting you, and when it comes down to it in the absence of any evidence, I'm taking her word over yours.

Monica's repeated violations of the code of conduct were only that she kept saying she didn't want to use "they" as a single-person pronoun and she kept trying to find an alternate way to be respectful that would meet her needs (to not use "they") as well as meeting the needs of others to be respected.

I went back and read a lot of the discussions that came before her removal and in everything I read, Monica was very respectful in what she wrote.

So the only "violation" was that she kept trying to find an alternative to the use of singular they that would work for her and would be respectful to others who preferred it.

To me, it isn't disrespectful and it's not a violation of "be nice" - to say, "that doesn't work for me, is there an alternative? how about this? or how about if I do this other thing to try to find an alternative?"

Four seconds before this Meta question was posted - literally, four seconds, - I amended a Worldbuilding meta post I had written a couple days, to state specific concerns I had about the entire situation. Here's what I added:

Now that it's been a few more days, and things have continued to snowball - about 35 moderators have either resigned in protest or gone on strike in relation to the chain of events - I thought I would elaborate a bit more on the things that bother me about the whole thing.

• I'm bothered that an elected moderator was summarily dismissed without consultation with other moderators, as is the established procedure for cases where users raise severe complaints about a mod.
• I'm bothered that Monica was dismissed based on opposition to a change in the Code of Conduct that had not yet been published or even finalized.
• I'm bothered that, by Monica's account, this happened before discussions between her and Stack Overflow had concluded.
• I'm bothered that this occurred less than an hour before the start of Shabbat, which, coupled with the start of Rosh Hashanah 48 hours later, meant that Monica would be almost entirely offline for 96 hours. Either this was intentional on Stack Exchange's part, or it was completely insensitive to Monica's religion, which is a major part of who she is and is well-known.
• I'm bothered that this was done in a way that effectively shamed Monica and hurt her reputation.
• I'm bothered that Stack Overflow has done essentially nothing to help trans moderators and others in the LGBT+ community. Mods network-wide have expressed strong support for formal sensitivity training, but this has yet to be implemented.
• I am, further, bothered that the company has failed in some cases to act against certain users who have written posts and chat messages that are clearly transphobic. The users who make them should at the least be treated more harshly than Monica was, because she is not a transphobic person. This supports the idea that a double standard is being applied.
• I'm bothered that the company has failed to make an adequate statement in response after more than five days. Responses to resignations and meta posts (e.g. this one) have been copied-and-pasted and say basically nothing of any substance.
• I'm bothered that Stack Overflow talked with the Register and provided quotes for a crappy article that poorly explains most aspects of the sequence of events, while refusing to spend as much time communicating with the community.
• I'm bothered that Stack Overflow does not seem to have acknowledged the human cost if all of this - on users, on moderators, and on their own employees.
• I'm bothered that Monica - someone who has contributed an extraordinary amount to sites across the network, who has indeed contributed to efforts towards inclusion, who has represented religious and gender minorities online, who has done so much more good than harm - was treated like none of her contributions mattered.

Rereading all of this, I have to say, it is quite tempting to hang up my mod hat. I don't believe that Stack Overflow can adequately address all - perhaps even most - of these concerns. But I still believe, after this time, that I can do a better job advocating for the users on Worldbuilding and across the network as a mod than as a regular user - and I will continue to do so.

I was, really, really hoping that Stack Overflow, Inc.'s first public statement would address these. At the moment, it seems like this question addresses maybe the first one . . . and none of the others.

I'm not convinced SO cares about the human cost of the debacle. Boilerplate responses on resignations don't mean much. A fairly boilerplate response here on Meta doesn't mean much. Individual employees - folks I trust immensely - have expressed concern for everyone, but the company itself has not.

I'm not convinced SO had any appreciation for what Monica did for the network. She did an incredible amount for so many folks and so many groups, and there is no denying that she did more good than harm - even though I think her stance here, and some actions, caused folks pain. On balance, she did a heck-ton of good - and that has not been recognized.

I'm not convinced that they actually care about trans users, especially as they have not participated in any of the recent discussions about how those of us who don't identify as trans can help those who are. There are way more ways that they need help, in an environment often incredibly dominated by those of us who are cis.

And I'm honestly not convinced that I shouldn't resign.

This statement reads more like damage control than anything else. It doesn't really give us any new information about what happened, and the apology doesn't actually address what the community was upset about. It only apologizes for it happening on a religious holiday weekend.

It comes down to Monica having different values, which lead her to believe that forced top-down moderation on this subject wasn't the correct path, the Stack  Exchange network wasn't willing to respect Monica's choice to bring an opposing viewpoint to the conversation.

It's a noble goal to make an area safe for everyone to use, but can that be done by alienating a large population of the site's agency?

Monica was and is a polite person that believes in making her interactions with other users pleasant and friendly. To my knowledge, Monica didn't object to the use of preferred pronouns; Monica objected to the agency of moderators being challenged.

Quote by Monica Cellio :

I completely agree that it is rude to call people what they don't want to be called; knowingly misgendering someone is not ok.

You start off with,

Friends

Any friend of mine that acted this way wouldn't be a friend anymore. It implies a level of respect that I don't see from the company, and haven't for years. So, sorry, but you don't get to call me a friend.

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior.

That's...a pretty unnuanced depiction of the event, and directly contradicts what Monica has said about the situation. It really doesn't fit what I saw, either. I'm making no judgement on whether it was the right or wrong thing to do; I'm not qualified, one way or the other, and don't have any of the history of what happened beforehand.

But as statements go...this one is lacking. It doesn't seem accurate in any sense.

We don't need a postmortem. We need a commitment to openness, transparency, and communication. Talk to us. We've been yelling for a good long time. All this talking at us isn't helping.

Here's what I was hoping for:

On behalf of Stack Exchange I want to apologize to all of you.

I messed up.

When I made the call to terminate Monica's moderator relationship, I believed that it needed to be done at that moment, and in the manner it was done.

I was wrong.

Through my actions, I hurt Monica's reputation. I hurt our volunteer moderators. And, I hurt you, the community.

I'm sorry.

Going forward, for cases where there are community or staff concerns about a moderator's actions, we'll be following a new process where we endeavor to give the accused a fair hearing and the opportunity to defend themselves, in private. These proceedings will be transcribed and made available if the accused chooses for them to be.

We will not make a public statement on the matter other to say "We've elected to terminate our relationship with <the accused>. We wish them well and want to thank them for their service in helping us build a better community."

We are looking closely at our internal process. Five days to get out an apology of this magnitude was too long for such an important event, and we're going to figure out a way to respond faster and better.

Thank you for sticking with us, and I'm sorry I let you down.

Disclaimer: This is not a statement from Stack Exchange, this is what I wish they had written. I have no authority to speak on behalf of Stack Exchange, nor would I ever claim to do so.

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct

Can you give us some info on this? Where exactly in the existing Code of Conduct is this?

being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior

Again, I'd like some more information. What did the CM request? Why was the request not accepted?

we will release an official process around removing moderators

You already have one.

Thank you for this response in general. I understand that it's hard for you to cooperate with the community, and I appreciate the effort that you put forward to do so.

^{_{To the pessimists out there: No, this is not meant to be snarky. I genuinely mean this.}}

Your actions have harmed the Lavender (LGBTQ+) Community here at SE.

I have taken a leave of absence effective today. This means Writing.SE has no active moderator.

As a queer user I used to feel safe here on SE. Monica's skillful and caring moderation was a large part of why. Now I don't.

If you care about the safety and well-being of your Lavender moderators, step up to make things right. This faux-apology just adds fuel to the fire.

More information in my Writing Meta post.

So we've waited (nearly) a week to get.. a slightly longer version of the same boilerplate nothingness we had previously. Strange that it took this long to respond to the community (if this can be classed as such) but significantly less time to respond to The Register.

Nice to see you putting your "friends" first.

This has generated a lot of attention already, but I'll add my own two cents.

Stop lying to your users.

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior.

No, you didn't. You removed a moderator for putting forth an opinion that suggested she might in future violate a provision of the code of conduct that was not yet written. Whether or not that moderator had violated the code of conduct on previous occasions is irrelevant - that's not what you removed her for. Whether or not that was the correct decision, and whether or not you stand by it, is also irrelevant - you've caused a hell of a mess around the network, and the least you owe your users now is a truthful account of what you did to cause it.

Monica said:

• I'm completely onboard with a rule that says that if you use pronouns you have to use the designated ones (if known). Of course! Don't call people what they don't want to be called. But when I brought up writing in a gender-neutral way, which I do by default as a professional writer who needs to steer clear of gender-related problems, I was told that using gender-neutral language is misgendering. Employees only implied that (other mods argued for it), but when I asked I got no answer, and then fired.

  -- source

• I specifically asked if writing in a gender-neutral way -- which for me means avoiding third-person singular pronouns in favor of plurals, names, other references, or other sentence structure -- was ok. Some mods told me it's not and Sara dismissed my question. That reaction astounds me, because many people including you and I write GN now!

  -- source

• I got one piece of email explaining why they're making this change, I replied with questions (including the one, again, about whether they mean when using pronouns or something more proactive), and got no further reply, though I was promised one (more than once). Instead, four days later, they fired me.

  -- source

Does any of this violate the CoC? Or is Monica leaving something out in her version which explains why you fired her?

There's a big disconnect between your (SE's) version of the story and Monica's. Are you accusing her of lying, or was there a massive miscommunication on (presumably) your part which explains why she was so surprised at the firing?

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct...

I take issue with this. All the indications (most of them visible only to mods) are that the Code of Conduct is changing and that Monica violated the updated, unpublished Code of Conduct. I suppose you can argue that Monica violated the current CoC if you squint really hard at it but there are several points against that argument:

1. Your initial announcement that the CoC was changing and that we would have to abide by it used the future tense. Indeed, the very fact that you are planning to change the CoC is an indication that the CoC did not cover the issue at hand or, at the very least, that it was unclear. Even if you merely admit that the current CoC is unclear then why wouldn't you give a respected moderator the benefit of the doubt and wait until she (and we all) saw the clarified CoC and decided whether or not to abide by it before summarily and coldly removing her as a moderator?
2. Last January there was a discussion in the moderators' Team about the exact issue which is triggering the CoC update.¹ I won't post exact quotes from it since it's mod-only, but the post with the highest score advocated essentially the same course of action which Monica was removed for taking (no points for guessing who wrote it). Furthermore, the Teams discussion would have been pointless if the existing CoC actually covers the issue at hand -- if Monica violated the current CoC over this issue then any SE employee could have and should have immediately answered that the CoC already covers the issue and no discussion is required. The fact that we moderators had the discussion is strong evidence that the current CoC does not cover this issue. Morever, three SE employees posted an answer in that discussion and not one of them said that the CoC already covers it (one of them specifically says that the employee's answer is not an edict, another asks us moderators to bear with the company as the employees try to figure it out).

It would be much more accurate to say that you removed a moderator for insisting that she would refuse to abide by the CoC update you were planning to release, and that you pre-emptively removed her. Even that would be questionable, though, since you can hardly hold someone to abide by a CoC before you've actually released the text of it.

¹Link to the discussion for those with access is here.

This is far from the first time a moderator has been removed. I know of at least two others, apparently there are even more, according to:

I can think of at least one moderator that was removed due to sharing PII publicly - years ago, so this is not a "first", as claimed here. – Oded

One moderator was even removed for violating the law in quite an obscene way, let alone the Code of Conduct (née Be Nice) policy.

Did you refer back to any of these events, or ask the CM team if there were any prior moderator removals, in order to guide your efforts during this process?

I imagine that anyone of Tim Post, Robert Cartaino, Shog9 (which might even be his real name), or Jon Ericson ought to have been able to help there, at least.

If you did not, will you commit to searching for and relying on precedent for future situations?

What is the whole story? This post only makes me more confused!

After reading the comments, I got a name, then I did some search, and get some posts, after reading the following answer: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/333773

My intuition told me that, this Monica is a pretty good person, who can stands up towards those powers.

I have seen more than one other moderators who are mediocre, and without any sense of justice.

And, from her posts, I personally think Monica is not one of them. She got the right spirit !!!

She is brave and got a good sense on how to improve the community.

You can see from her posts that she doesn't hesitate to tell the truth even though other people who are in power don't agree.

And, that might be the major reason why she got fired.

I support her!

When I first read What a very bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community, I agreed to most of the statements and still do.

I thought you would improve our community for the best, but apparently not.

You didn't even apologize to Monica and the rest of the community

Monica did an excellent job for the community as a moderator and there is no reason why Monica was fired for not following the standards under the unreleased CoC.

Release the new Code Of Conduct and apologize to us.

Ultimately here's my two cents on this thing. SE made a poor decision and the community as a whole is mostly in agreement (on top of the mass mod exodus). They're clearly not listening, and giving half motions by ways of apologies and answers.

The only way to send a message to a company that clearly only cares about their bottom line at this point is to hit them in their wallets. Walk away, don't support any of the Exchanges. Don't visit their sites, don't let their ads load. Let the whole infrastructure collapse.

A couple of thoughts and perhaps a bit of mentoring as well.

First, "Friends," is really not a appropriate start to an open letter like this. "Dear Colleagues," or perhaps "Dear Members of the Stack Exchange Community," are much more appropriate. As others have pointed out, we aren't friends and a professional relationship does not imply a personal relationship.

Second, I'm a bit surprised that management at Stack Exchange wasn't aware of this:

We learned (or were painfully reminded, rather) to never ship at 6 PM (EDT) on a Friday.

While it is generally acceptable to inform someone before the weekend that they are being laid-off, generally that decision should be made days to weeks in advance. There might be occasions where it is necessary to remove someone in an expedient fashion, but it doesn't appear to have been the case. Even assuming good faith and there was communication going on behind the scenes that we are not aware of, we encounter this situation,

Even more, this weekend was a religious holiday observed by many on the site.

That was a really big mistake. Despite your personal options about Monica Cellio, she was a fairly high profile person on the site. Between that, the Shabbat, Rosh Hashana, and the fact that all of the issues were "behind closed doors" from the standpoint of the general public, there was no need for a expedient dismissal.

Third, it's a really bad idea to use canned responses and to talk to the press before a general response like this is written. Going back to my second point, a much better way of handling this after the determination to dismiss Monica was made would have been to have an official statement ready to go before Monica was even informed of the decision. Properly managed, the community may not have even needed to know that Monica was fired and a graceful exit strategy could have been employed.

Quite frankly, as someone that's been around since the private beta and has around 40K worth of reputation across all network sites, I'm very disappointed in the direction Stack Exchange has gone over the years. This really was one of those situations that could have been handled much better and I suspect a lot of good people are moving on as a result.

Finally, as Director of Public Q&A you are being held to a bit of a higher standard than other employees of Stack Exchange. Be mindful of that.

Sara,

I don't envy you right now. I realize you are getting absolutely hammered by negative feedback, and more is rolling in every minute. If I were in your shoes, I'd be a mess. I'd be seriously tempted to write off all these criticisms as the result of a poisoned culture that needs to be overhauled.

I hope, though, that you'll remember that this criticism is not coming from a bunch of neanderthals. This criticism is certainly passionate, and at times may be unfair, but nonetheless it largely comes from people who are the recognized leaders of their communities.

This isn't just a bunch of people with three followers tweeting you. These critics are largely people who have demonstrated their ability to work with others patiently and kindly, despite disagreements. These critics are largely people who want to see Stack Exchange succeed. Indeed, many of them want to see you succeed, though it may not feel that way.

So I ask you to please attempt to dispassionately consider all this criticism. Filter out the excesses and learn from the truths, and ask people you trust to help you distinguish between the two.

Perhaps this will only be possible after the dust settles. But please don't dismiss all this as mere negativity from the rabble.

In all honesty, I do believe that knowing why Monica Celio was demoted as a mod is none of our business (or at least, none of the regular users business).

However, I do believe that it is Monica's business to know why she was demoted.

From what I have read so far, I get the feeling that Monica hasn't received a proper explanation about what she did wrong. So, if this is true (and I could be wrong), I urge you to send her a detailed (and private) message explaining all that.

There is nothing more awful than being banned from a place you love without understanding why.

This is not what the community expected or deserved. An apology would have been appropriate, and this does not qualify as one. And as Monica said, "citation[s] needed" for a great deal of this post.

I was officially inactive for several days on my sites while most of this unfolded. When I returned on Monday evening, I found one of the most valuable members of the SE network unceremoniously tossed to the curb, with no notice or meaningful opportunity to respond, and everything on fire. I took the time to read everything I could on the public sites, mod team site, and various mod chats before reaching the conclusion that I needed to resign my diamonds and walk away from roles I loved and responsibilities I took seriously.

The evidence I have seen rebuts at least the following statements in your post:

Last week we made an important decision for our community.

This is partially accurate. You did make the decision for the communities in the sense of taking away agency and autonomy. Not so much in terms of making a decision for the benefit of, much less with input from, said communities.

We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct...

I have seen no evidence of this whatsoever. The evidence I have seen is clear that Monica was trying to determine how to comply with the vaguely-described, proposed, future CoC, not violate it, that she did so in private contexts, and that she did so respectfully.

and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior.

I have seen no evidence of this whatsoever. Quite the opposite.

We recognize it has caused concern in the community as a whole.

To put it bluntly, I don't think you do. This kind of boilerplate "sorry you were upset by our decision" non-apology indicates to me that you have no idea how much damage has already occurred.

We made a hard decision, and we stand by that decision.

Not false, perhaps, but a grave error.

We have a policy for users, but this is the first time we’ve had to suspend a moderator for a Code of Conduct violation.

Unless memory fails me or the official explanation of certain past incidents is something other than the CoC, I do not believe this is accurate. (Edit: the OP keeps getting edited, but your statement is incorrect regardless of whether it says “suspend” or “remove.”)

We learned (or were painfully reminded, rather) to never ship at 6 PM (EDT) on a Friday. We didn’t follow that rule last week and as a result there was a lot of confusion over the weekend.

The “confusion” has nothing to do with the fact that this happened just before a weekend. Blaming the widespread reaction to your decision entirely on timing indicates either a complete failure to comprehend the situation or utter indifference to how the communities affected feel.

People aren't upset because you made a decision at 6 PM on a Friday. Nor are they upset solely because you did so right before a major, religious holiday that the person most directly affected observes by going offline.* They're upset that you removed a popular, highly respected, professional, competent, and extremely kind and decent person from multiple moderator positions simply because she didn't agree to toe the line on a still-unpublished policy without at least asking some questions. And on top of that, you disregarded your official, published, community-vetted process for moderator removals.

I have not always agreed with Monica on everything, but she has always been among the kindest, most respectful, all-around best moderators on the entire network. Even when we didn't see eye-to-eye, I respected her take and always felt that I was treated respectfully. I have seen nothing whatsoever that could justify how I have seen her treated.

We do value every one of you.

Again, to be blunt, I think I speak for many people when I say that I don't believe this anymore. The evidence strongly indicates quite the opposite.

We’ve seen your pings on chat and on the network and have been actively working to get you answers as soon as possible.

6-8 isn't going to cut it. The response so far has been unapologetic, dogmatic, boilerplated, and slow. At this point, I'm personally disinclined to participate at all on these sites if this is how the communities can expect to be treated.

* But, to be clear, that timing was appallingly inappropriate and insensitive, and people are very upset about it, with good reason.

This response has been picked apart, but I feel a few more points need to be raised.

As we continue on this path to doing better, we want to thank you for everything you do and for being such a huge part of this community. We do value every one of you.

It's quite obvious you did not care about the moderator, as your action in removing her moderator status came without proper warning or communication. If this action did come with warning, that warning should be cited, especially following an uproar of this magnitude.

The sheer lack of transparency on this issue is the largest cause for concern. In order to find even some of the smallest bits of information on this event, you have to scour meta SO or meta SE. I personally spent the better part of an hour simply reading over all relevant topics of the event and trying to piece the story together.

I had hoped that, after almost a week of deliberation, we would at the very least get some detailed information regarding this event, rather than:

Last week we made an important decision for our community. We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change the behavior.

This explanation is vague and lacks sufficient information to inform the public of your decision, or even of the event that transpired. Transparency is necessary when you're discussing the unceremonious removal of a well-renowned moderator.

I request that this post be heavily edited to hopefully explain what happened, how it happened, the thought process behind the moderator's removal, and eventually, your serious plans for the future. I also request that the plans for the future be discussed on meta with the community such that we, and Stack Exchange CMs, never endure this sort of issue again.

I am loathe to post an answer here, because the community is especially charged right now. However, I feel I must speak out.

1. Full Disclosure: I am trans. I'm not really open about this fact with SE, though I did recently out myself on Parenting.
2. I have no idea about the details of the new CoC. I haven't been able to find anything directly from the source yet. However, I have read over what Monica said in the Teacher's Lounge. I will not share it here out of respect for Monica and the rules of the Teacher's Lounge. But what she said is more than a mere disagreement over pronoun use. She used strong, visceral language that was definitely a violation of our current Code of Conduct.

   Side Note: I don't want to get into the details of transphobia and enbyphobia (non-binary phobia) here, but I do want to say that I don't think Monica meant any offense or that she harbors any ill will toward the trans community. Sometimes, however, people's actions can be harmful even when there are good intentions.

3. Nevertheless, I disagree with what appears to be a one-strike-you're-out approach. I think some form of discipline was in order, but the immediate removal is out of line.
4. This is a delicate issue. People were bound to be hurt however this went, but I feel that the cloak and dagger approach ultimately created more problems. And unfortunately, as pointed out by a few others, this puts trans issues at the center of a scandal.