@ACuriousMind @DavidZ @Qmechanic @rob Wat?

This is distressing.

Also this: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965

@DanielSank Then there's this spicy nugget meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/…

@DanielSank It's been a long past seven days.

It's basically like a PR disaster for SE by the looks of it, though Physics has been basically unaffected in terms of moderation

@JMac I just read that. It basically says nothing.

@DanielSank It was at over -200 within 2 hours of being posted. People were not pleased to wait a week to get that response.

@HDE226868 I feel like that's the mood on this site every week :P

it seems every other post from an SE mod ends up with hundreds of downvotes

what is going on with the staff lately? it's been a consistent streak of very controversial choices

*SE staff member, not mod

I can't find my particle physics book

:(

Holy shit Minguzzi answered to my post

And his answer contradicts the previous one

Aaaah

what to do

@DanielSank Boy, no kidding. The next time we have a high-profile user who has to be suspended: if anybody in the community starts jostling for us to discuss why, and suggesting that our tendency towards keeping things private is secrecy, we'll be able to point to this episode as at least ten different things that can go wrong if the delicate situation is mishandled.

@DanielSank I have many thoughts about this (but have little energy to participate in the shouting match over who said what and for what reasons), but first and foremost I'm here for physics.SE, and there's nothing there that I expect to affect our site in the short or long term.

@EmilioPisanty i like it!!! do you mind if i use it as my avatar?

cc^ @DanielSank

@skillpatrol not at all

thanks pal :-)

i just found this

Hey hey

hi

@rob @ACuriousMind The only useful thing I have to say about the situation is this I think this incident is an example of where the site policy to not discuss suspensions has (maybe) caused more trouble than it has prevented. A user has given their version of events plainly and in admirably calm tone. In that version of things, SE made a mistake. Since SE policy is to not discuss suspensions the usership sort of has three options:

I imagine that not discussing suspensions is generally the right call though.

What I would like from the mods @ACuriousMind, @rob, @DavidZ and others, is some assurance that you will try not to overreact if and when the CoC is bent or when users ask annoying questions about how to respect site rules. I think given what happened elsewhere on the network, some words of assurance really would go over well.

@DanielSank Having spent countless hours in the past 8 days reading the discussions with other moderators, I don't think there is anything to worry about re: overreaction. I don't think you'll see any difference in how we approach moderation -- if somebody consistently behaves in a way intended to cause problems, we will address it

And if somebody makes a mistake, or even has a bad day once in awhile and acts out of the norm, we'll provide some guidance like usual but not punish unnecessarily

It's gotten lost in the noise of everything, but we've been told there is not a change in the actionable part of the CoC. Just an update of some examples of what counts as unwelcoming to show that intentionally misgendering somebody is not okay.

It was never okay, but now there will be an example in case somebody doesn't know what that looks like.

Shog's answer there is a pretty good description of how this will all be approached

The only caveat I would add to what he said is that the audience doesn't include just OP and people who participate in that tag now. But it includes random passerby's from other sites or the internet at large, and so thought has to be given for those folks as well

@tpg2114 Thanks.

Shog9 is usually a good communicator, but that's one of his better posts, IMHO, and it restores my confidence in SE, to a degree. But your caveat certainly deserves consideration. It's so easy for people to forget that they're writing in a space that's visible to the general public. That can happen on the main sites, but it's even more likely to happen in the chat rooms, where there's mostly a relatively small population of familiar faces.

Indeed. Our words/actions live on much longer than we think.

Politics shouldn't be anywhere near physics, really.

All this has got me wondering who actually owns Stack Exchange, and which nation they're mainly from.

That's a noble goal, but people are near physics and so we have to remember that we're always interacting with people. Not just equations.

Any time we're interacting with people, we have to show respect for the diversity of backgrounds and situations they are in

Being English, though, I'm particularly fearful of speech controlling.

You should be more afraid of our chlorinated chicken ;)

Hey, chlorine is a useful, all-purpose disinfectant! (I may have been playing too much Oxygen Not Included...)

Well, that's the last time I eat chicken then.

@ACuriousMind Exactly! Who wants infected chicken, afterall

@tpg2114 I don't think anyone's really worried about the change to the CoC. They're worried that a mod was de-modded for asking questions about that change.

@tpg2114 ewwwwwwwww

It's interesting -- it took Brexit for me to learn that chicken can be dipped in chlorine to kill bacteria (in the US)

Brexit is related to this how?

Because that's one of the "fears" people say that EU has with allowing the UK to have a soft border. That somehow chlorinated chicken from the US will be imported and then end up in the EU food supply

i see

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/10/…

For example

Oh God, don't get me started on Brexit. Let's just say it's a particularly extreme example of the political class not only ignoring the will of the people, but working against them.

@DanielSank If that is your worry, I'm confident we never have suspended anyone for merely asking questions about policy, and never will. (I initially wrote "just asking questions" and then remembered that we do suspend users asking too many low-quality questions on the main site...)

lol

How's life, @ACuriousMind?

Pretty good :) Nothing exceptionally exciting going on, but all's well

Glad to hear it.

Looks like George will score a 500 point bounty on his answer to meta.stackexchange.com/q/334248/334566

@DanielSank How about you? Will you quantum octopodes achieve world dominance soon?

@ACuriousMind Have you looked at pop science news lately?

Yes, and I've seen some stuff you're probably involved in but don't want to talk about just yet ;)

I see. Well, the octopodes likely will not take over the world.

But you know, maybe a small island nation.

Fittingly, the UK looks as if it could use some new overlords...

@rob yeah thats one interpretation. another pov is that what happened is a microcosm or analog of what happens when mods make heavy handed unilateral confidential decisions against users including suspensions, its just this time it happened to a mod by SE mgt...

Yes, bring on the Octopode Overlords. I don't know what they are, but I know for sure they'll do an infinitely better job.

A gaggle of hairless cats would do a better job than parliament. And I'm not even joking.

Primordial goo would do better, to be honest.

@WhitePrime The purpose of Parliament may ostensibly be to govern the country, but its real function is to gather the political types in one place so as to limit the damage they can cause to the rest of society. ;)

Couldn't they have gathered them all at a derelict Blockbuster store instead.

@ACuriousMind SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS

@PM2Ring I like that.

@WhitePrime That would be less effective. These are people who want power, so you have to give them some power, but you need to make sure they don't get their hands on too much power.

@PM2Ring Hmmm. Give them management responsibilities in that decrepit Blockbuster store?

↑ lol! following is not an onion article! Oregon Blockbuster outlasts others to become last on Earth apnews.com/e543db5476c749038435279edf2fd60f

@vzn Aw man I suddenly want to go there so bad

Relive the good old days

Bendy bananas are the real thought control

Congrats to the apology for (probably) being the first SE post to ever reach -1000 score

link please

Welp it got upvoted again

thnx pal

post-to-reach-negative-one-thousand

:-)

anyone know any recent important scientific discoveries that in retrospect were obvious and should have been discovered sooner?

What do geneticists and biologists say when it comes to gender, these days? Do they agree that there's only two genders? Certainly, a man can be born with the personality, mannerisms and emotions of a female (and vice versa); and I believe these are natural occurrences. But are the experts in agreement that there are only two genders?

@WhitePrime Hi @WhitePrime. There are a lot of resources online on this subject. Could I ask you to start your research somewhere other than this chat room? Moderating such a discussion is something that can suddenly require a lot of my intellectual energy, and I'm not super-available for that tonight.

The short answer is that binary gender (or binary biological sex, for that matter) is an oversimplification of the diversity of human experience. But I'm not prepared to elaborate at the moment.

@rob I apologise, Rob. I totally understand. Please delete it if you like, mate.

@WhitePrime No need to delete. Just trying to preserve my participation in family time later this evening.

yup, moderator burnout is a real phenomenon

i think math.se is the highest?

Just to be clear, though: I have absolutely no problems whatsoever with Trans or Gay people etc. But I do have an issue with biological/genetic facts being unilaterally changed for political purpose. Please don't send me to prison. I have a loicense for this opinion.

lol

math causes the most heated debates? lol

they have more questions asked

@WhitePrime This comment encourages me to stick with the hard job of making my too-long partially-written response suitable for public consumption. But it'll be a while.

The short version is: if you're in doubt about how to interact with somebody (particularly in our community, but it's good guidance in general), try to be kind to them.

If you're not sure how best to be kind to someone, admit it and be willing to accept their guidance.

If you are accidentally unkind to someone, apologize and interact differently with them in the future.

And if someone tells you that your interactions are hurtful to them, then believe them.

do on to others...

If that's the starting place, then we'll be fine.

Rob, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me, man.

The thing about this partial expression is that there are two very different ways to complete it.

One is "Do unto others as they do unto you."

The other is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

The first supports grudges.

The second is aspirational.

Aspire to be kind to people.