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We've had another instance in which Stack Overflow (the company) has an employee or CM responding to what would normally be a Meta issue on social media.

I'm not going to get into specifics about what those issues are, nor does it actually matter; the main issue is that this isn't the first time this has happened.

All I seek is documentation of this policy so that the community can be on the same page as the company when this kind of thing happens. CMs can overrule the community - this is fine - but it would be beneficial to the community to explain how and when it can happen over social media.

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    Can you provide a link to the context?
    – Magisch
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 7:38
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    @VLAZ - a.) Mods explicitly do not represent the company - it says so explicitly in the moderator agreement. b.) SO has laid out some guidelines for responding to stuff on social media for mods, but the details aren't public.
    – Mithical
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 10:59
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    @Mithrandir this question is about a tweet and subsequent response by a staff member / multiple staff members, from the context I could gather.
    – Magisch
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 11:03
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    That's right @Magisch. I'm deliberately excluding references to the tweet or anything like that because it doesn't matter what the tweet was or what happened. All that I care about is that the policy which is in effect - either explicit or implicit - is documented for us to see. The company can choose to engage with people over social media if they want to. What I want to see is some bloody consistency with how it's applied.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 19:16
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    I don't think they'll release it. Mostly because I feel like Twitter gets handled more on a case to case, and personal basis. Rather than to a policy. And even if there is a strict policy to it, posting it will probably cause another big discussion on meta where people will try to discuss every point in said policy. To which I would say that it is fair game of them not to release it.
    – Remy
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 20:09
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    @remy_rm: That's no reason to not release it. Being afraid of having someone give feedback to the policy is not a reason to mask the policy. It may not change the policy, but hiding it is non-constructive.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 20:43
  • It's unclear what you're asking? What policy exactly are you referring to? The policy of employees being able to respond to specific mentions of @stackoverflow on a public platform as representatives of their company? What clarification is it you're wanting?
    – TylerH
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 19:26
  • Wait, how isn't this clear @TylerH, in the wake of what we've had happen with Twitter and how it's had a measurable impact on the network in the last, what, eight or nine months? I'm looking to know what the policy is for official action taken as a result of social media feedback. If someone in an official capacity is making a decision based on something they saw on social media, I'd like to know when this is triggered, and when it'll have an impact on the site, and when we should reasonably expect it to occur.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 19:28
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    @Makoto That's what's unclear. How are they "overriding" the community? What makes you imply that they are even checking what the community thinks? In what way does the Meta community have "rights" that are not being respected here? Why can't they just engage with someone on a platform and then make a change to their product based on that feedback?
    – TylerH
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 19:44
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    @TylerH: Supposing that someone has an issue with an edit they made. Ideally a Stack Exchange community should be able to defend and justify why the edit would be rejected under normal circumstances. Did the person who made the edit know that Meta existed, or did they feel comfortable coming here? Could we not have had a discussion about it? (Meta is fairly civil in this context.) By not directing someone who has a support issue to Meta, a workflow is established in which people believe it's okay to ping SE employees to do this kind of thing on their behalf.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 19:46
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    @Makoto All the questions in your comment are reasonable and I would like to see them be asked in a Meta question/discussed on Meta. My point is your question above doesn't say any of the things your comments have said. Your question is really vague and assuming/asking a bunch of things that rely on knowledge that you're thus far refusing to include in the question.
    – TylerH
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:06
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    @Makoto It appears clear the person who made the edit doesn't know how Stack Exchange is designed for them to initiate resolution to a situation where they feel there's a problem. That person has almost no interaction with Meta (no non-deleted questions, answers, comments, helpful flags, edits, votes, etc.; although they have visited Meta at least once, for the annual survey), and no helpful flags on SO main. They have also never taken the tour (not that the tour would have helped for this situation). It appears they went with attracting attention the way they already knew: Social Media.
    – Makyen Mod
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:07
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    @Makoto I didn't intend to blame the user who edited. It's something where the Stack Exchange design has failed to educate the user as to the "normal" method of resolving such issues. SE should look into making it more obvious to users how resolution of such issues is intended to be accomplished.
    – Makyen Mod
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:26
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    IMO, the person responding to the tweet should've taken the opportunity to educate the user as to the normal method of initiating resolution. An SE employee, by extension SE the company, choosing to A) immediately and effectively respond to such social media posts, and B) not educating the user, at the time, how the system is designed to work, implicitly trains that person, and anyone that sees the post, that the way to get an effective response from SE is to use social media. That isn't inherently good nor bad. SE just needs to choose if they want that and its significant consequences.
    – Makyen Mod
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:29
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    @BSMP That's conflating two issues IMO -- mods have stepped up deleting comments on Meta (even though maybe not fully to the extent proposed by some). What they're definitely not doing though is going around mod-redacting content in questions and answers, which is where Makoto needs to include more information, obviously.
    – TylerH
    Commented Aug 5, 2019 at 13:59

1 Answer 1

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I think that in cases when company chooses to ignore meta in favor of some social media we can consider approach explained in related discussion at MSE (What are the effective communication channels for effecting change to SE?):

Title of your question kind of hints at an answer. One of communication channels to consider for effecting change to SE is to discuss this change in the very same social media channel where it originated from.

Specifically, when Stack Exchange team refer or respond to particular social media post to announce or justify some change in the system our community members can get to that post and discuss it and involved change over there.


One caveat, authors of these originating posts might sometimes get unhappy about received feedback from our community. I heard that was the case with two recent changes ("welcoming" and blocking IPS from hot questions).

But I guess it should be responsibility of SE employees to consider consequences when they choose to hijack particular social media post and turn it into change announcement / justification.

For example, in case of an edit discussed in one of the linked questions, we could get to the Twitter of a person who convinced company employee overrule community decision and clarify these matters with this person.


See also: Twitter-driven development

impression that Twitter is a better place to propose changes and features for the Stack Exchange network than the respective Meta sites

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    That's not constructive, nor it it a policy. I touched on this before but I felt like there was a disconnect in how the flow should have worked between either the person asking on Twitter, the person fulfilling the request on Twitter, or myself who is willing to accept that they are out of the loop at this point. Going over to Twitter to ask questions/clarify/engage would only make the situation worse, in my mind.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 15:48
  • @Makoto "in cases when company chooses to ignore meta in favor of some social media" -- I honestly doubt that it can be worse than that
    – gnat
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 15:56
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    I'm trying a different tone. If we state that we're ignored, then that introduces the risk of us being labeled as something we're not. Worse, the situation isn't exactly dealt with if we decide to pile on to some employee's Twitter account. I would hope that some policy would include some familiarity with the site's culture and how it wants to conduct business, with acquiescence given to the company as needed.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 16:23
  • you both sound as if social media activity is somehow inherently bad. I am sorry but I haven't seen compelling reasons why it could be so, especially in cases when company chooses to lead by example and do just that. What you propose instead seems to be that people should cut their media activity in cases when it may interfere with meta or with SO (the company) actions - this just doesn't feel right
    – gnat
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 17:32
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    @gnat: Hot. Network. Questions. And the brouhaha that followed.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 19:31
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    @gnat: Social media by itself isn't bad. The major consequence of social media has rocked us to our core - starting with some Medium post about how trolls have taken over Stack Overflow, next with the Welcoming initiative, down to changing features wholesale overnight while completely ignoring valid community feedback on how to improve it BEFORE it had got that bad, to stupid stuff like this edit. I need consistency with how the company decides to override the will of a community based on some social media post so I can at least have that to shout at.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 19:35
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    @gnat: Furthermore...guess what? We were teased a policy would be circulated internally, at least. Has it made the rounds? Who knows?
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 19:38
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    all these past negative experiences had one thing in common: community tried to make an impact through meta while company focused solely on social media. A communication breakdown like this surely causes pain for those who are unheard. This can be solved by closing the communication gap somehow. I would prefer this to be done by company communicating via meta but if they choose not to, the other way 'round will work too, "if the mountain won't come to Muhammad..."
    – gnat
    Commented Aug 3, 2019 at 10:49

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