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50

Sheesh, I guess I have to post another bounty. I feel like I want to take a highlighter to this. Key points, for me: 1) how can a contributor feel safe from the company itself after Monica; 2) despite everything, a lot of people still want these sites to succeed; 3) we've been talking about this stuff for years, please stop saying you need new input.
– jscs
Commented Feb 22, 2020 at 19:04
38

If I could pick one answer for Teresa to address in detail, it'd be this one. Processes are worthless if you don't use them. Regret without remorse is an insult to the injured. Remorse without restitution is only half a solution.
– AmaiKotori
Commented Feb 24, 2020 at 18:46
13

"with the removal of a moderator, there were already processes in place, but they were simply ignored" - this is a misconception that I keep seeing. There was a process for allowing a team of moderators to remove one of their own, but there was never (until after Monica) a process for how SE employees should handle removing a moderator. Richard/Valorum on SFF in 2015, Masked Man on Workplace in 2018, HopelessN00b on Server Fault in 2015 ... all removed by CMs without any particular "process" being applied.
– Rand al'Thor
Commented Feb 25, 2020 at 17:55
9

@Randal'Thor A valid point that it wasn't mandatory, but "The process may also be initiated by the Community Team at Stack Exchange, Inc...." Seems they could have used it and chose not to.
– AmaiKotori
Commented Feb 27, 2020 at 15:30
5

@Randal'Thor The fact that they ignored the process before doesn't mean it didn't exist. The policy says that it can be used by the Community Team, and that is the only such policy. Without any contrary policy, they are restricted to the only one which exists. It's unreasonable that they wouldn't know publicly shaming a mod was bad form, or that punishing someone for discussing the rules that were not yet in place is not a valid reason to fire someone. They clearly acted with malice, as they otherwise wouldn't have done things that everyone knows are wrong. There's no reason to defend them.
– trlkly
Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 13:13
1

@trlkly Of course they acted badly, but to say "they didn't follow the processes in place" is a false argument because there were no set processes in place for CMs to remove moderators. See: all the previous removals of moderators by CMs, which did not follow that process (no non-employees were consulted before the diamond removals) but also didn't lead to mass resignations across the network.
– Rand al'Thor
Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 13:31

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