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Crossposted from Meta.Stackexchange

Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.,

We know you know about this already, so we'll keep this brief. The past two weeks have been rough. Lots of moderators have lost confidence in you; for some, it was the final straw. For many of us, though, we like being here and we don't want it to get to that point. So, in the past few days, a number of us have collaborated on writing you a letter.

We're worried about the direction that the company has been taking recently, and we're concerned that nobody in management has noticed or addressed that. The past couple of weeks have been the catalyst, finally, for us to write it all down in one place.

So, without further ado - please take 10 minutes out of your day to read the letter in full. It's not short, but we think it's important feedback that the company (and management in particular) needs to hear. Those of us who've already seen your recent meta post seem to be of the opinion that it's a good first step, and it's certainly touched on a number of the issues we've mentioned here, but there's plenty more work to do. We hope we can start working together with you again to get back to building communities.

Signed,
420 moderators, ex-moderators, and users.

Staff: Please do share this letter around the company. We think it's important that we have a shared goal, and to do that we need to start from some common ground.

Everyone: If you wish to sign this letter in support of the sentiments in it, you're welcome to do so - use the button at the bottom of the page. If you have your own further thoughts on the things we've touched on in this letter, feel free to use the answers here to add to the discussion.

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I'm fine with my interpretation of the policy "Use stated pronouns (when known)", which is: don't mis-gender a user on purpose. That is, don't say "he" about a user whose name is "Anna" (assuming I'm familiar with the name) or stop saying "they" or "she" if a user with a cryptic nick writes in a comment "I'm a guy btw."

What worries me is the understanding of the policy which implies that I'm required to prove the correct pronoun was not known to me if I used the wrong one. Or (what the crux of Monica's issue with SE team appears to be) that I'm not allowed to avoid using a pronoun at all if I choose not to.

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  • Thank you for the response. As you might be aware, this topic is being discussed on Meta.SE at length... including how to interpret, implement, and enforce the new rules laid out in the Code of Conduct. Since this is a networkwide issue we need to deflect further discussions on the topic to the Meta.SE where it will receive the attention of the community and SE staff. That being said, core of the CoC is to be inclusive and respectful and this is what we should all strive for.
    – Ghanima Mod
    Commented Oct 14, 2019 at 16:07
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    BTW my reading of Q5 (as of now) is not that you are required to prove whether a pronoun was known to you.
    – Ghanima Mod
    Commented Oct 14, 2019 at 16:08
  • @Ghanima Thanks, I missed that post in the flood. It indeed looks like a better place to get (or ask for) clarifications.
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented Oct 15, 2019 at 7:11
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Politics aside, IMHO, the ultimate goal of moderators job is to facilitate the sharing of knowledge on the site they moderate.

There are many questions that have no answers, some of them can be improved to get good answers. Those answers could then be used help others later on.

Example of some of those questions:

How to control servos on Arduino through Raspberry Pi

Improve RaspberryPi 3 B+ wifi reception

connect 5 arduinos to raspberry pi via uart

Instead of helping good questions to reach good answers, some moderators choose to go after more powers.

As much as we should appreciate moderators who have volunteered their valuable time in trying to help this site, if their contribution does not help this site in a positive way, then all their efforts are in vain.

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  • Those all look like "design my project for me" questions and show negligible effort by the OP. In addition they are too broad and the relevance to the Pi is marginal.
    – Milliways
    Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 4:38
  • Those are legit questions. Refusal to answer legit questions will only push users on to other sites. @Milliways If no one knows the answer, fine. But don't close the question just because no one knows the answer.
    – TelKitty
    Commented Nov 13, 2019 at 8:07

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