One thing I'd like to add is that it is entirely SE's decision to not engage with the community on this topic right now. It was their decision to only negotiate with a few selected representatives out of the striking mods, and mostly stay silent in public.

I can understand this to some extent, it's difficult and often not particularly productive to discuss this with this many people, especially when the whole atmosphere is already pretty adversarial. And I appreciate that they published most of the data they also showed the mods, it's very useful to have that information in public.

But SE could engage with the community in public as well, especially if they were willing to roll back and rethink some parts of those changes. But they haven't moved an inch so far, despite the overwhelmingly negative reactions from the community.

The data dumps must be re-enabled, and SEDE and API access guaranteed.

I hope you will take a very strong line on the "guaranteed" part. This parallels what I said last time:

Nope, sorry. This just isn't good enough any more.

The handshake agreement is no longer sufficient. It has already been broken, along with whatever trust we placed in it. Going forward, regular release of data dumps should be a binding legal commitment on the company. If you all need to hire a lawyer to help with negotiating this, I am more than willing to send dollars to help.

P.S. Many thanks to all of you for continuing to represent and fight for the good of these sites.

Our conditions for ending the strike [...] The data dumps must be re-enabled, and SEDE and API access guaranteed.

Please add that the data dumps must continue to be licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, and the access to SEDE and the API should continue to be free of charge.

Stack Exchange, Inc. must agree to publicly disclose the outcome of negotiations.

Significant damage has been done to the relationship between SE and its users and must acknowledge that it is not only moderators who are shocked and dismayed by these events. Those of us regular users who are suspending our participation are doing so partly out of solidarity for the moderators, but also partly because we want to know what we're contributing to.

Aside from asking and answering questions across a number of communities, voting, and commenting, I have also promoted communities like Conlang.SE Beta and Skeptics.SE and was a proponent at my company of SO for Teams, which we now use.

SE should not expect me to resume my regular activities of answering questions, voting, exercising other privileges, and promoting its communities and products if it chooses to keep the outcome of this event a secret, and I would be disappointed if the striking moderators decide to end their strike on the basis of a secret agreement (though I would not assign them the blame).

Our conditions for ending the strike

[...]

The data dumps must be re-enabled, and SEDE and API access guaranteed.

The data dumps of Stack Exchange content serve to further the goals of free knowledge-sharing. The content posted to the Stack Exchange network was done so to further that goal and with the understanding that it would be freely distributed to anyone seeking knowledge. The data dumps safeguard that collected knowledge and must be continued.

The Stack Exchange API and Data Explorer both serve as major parts of moderation. Userscripts, queries, bots, and others are used to find, identify, and improve content across the Stack Exchange network. Access to these resources and the data dumps must be allowed to continue unimpeded.

Stack Exchange, Inc. must communicate, gather feedback, and act on that feedback before making major policy or software changes to the public platform.

Stack Exchange, Inc. has consistently made harmful changes to both policies and the software running the public platform that run counter to the knowledge-sharing goal of the network. Moving forwards, Stack Exchange, Inc. must consult with the community to gather feedback in order to safeguard the goals of the platform.

I see two things happening:

• As history has shown us, SO will make a whole lot of promises and commit to a whole bunch of things and they'll never follow through. But, it'll give them enough time to smooth things over so people start contributing once again until their next inevitable mess
• SO will not budge

Regarding the first demand, SO has potentially found a way to further monetize our contributions probably in a massive way as AI is currently the "new thing".

I really can't see them reversing this.

As for the second, fundamentally SO is not interested in communicating and gathering feedback from us. We're not the target audience, we're the thorn in their side that gives them bad press.

They're at the stage in the company where they believe they've exploited us enough for content to be able to kick us to the curb and continue running smoothly. They want our time and effort but not the constructive criticism.

If SO does come bearing gifts and empty promises I implore everyone to be more critical and reluctant to go back to business as usual. Those who are striking, have a plan to return to the strike if they start failing on these guarantees.

Don't be fooled by their words. Talk is cheap and SO has shown us that enough.

We've had too many fake apologies/guarantees made to us and then had the rug pulled from beneath us, over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.

What they're doing with the data dumps especially flies in the face of everything that these sites originally stood for. SO has had the stench of empty suits sacrificing this site on the altar of profits for quite some time now. It's nothing new.

With that in mind, I also hope everyone involved is ready and willing to let their respective communities decay for the greater good if things don't change - ironic, right?

^{I'd be more than happy to be proved wrong but history is not on SO's side.}

Stack Exchange, Inc. has instructed us in no uncertain terms that we cannot organize on their platform.

What does this entail? "Organising" a community response could include almost anything, including expressing opinions about what SE are doing wrong and what they should do instead, and voting on those opinions to reach a community consensus; if that's no longer allowed on Meta SE then an awful lot of posts are going to get deleted.

Can we see the full wording of what, exactly, is forbidden ─ or is this another secret rule?

The recent action by this company is a perfect example of how so-called "artificial intelligence" is about deskilling.

Deskilling has affected many other sectors, and now it's affecting coding. Coders won't get such good answers from bots as they would from fellow human beings who know about coding. But guess what. Most coding is part of the economy. And the economy is about profit.

Coding is a craft skill. So was printing. So was clockmaking.

"The very reason for the existence of the platform: Guaranteed, free access to a repository of knowledge."

No. It's never been anything like that. The reason for its existence is now, and always has been, PROFIT.

If I had to offer a clue, it would be this:

don't work for free for people who make profit out of your work.

There is no "community" here. That's a mirage. They let you use the tools you need to work for them, and they let you have a sense of camaraderie while you're working for them. That's all.

Thanks for this update. Going forward, it would be nice to have a place other than Discord for periodic status updates from the community's representatives; if Meta is not allowed, what would you suggest?

I would like to express my support for this strike from the perspective of a newcomer to the community. Background: I became active around two weeks ago, and am currently active in SO and CS-SE.

Before actually becoming a contributor, I have benefited from SE a lot. I was astonished by the sheer amount of high-quality content targeted to almost all possible questions. This would have never been possible without the hard work of the moderators, who regularly clean the content to keep the quality.

The influx of GPT into the community, therefore, would wreck complete havoc by increasing the amount of potentially erronous content. SE would no longer be the high-quality resource that it is now.

My interpretation of SE management's decision is that they consider the potential benefits of GPT to outweigh the potential harms. However, by doing so, it means complete disregard to the amount of work moderators would have to do to keep the quality standards.

I believe that I, like many others, would not have loved and joined SE had it been a low-quality GPT-based site. Moderation standards is what makes SE special and reliable. Hence, I would like to express my support for this strike from the perspective of a newcomer.

I urge that SE management reconsider their decision, and appreciate the moderators' efforts. After all, they are the ones who keep the community alive. No effective moderation, no Stack Exchange community. We all owe the moderators so much.

Edit: Additional rebuttal (again from newcomer perspective) to some anti-strike posts framing the issue as a clash between "new technology" (AI) and "old technology" (Human Intelligence).

This issue is unrelated to new/old technology. Most people now should understand the power of AI, and AI ethics is also a hot topic nowadays. But GPT and AI are not the core of the issues here.

Again, to us newcomers, SE as we know it is a large collaborative effort to create truly useful content. Meanwhile, AI and "new technologies" are definitely useful tools if applied correctly.

The core problem is that unregulated AI makes it much easier to flush the site with low-quality content. Therefore, discussion upon "new technologies" and "old technologies", and attempting to frame the strike supporters as luddites, is entirely unjustified.

The AI vs Human Content conflict is far from inreconcilable. If the two sides of the debate collaborate to form a constructive set of guidelines for using AI, SE would be much better than the humanpower-reliant site it used to be.

This strike, however, is a response to the ignorance of SE management to the importance of moderation and the efforts. GPT is more of the ignition fuse rather than the dynamite.

Clarification:

Thanks to TinkeringBell for pointing out the confusion. Yes, technically my account is 7 months old. However, I only started contribution 2 weeks ago. Apologies for my mistake.

Issue: There is no recourse if Stack Exchange, Inc. breaks the Moderator Agreement.
Progress: Frankly, there's been no progress. It was floated that a group such as the Moderator Council should have the authority to rule that an action taken by Stack Exchange, Inc. broke the Agreement, and is so rendered null and void; however, the Mod Council is currently defunct and is unlikely to be revived. We have not resolved this to any degree; suggestions are welcome.

Solution #1: Procedures.

The problem seems to be related to the process of approval and publication of the agreements. In my opinion, a consensus of at least 76% of the active moderators should be required for a deal to be approved by both the company and the moderators. Once approved, the agreement can be published without changes.

There is no point in posting something that has not been reviewed by moderators or making last-minute changes.

Solution #2: Compliance with Agreements and procedures.

Stack Exchange, Inc must publish internationally in the policies as a company that will not send agreements that have an impact on the operation of the site if it has not gone through point #1, internal company policies are patterns to follow before any court of law. The policies must be a document signed by the CEO and main executives of the company.

Observations:

Also, there is no need for a board of moderators. In my opinion, active moderators who actively contribute to the community through chats, queues, and the website are the ones who should participate. If a community manager (CM) is present, he should be able to communicate with site moderators to consistently evaluate these agreements.

Sometimes, we tend to complicate things unnecessarily. Often the simplest solution can be the correct one.

Establishing policies and procedures are the pillar of trust and guarantee of the company, collaborators and community commitment.