Cellio

Julia Evans - https://jvns.ca/ Rachel By the Bay - https://rachelbythebay.com/ Monica Cellio - https://cellio.dreamwidth.org Mark Dominus - https://blog.plover.com/ Morlock Publishing - https://twitter.com/MorlockP Admiral Cloudberg - https://old.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/

There are legal-related concerns, but not precisely due-process ones. Monica goes into it more on her blog, particularly in the comments of this post [1] where she discusses the possibility of taking legal action against the company. She feels that StackExchange libelled her by making public accusations of specific & evidently inaccurate bad conduct to the press [2] while making themselves unavailable for any sort of communication and resolution. As far as due process goes, there was an established process on the website for removing moderators, which StackExchange did not follow in her removal. Nothing legally questionable about it since they can run their site how they will, but certainly questionable enough to burn goodwill. [1] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/15/stack-overflow-delays.html [2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/

I suspect that the average user of SE will not care one bit about this whole drama. I do find it frustrating, puzzling, and sad how SE appears to have treated Monica Cellio. She provides an excellent summary (from her perspective) here: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

>All I know is it has something to do with Monica questioning some new CoC changes (pronoun-related) and then being fired for "violating" the CoC before it was even ratified. Pretty close. Monica blogged a timeline if you want even more reading. https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timelin… And then these might be better entrypoints to what followed https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to-our-commu… https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-forced… >It's very unclear to me what everyone's positions on this issue Most people seem to care more about how StackExchange handled it and what it means for the future of contributing to SE sites. The way SE got rid of her, and the subsequent damage control has been a dumpster fire. They're prepping to sell the company, and the shit communication skills are probably a deliberate not-so-subtle "fuck off" to any volunteers that have become more ingrained into the community than the free frontline staff SE wants.

Per Monica, a senior SO employee --Sara Chipps -- is publicly lying about Monica. Monica's claim is multiple messages went unanswered, and then... > Sara Chipps, Director of Public Q&A, left responses on various moderators' resignation posts maligning my character. You can see an example on my Mi Yodeya post. The cut-and-pasted message included, specifically referring to me: "When a moderator violates [inclusion and respect], we will always do our best to resolve it with them privately." Both halves of that statement are false. [1] Let's call publicly talking about an observant Jewish ex-mod on Rosh Hashana a lagniappe. This pretty strongly seems StackOverflow saying use personal pronouns and don't question our policy, or GTFO. Which is of course fine -- their house, their rules -- and frankly something I generally support. But given both the willingness to de-mod Monica, ghost her, and then (again, per Monica) lie about it in public, and (2) be far more responsive to a random twitter message than multiple longstanding mod requests, SO's position is quite clear. So yes, mods saving SO millions of dollars of paid employee time per year should certainly re-evaluate their relationship with their corporate beneficiary. [1] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

Non-exhaustive reminders of the story so far: - Full timeline from Monica Cellio herself: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timelin… - Her account: https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-overflow-i… - Discussion on HN back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153224

>Why do you think she's telling the truth? Because she at least offered a very detailed breakdown of events that can be fact-checked, critiqued, etc. StackOverflow has offered basically nothing more than vague PR BS. https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timelin…

Some context, although really this is the culmination of a five year breakdown in community trust and there's way too much background to sum up briefly. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-forced… https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334575/dear-stack-exchange-a-… https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timelin…

It seems pretty clear that Sara Chipps is effectively lying. Even if she's convinced herself that "we've been as clear as we can and your values are out of alignment".[0] At least, if "An employee with a 'director' title" is in fact Sara Chipps. If it wasn't her, there's the possibility that the two SE employees miscommunicated, or could pretend so. 0) See https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timelin… at the second September 18 paragraph.

You're plainly wrong. According to the "fired" mod herself, the issue is centered on SO's (soon to be introduced) policy of using preferred pronouns. See https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html > the company is changing the CoC to require use of preferred pronouns In other words, it's a policy whereby an individual may request to be addressed a certain way, and that request must be honoured. Nothing more. Nothing less. It sounds like you're the one generating false outrage. NB: It's not exactly clear how/if she violated anything, in fact, it sounds to me like she did nothing wrong. But that's not the point I'm making: The point is that everything stems from this new policy.

Read this related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176712 ...and in particular the link in the top comment, copied here for convenience: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

why? its literally the points right here https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

I think you should invest the time to read what happened, the moderator the letter was written to support has her detailed write-up here [0]. [0] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timelin…

Based on Monica Cellio's blogpost (https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html), I think what happened is that, last year, she posted saying that she prefers, when possible, to refer to people in ways that don't require using pronouns at all. Later, this was misinterpreted to mean that she refused to use people's requested pronouns, and she was fired from her position. That might have been reasonable if she had actually said that, but it sounds like she didn't say anything of the sort. That makes me think that it's not really about pronouns, it's about people using bad-faith misinterpretation and unjustified accusations to hold a witch-hunt. Pronouns are just the purported subject. But I'm new to the whole kerfuffle, so I may be missing something.

Before even opening the link I knew it was something having to do with the use of pronouns. Sometimes I think we are concentrating on (and fighting over) the wrong problems. Anyway, there's a timeline of the drama directly from Monica: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timelin… > "A queer moderator resigned in anger, with complaints about community managers, other moderators, and the "entrenched power structure", and vague accusations of bigotry" >"a different moderator (henceforth OP) asked a question, tagged "discussion", on the moderators' private Q&A site ("team"): should we require people to use people's preferred pronouns? (Again, the moderator, who is trans, used the term "preferred".) OP self-answered to say, somewhat vehemently, that we absolutely must require this and using wrong pronouns is misgendering. I answered saying that we already have a negative commandment, don't call people what they don't want to be called (like wrong pronouns), which is proper, but this question calls for adding a positive requirement to use specific language and we shouldn't do that. I talked about writing in a gender-neutral way, that we rarely even need third-person-singular pronouns in our discussions, and not using a pronoun at all isn't misgendering. This was the top-voted answer, something like +53/-10 last I saw it. Note: Three different community managers posted answers after I did, and none said my answer was inappropriate in any way. (One…

More context: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html