Timeline for Abrupt change in moderation staff?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 14, 2015 at 14:39 | comment | added | Katherine Villyard | @JonEricson For what it's worth, this is why people are saying it looks biased. This speaks to how some people think SE views SF. | |
| Apr 14, 2015 at 5:21 | comment | added | Rob Moir | Fair enough @JonEricson I'll assume the good will in Shogs actions that he didn't accord to one of SE's mods. But that's the thing - mods are supposed to be the most trusted members of the community (iirc that's pretty much the exact phrase SE uses?) - this error in judgement speaks volumes, then, as to how SE views this community. It reflects poorly on SE's processes and the judgement of its staff. It's a poor advert for any of 'us' who may have wished to be mods. I'd love to hear your suggestions as to how this chasm can be bridged. | |
| Apr 13, 2015 at 22:45 | comment | added | Jon Ericson Staff | @RobM: I can tell you that Shog was far too busy with other things to dig for reasons to demod, well, anyone. This situation pretty much killed his productivity last week and will likely prevent him from doing things he'd rather spend time on this week. In this job, we don't go looking for trouble; it comes looking for us. | |
| Apr 13, 2015 at 12:18 | comment | added | MDMoore313 | Well, the interesting this is this dialog between Shog and n00b a couple of months ago, where n00b informed Shog what was going on w/ the off-topic and Shog approved of the tag cleanup, he just didn't like the tag itself. And n00b obliged, but said it had to be cleaned before the tag could be deleted, for technical reasons it ballooned to 10.6k, and n00b closed 800 questions that week, nobody batted an eye, I'm curious why the blow up now. | |
| Apr 13, 2015 at 5:19 | comment | added | Rob Moir | The problem @james is that it's far from clear that anything 'happened' - it should have been fairly clear that hopeless was at worst simply being over zealous. And while you might consider suspending someone you had questions about, you don't start an investigation by making assumptions of bad faith, then leaping to accuse them of being a liar. From where I'm sitting, shot expected the worst of hopeless since the election, and kept digging until they found or manufactured it. 'Optics' as someone said already. | |
| Apr 13, 2015 at 2:15 | comment | added | James | @RobM "Putting aside whether or not HopelessN00b's actions were correct for the moment, I think its perfectly clear that he believed them to be and with good reason, and was therefore acting in good faith....it seems to me that Shog was very quick to believe the worst instead of assuming good faith" Don't you think that actions taken were simply someone following company "protocol"? No point bolting the barn door after the horse has bolted. No implications intended, but if you don't know what happened you have to "freeze" any further "potential" before investigating | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 18:32 | comment | added | Katherine Villyard | I think what I'm getting at is that if someone is going to possibly end up in the position of taking someone else's mod diamond, they might not want to be on public record as having a negative opinion of that someone. Just for their own comfort and public perception. That said, yes, snark did flow both ways, yes. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 18:16 | comment | added | Reaces | @KatherineVillyard I don't think it's entirely fair to point the finger solely at the SE staff. The election was one of the first Meta conversations I followed and the snark flowed both ways. From my outsider opinion at the time it seemed like everyone had a history against each other. And I personally ended up not voting for HopelessN00b at the time exactly because of the way those conversations played out. (And let me end that by saying that my opinion since has drastically changed and I quite approve of the way Hopless moderated) | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 17:34 | comment | added | Katherine Villyard | @Reaces I agree about the comments immediately after the election, yes. My concern about comments during the election cycle is precisely the weight they carry and the appearance of bias later. On the other hand, elected mods did endorse one of the other candidates, so perhaps I'm being unfair. But there's a difference between positive and negative campaigning and between elected mods and employees, to my mind. Clearly, not everyone agrees with me on that. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 17:14 | comment | added | Rob Moir | Putting aside whether or not HopelessN00b's actions were correct for the moment, I think its perfectly clear that he believed them to be and with good reason, and was therefore acting in good faith. I would suggest that at least some of the SE 'side' of this debate cannot claim the same benefit of the doubt. Maybe I'm being unfair but it seems to me that Shog was very quick to believe the worst instead of assuming good faith on the part of a moderator, which is a sorry state of affairs. I don't think it's n00b's temperament that has shown itself to be unsuited to the situation here. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 17:03 | comment | added | Reaces | @KatherineVillyard While I disagree that they shouldn't campaign against someone during the election cycle (the opinions of those responsible for the overall network should rightfully carry some weight) I think the comments after the election are what matters most. And there was quite a bit of those as well. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 15:50 | history | edited | Katherine Villyard | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
accidental double negative
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| Apr 12, 2015 at 15:42 | comment | added | Katherine Villyard | Thank you, @TimPost. I'm going to suggest that perhaps SE employees might want to avoid campaigning against moderators during an election cycle in the future to avoid the appearance of confirmation bias. Several SE employees (Shog9 was just the most vocal) expressed reservations against HopelessN00b becoming a moderator on the grounds that (to use N00b's phrasing) he's "temperamentally unsuited." Unfortunately, that pre-judgment means that later actions... have poor optics, yes. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 13:54 | comment | added | Tim Post Staff | @AndrewB I'm unfortunately late to all of it, but I am going to spend quite a bit of time looking at how everything went down on Monday. Even if events modeled a best possible case, I think we've got some stuff we can learn from this, in quite a few places. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 13:33 | comment | added | Andrew B | @Tim Regardless of what we end up with in the post mortem, I think there's no excuse for throwing out accusations of a mod under investigation being a "straight up liar" without backing up the statement or answering requests for clarification. The technical execution may have been sound, but accusations of malicious intent with an implied reckoning were treated as an imminent fact with no need for explanation. This does not beget trust or respect for our overlords. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 12:26 | comment | added | ewwhite | Again, the optics matter. This looks incredibly sloppy on the part of SE, and you've lost a lot of goodwill. I'd be interested in a real explanation about why Stack Exchange so easily alienates the Server Fault community. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 6:11 | comment | added | Tim Post Staff | There are only three people on the community team that have the level of access needed to remove a moderator's status - that's how seriously we take it. Ideally, Shog could have had more time to 'freeze the action' and let someone else step in, but I truly appreciate the level of urgency he felt once he realized what was going on. I would have taken the exact same steps that he did, the technical execution of the procedure he applied had no bias, but I understand how the perception of it is what matters the most. Good points. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 5:03 | history | answered | Katherine Villyard | CC BY-SA 3.0 |