The Nineteenth Byte

Anonymous

1:36 AM

@UnrelatedString Yeah the code for Axtell is still floating around on GitHub. There's no setup instructions for a server because a) we were kinda flying by the seat of our pants there, and b) there's not many strict requirements for how the server has to be set up, other than using Redis and Celery (but those could also be removed/replaced). If someone else wants to take over the development and hosting, I'd be happy to help them get set up, but I simply don't have the time now to develop it anymore.

Anonymous

As much as I would love to be able to answer all of the questions that you folks have about the situation with Monica being demodded and other mods stepping down, I can't, because a) I signed the moderator agreement, which means that I can't talk about the confidential conversations that led to all of this, and b) I didn't actively take part in the conversations; what I know about the situation mainly comes from reading transcripts, which means I don't have all of the information or context.

Anonymous

Spreading incomplete or inaccurate information is often harmful, so I'd rather not do that. Instead, what I want to do is share my thoughts on public things SE has done (and hasn't done), which will neither violate the moderator agreement nor involve stating incomplete information as fact. For starters - I'm not going to step down and hand in my diamond right now. I respect Dennis's decision to step down, and I do not disagree with the sentiments he expressed.

Anonymous

However, I do not think that stepping down is the right choice for me. To me, stepping down would feel more like abandoning this community than taking a stand against SE, and I'm not willing to do that to this site and community that I love. Instead, I'm going to air my grievances here. This may sound like navel-gazing, but the reality is that SE (and specifically CG&CC) are important to me, and I don't want it to seem like I don't care about what's happening in these tumultuous times.

Anonymous

1:51 AM

First off, since this site was first created, we've always felt like a second-class citizen to the rest of the network. SE is a network of (mostly) Q&A sites, but we (mostly) don't do Q&A here. We have different needs from the rest of the network. When the Area 51 proposal for PPCG was accepted, it sent an implicit message that we would be supported on the network, despite being a different kind of site. In my eyes, that is a promise that SE has failed to fulfill.

Anonymous

Not only have we been unable to get any customizations other than minor text changes and a flag set to allow meta posting at 1 rep, but we've been ignored a lot, too. It took us repeatedly poking staff to be moved out of beta, long after we had reached the milestones set by SE for a successful beta. It took another year to become fully graduated and get our own design.

Anonymous

We've been more or less left to our own devices to figure out how to make our weird little site work within the SE framework. And to our credit, we've got it mostly figured out. But the issues we have remaining are complicated issues - the voting system, the reputation system, the sandbox, etc. I don't think those issues are going to get resolved while we are still hosted on the SE software.

3

Anonymous

And then there are the network-wide actions of SE that are a whole different problem. First there was the half-baked idea of applying the MIT license to code contributions, while keeping non-code contributions licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. That fizzled out, because the community pointed out just how stupid of an idea it was, because it's very hard to distinguish code contributions from non-code contributions.

Anonymous

Then SE changed the Terms of Service to include a non-arbitration clause, and had to backpedal and offer a way to opt out when it was pointed out that the change was illegal in the EU. The fact that it was another decision made without consideration of the legality of the change was worrying. A few weeks ago, SE announced that they were changing the Terms of Service yet again, to license content under CC-BY-SA 4.0 now.

Anonymous

2:07 AM

Many users pointed out that this too was illegal, because content licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 could not be retroactively changed to be licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 without express permission from the contributors. SE has yet to respond and offer an explanation from legal counsel about how this change is not a gross violation of copyright law. This all left me with very little trust in SE's ability to do what is best for the network.

3

Anonymous

And now, this whole demodding situation has exploded (to put it lightly). Like I said before; I'm not at liberty to share details, but my opinion is that SE vastly overreacted, and it feels a lot like tyranny to me. I feel as though SE has broken the contract between users (especially moderators) and staff. I feel that SE no longer represents the best interests of the userbase.

Anonymous

I hope that these issues can be resolved, and that all of this doesn't continue to worsen and cause a deeper divide between users and SE staff. A lot of people are unhappy right now. I'm unhappy right now. But I'm choosing to be optimistic, and believe that things will get better. And in the interest of optimism, I'm choosing not to make a stand right now by turning in my diamond. However, if things do not get better, I don't think I'll be left with a choice.

Riker

@Mego what's your opinion on moving CGCC off of SE?

I'm curious, would that change your opinion on turning in your badge? (I have no real opinion one way or another, but I am curious)

Anonymous

I hope that the wall of text I just typed comes together into cohesive thoughts like I want, and not just the ramblings of an unhappy penguin. In my eyes, remaining silent when terrible things are happening is not productive. I wanted to get my thoughts out so that hopefully that huge block of words can help inspire a positive change.

Anonymous

@Riker If CG&CC moved off of SE, then I would turn in my diamond. I'm only a mod here, and that's by choice - CG&CC is the only community I care enough about to volunteer to improve by being a moderator. That's not to say that I don't care about the rest of the network - this place is just super special to me. Without CG&CC here, I'd have no reason to remain a moderator.

Riker

2:18 AM

@Mego okay, that's what I was assuming, but thanks for clarifying :)

Anonymous

I'm a big fan of baseball, specifically MLB. In baseball, when a team believes that the officials are not applying the rules of the game correctly, they can choose to file a formal protest, and continue playing the game under protest. The MLB head office will then review the protest, determine if any wrongdoing occurred by the officials, and take action to right the wrongs, if any.

Anonymous

As an analogy, you could say that I'm moderating under protest (as opposed to resigning under protest, like many other moderators are choosing). I'm still going to act as a moderator for the foreseeable future, because that's how I feel I can best serve the needs and interests of this community, but I'm not happy about the way the network is being run right now, and I hope that SE will take note of these protests and right the wrongs that they have done.

9

El'endia Starman

@Mego This idea of "moderating under protest" actually applies pretty well to my own stance too. I want to continue serving my community on Christianity.SE, so I'll stay for now, but I'm doing this in spite of SE.

Anonymous

And now that I've poured my heart out onto my keyboard, I'm going to fill the empty space with ice cream. See you all tomorrow. If anyone here wants to talk about this stuff (in a civil and productive manner, and without me violating the moderator agreement, naturally), I'm here for you.

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one feeling the way that I am, and that what I've said resonates with someone else in a similar position as myself.

Anonymous

2:30 AM

<3 you all from the bottom of my penguin heart

Riker

@Mego what flavor?

that's the really important question here

Anonymous

3:06 AM

@Riker Mint chocolate chip and alcohol

Riker

:/ not cookie dough?

PhiNotPi

3:48 AM

Do people think PPCG could actually survive outside of the SE network?

Unrelated String

Might not grow as much but it ought to do fine

of course we don't know whether or not that might be necessary since the situation hasn't had much time to evolve

DJMcMayhem

@Mego What are you mixing in?

Anonymous

5:17 AM

@DJMcMayhem Kahlua and chocolate cream liqueur

Fatalize

6:55 AM

SE has stopped sending merch to top contributors of graduating sites for quite some time now. Another example of how they mostly don’t give a shit about their community

Night2

I'm like a toddler in this community as I've been here only for about 1 year. But I was always wondering if a combination of PPCG (which is now CGCC) and code-golf.io could work better. Something which is specifically structured for code golf/challenge (like code-golf.io) and still has a community around it where people can comment, chat, joke and have fun too (like PPCG).

ngn

7:16 AM

@Night2 code-golf.io requires login with github (that alone means i ain't gonna use it) and reads your private email address from there

Cows quack

7:29 AM

anarchy golf is better in that regard

Unrelated String

it also looks like it's severely language restricted, so i think the point of bringing it up is just as an example ofa dedicated platform for golf

Night2

8:37 AM

@ngn It is just about the general idea/example as @UnrelatedString better said it. I have only seen that website, so it is my only example apart from PPCG. How you are going to login is just a minor detail here.

In a structured platform there can be better categorizations for challenges (we have only tags in PPCG) and answers (for example each answer can have language and score fields so shortest answers for each language can be shown automatically or user statistics based on languages can be extracted).

There can also be other scoring systems apart from votes and so different score boards too. It doesn't need to be a platform where you have to run the code and get results inside it, but can have that feature too (like having a TIO alongside or withing).

Generally this is just something I have been wondering about, I'm not even sure if it would work or not. My experience with PPCG is very limited, so I'm not the right person to give out opinions as I cannot see everything!

But I have enjoyed both code-golf.io and PPCG, of course the joy in code-golf.io has been limited due to lack of a connected community, while PPCG can be enjoyable every new day.

ngn

8:59 AM

@Night2 i see ppcg (or cgcc) first and foremost as a community that just happens to use SE as a platform - both in the tenchical (a db+ui for challenges and answers) and in the social sense (moderation etc). SE has been doing a tolerable job so far, despite not being designed for the specific needs of codegolf; that's why most people never bothered with pushing for alternatives and a project like axtell didn't get a critical mass. is there room for improvement? - definitely.

will it work? - well, it depends. now that the social side of SE experiences troubles, it might be a good time to consider alternatives. there's enough brainpower around to help with the making of a dedicated golf site. it's a question of motivation and coordination, and of course a question of what you mean by "will it work".

for any alternative golfing site, there should be enough motivation to maintain it and keep it running in the long term. maybe that could be done with enthusiasm alone. or maybe it should make some money too.

Night2

@ngn I would say here, by "will it work" I mean if it can keep the positive sides and combine the benefits and have a successful community around it. This is kind of too general and probably has aspects that I cannot think about it. I'm not considering or wondering about who will own it, who will run it, what will be the policies and other things like that. But these are also some important points.

ngn

9:17 AM

@Night2 if you can formulate it as a specific question, a chat mini-poll might be a good way to reveal what the majority thinks

Anonymous

11:20 AM

For reference for the money aspect - we were running Axtell on a $10/mo droplet from DigitalOcean with no issues during the height of development, and that was with some choices that probably weren't as efficient as they could have been. Granted, that won't be enough as a site grows, but it requires very little monetary investment to get hosting started.

New Meta Posts

1:10 PM

0

Q: Should we consider planning a move off StackExchange?

Should we consider planning to move Code Golf to our own site off outside the Stack Exchange network? Reasons to consider leaving This post was spurred by recent events, but it's been in my mind for a while. Stack Exchange has been losing community trust for years. If you haven't followed main ...

5

Veskah

1:48 PM

@NewMetaPosts Man, I apparently missed a lot of shit going down over the weekend

John Dvorak

@Veskah TMR is still raging on

Anadactothe

3:34 PM

man, why do people have to be not good!

:(

flawr

5:46 PM

i have the impression it is rare that someone is consciously trying to be not good. Sometimes it is a matter of perspective and many times it is a matter of ignorance.

(This does obviously not apply to me, but to everyone else.)

New Sandboxed Posts

6:13 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Surjection from one string to two strings This is the inverse of negative seven's question. Write a program or function which, given a single string of printable ASCII (codes \$[32,127]\$) outputs or returns two strings of printable ASCII. For any two ordered, possibly empty strings \$s_1\$ an...

Veskah

@JohnDvorak Ha ha, when you meme so hard, you get TMR frozen

ngn

SE's darkest hour

ngn

6:56 PM

@Veskah unfrozen now

flawr

must be global warming

musicman523

@Dennis haven't been here for awhile but thanks for all you've done for PPCG. hoping stackexchange gets their feet out from their backsides and you'll come back when they do

Anadactothe

SE has been surviving for years, i'd be surprised if it died now, even if they do a bunch of stupid shit

musicman523

it won't die, it will just become something in which I will have no desire to participate

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

I don't even understand what is happening.

But it does seem entertaining.

musicman523

7:10 PM

TLDR is that SE is (1) trying to assert that they have the right to change licenses on content, and (2) remove their mods willy nilly

at least as far as i understand

ngn

@musicman523 there's more than that

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

I saw the mods post about getting removed but it was very very vague so I didn't know what to make of it.

Veskah

(3) when called out on 1 and 2, maintained basically radio silence or posted vague responses that answered little

John Dvorak

If we go by Caleb's resignation ... SOinc has decided to require moderators to respect gender pronouns requested by the users; Monica asked for a clarification about the new rule; SOinc descended harshly on her; that made quite a few mods rather upset, which helped made the whole MSx community rather upset.

ngn

link

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

7:15 PM

So the issue with the CoC, is pronouns?

dzaima

@SriotchilismO'Zaic it seems to be the more general concept of.. opinions, from what we seem to know now

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

What is "The general concept of opinions"?

dzaima

@SriotchilismO'Zaic the c.se post linked above, while mentioning pronouns, also mentioned other cases of "people want X => you must do X"

personally i'd like to not make assumptions currently until clearer information in a non-side-note-y way is available though, my message above can very well be very overstated from all i know

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

I guess I don't get their reasoning at all then.

ngn

@SriotchilismO'Zaic if i understood correctly, the new CoC will require mods to refer to people with their pronouns of choice, and not try to be evasive by using just their username

this is just my interpretation of the information i've been able to collect. i could be wrong. we'll know for sure if/when the new CoC becomes public.

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

7:23 PM

Does it say that somewhere in Caleb's post and I just missed it? Or is there something else I have not read too?

To me, it looks like, and I could be wrong, that this is just an explicit extension of the be nice policy to cover trans people.

John Dvorak

It's in Caleb's post

ngn

"If person A comes along and demands that I refer to them by their "preferred pronoun" (even if it is a mismatch for their genetic sex or the grammar of the language being spoken) and I refuse, that's considered an insult. Now if I avoid pronouns altogether by sticking to proper names or disengaging from the individual, that's being considered an insult too."

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

Ah ok. I see. How would you even notice someone avoiding 3rd person pronouns though? It seems like you would only notice it if that person were trying to be mean.

dzaima

hm, I guess I might have extrapolated "The new unforgivable offense is not playing along with people that disagree." a bit more than it was meant to, but who knows

John Dvorak

I suspect that consistently avoiding third person pronouns would lead to quite a bit of unnatural speech and quickly be noticed

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

7:28 PM

Well then it is kind of mean isn't it?

John Dvorak

which I suspect was the point of the new CoC

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

Ok, so are people more mad about the demodding thing than the CoC changes?

Félix Gagnon-Grenier

I know I am

Dennis

I'd like to make clear that I have resigned exclusively because of how Monica was treated by SE. The proposed changes to the CoC have nothing to do with my resignation.

Félix Gagnon-Grenier

it's a thing to soft request from people to accomodate other folks pronouns, it's another to dismiss Monica on the basis of inclusion

xnor

7:30 PM

Yes, especially since people got mad at demodding before the topic of the CoC changes became known to non-mods

John Dvorak

I suppose. But how the demodding happened is unclear to me.

Are you at liberty to share?

Doorknob

@SriotchilismO'Zaic people are mad about both, but most people agree the demodding was handled poorly whereas people are very divided on whether it should have happened at all / the CoC changes

Dennis

@JohnDvorak Not beyond what she wrote on the topic.

John Dvorak

OK, thanks.

ngn

@SriotchilismO'Zaic what annoys me most is the attempt to hide information (by both sides) and stifle discussions (by staff)

Sriotchilism O'Zaic

7:33 PM

@ngn Yeah I do feel like I don't really have enough info rn. Maybe in a little while we will.

John Dvorak

@ngn did that really happen though, or did they just want to reduce the number of speculation and flaming until they can assemble a consistent message to the public in the middle of the night?

ngn

@JohnDvorak that's a terrible way to handle a crisis like this

dzaima

@ngn i'd like to assume that's without malice, though now somewhere it was said that at some point some (hopefully) proper info will be given

John Dvorak

I do suppose, and most notably I believe Sara's message was ... causing more harm than it solved

ngn

mods claim they can't talk because they're under an NDA, yet so many of them are leaving and still keeping quiet...

John Dvorak

7:36 PM

Maybe they're keeping quiet because they feel enough has been said already or because they don't want to burn bridges in case their grievance is resolved?

ngn

not enough had been said. it took me (and probably many others) a long time to connect the dots.

John Dvorak

True, but perhaps more would have been said if the community just waited

ngn

@dzaima first there was talk about info that would be released in a week or two, but then Sara Chipps said in her template posts: "We aren’t going to share specifics out of respect for all individuals involved"

John Dvorak

Yeah, that's an issue...

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