The last weeks and days have seen some erratic behaviour by Stack Exchange Inc, such as likely illegal changes to the content license and the firing of a community moderator for no good reason. It would be nice if those just were examples of ill judgement, but the disturbing alternative is that S...

Monica is my captain. There is no one else I would rather follow in this community - she is the perfect embodiment of “leading by example”. Within the confines of the moderator curtains, I witnessed at first hand this whole sorry story play out. Gilles’ meta post carries most of the context. ...

I wish I could share some of what's been happening in the moderator chat, but suffice it to say that Stack Exchange has gone beyond the pale in the "1984" abuse of language and thought/speech crime department. Even so, it's not clear that Monica violated the new guidelines (yet) -- but I didn't ...

I've been asked a few times about my demodding. The simple, honest answer is simply that... I'm tired. The past few days has been an emotional roller coaster. As a moderator, I've always felt an essential part of my role was to bring a community together. To help build bridges, and to heal rifts...

Community contradicts profitability. There is a lot of sense in this question from two years ago: How much is a Stack Exchange reputation point worth, roughly, to the company? By far the largest proportion of the brand's value is in the work done by the licence givers. The deal is basically tha...

I am appalled at this action by Stack Overflow, Inc. I urge them to reconsider, as this community, and I'm sure others, are significantly better places thanks to your past and ongoing impact. It's too late to wash this painful act from our memories, but it really needn't be too late to reverse it...

I am shocked to read this. In nearly 4 years on MiYodeya I can only remember positive interventions from your side, welcoming new users, taking time to explain the site features, intervening in a highly balanced way whenever required, and generally acting as a force for good. I cannot believe th...

Moderator resignations across the network in protest of this: Gilles: Computer Science, French, Emacs Snow: Workplace Jane S: Workplace Dennis: Code Golf Robert Harvey: Software Engineering, Stack Overflow Paul White: Database Administrators (Suspending moderator activity) Awesome Poodles: Sta...

We understand there are some folks upset about this decision. We aren’t going to share specifics out of respect for all individuals involved but this is a site reaching millions of people and we have to do what we believe fosters a spirit of inclusion and respect. When a moderator violates that, ...

Writing from the Western US where the holiday has not yet begun. L'Shana Tova to you all. I have been very lucky to serve alongside Monica for a brief time as moderators for Writing.SE. She has been an amazing mentor, not just for me but for other moderators, and always generous with her time ...

After an extended alpha period, we are pleased to announce the release of Custom Filters (formerly known as Custom Question Lists). Custom Filters provide a rich UI for building more tailored views of questions around your specific needs (e.g. unanswered questions about movie series you like bu...

Starting today, all staff member accounts will have "Staff" next to their name on their user profile. It looks like this: For reference, it used to look like this: We took our cue from the existing design of the "top n% overall" label which we've actually inverted for everyone (not just st...

If you're a user on a long-toiling beta site that's been waiting 7-8 years to get out of beta, this may be the post you've been waiting for. The 29 Beta sites that are 7+ years old no longer have the "Beta" label! I'm on record as saying that we need to ditch the "beta" label for our older site...

It's long confused me why we put bounties on a tab labeled "Featured" that has no connection to the "Featured" questions in the right sidebar. I posted a discussion about it earlier this year here on Meta Stack Exchange and the (small) response seemed to agree that this terminology mixture was co...

Update: The maintenance went as planned. tl;dr; Planned service interruption that will impact all Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange sites. All sites may be read-only for up to 15 minutes on Wednesday September 11, 2019 at 1:00 UTC. Enterprise cloud hosted instances will not be impacted. Short...

When purging all comments under a post, the comments then reappear immediately after if I click to add a comment. They then disappear again after posting the comment. It's not uncommon to leave a comment when purging a thread, as often the comment thread has gotten out of hand and a mod explanat...

Can we please have a more intuitive user experience when annotating user accounts? The pop up box when annotating user accounts does not close when submitted. It's counter intuitive to the process of task completion. The clarification at the top is not helpful. Usually the moderator workflow wou...

This is not a duplicate of Strange course of actions with migrated and deleted question. That question was asked before the re-migration in question (while the migration was in a "rejected" state), and the response there boiled down to the fact that the user's browser continued to cache the fact ...

As many are aware of by now, a whole bunch of moderators are no longer serving in that capacity. Between all those individuals there are (as of now) about 20 moderator positions that became unfilled without much prior notice, and at least one site ended up losing the majority of its moderators. ...

I answered a question, and to no surprise, received a downvote. That's not the problem, it happens all the time. And I somewhat understand the reason for the downvote - even though technically I did still answer the question in its state at that time. Once I noticed the downvote, I commented alo...

Okay. So in the past, I have asked many bad questions. I mean they were bad. But one comment, on a certain question that has been deleted, said this about me: 340 up, 84 down. Not exactly stellar 'keeping the site clean' :( I wondered if downvoting means you are contributing more to the sit...

Someone's gonna have to explain this one to me. My answer here received a new comment after a few years. This particular comment seems like it'd be better served in an answer, but it also seemed like it was entirely conversational and thus orthogonal to my answer. So, I flagged it, but it was ...

Stack Overflow has over 18 million questions not counting the deleted ones. All in all there are 100s of millions of recorded actions of the site (asking, answering, voting, closing, reopening, flagging, ...) This would make a good basis for training an AI to do some moderator work. Did the SE ...

I'm resigning as a moderator from all Stack Exchange sites, effective today. I didn't make this decision lightly, frivolously or suddenly. A persistent pattern of corporate missteps, and a monumentally deplorable moderator dismissal, has compelled me to re-evaluate my relationship with Stack Ex...

Thank you for all of your enormous contributions to the site over the years, Gilles! I admire your acts of service and your spirit of giving the world anonymously, and I will miss having you on the moderation team. Best wishes in all your future endeavours.

Gilles was specifically involved in creating Computer Science and shaping its community and policies from the early days on. His prior experience as SE moderator was unique among the pro-tem mods and very helpful. Thank you, always.

I think the site might need you exactly because of your attitude and your views. But still, I respect your decision and, moreover, share your views. If there is any alternative, non-StackExchange computer science forum you participate in, please feel free to tell us so; some of us might wish to f...

We’re sorry to see you go. Thank you for your amazing contributions. We understand there are some folks upset about the decision made this week. We aren’t going to share specifics out of respect for all individuals involved but this is a site reaching millions of people and we have to do what w...

Apologies for the slight hijacking of the thread. I endorse your decision to resign. I am no longer going to contribute to any Stack Exchange site. Moderators and major contributors (of which I do not include myself) have been underappreciated by Stack Exchange for a long time, but in the past c...

Je démissionne de mon poste de modérateur volontaire et vous êtes en droit de savoir pourquoi. Je ne peux pas accepter ce que la société Stack Exchange vient de faire (en privé, mais je pense que cela va rapidement s'ébruiter). La vie en société conduit forcément à la confrontation de points de ...

Merci pour tout ce que tu as apporté à ce site.

J'admire l'intégrité, l'empathie et la solidarité et je crois qu'écouter la voix de sa conscience mène assurément à bon port. Merci pour tes bons et loyaux services de modérateur, ce n'est pas de tout repos ! J'ai dû lire un petit moment pour comprendre un peu le contexte (1, 2, 3 etc.) dans leq...

Monica was removed as a moderator over the weekend by the SE staff. It wasn’t her decision. As a result of that decision and the wider issue that prompted it, I have taken the easy decision of immediately stepping down. Good luck to you and all who follow.

Snow and Jane, it has been an honor to serve with you and the other moderators and work with this community. On Friday, half an hour before Shabbat and two days before Rosh Hashana, Stack Overflow Inc. suddenly revoked my moderator status on all sites where I had it. I found this out while handl...

It's been an honor to serve as your moderator for the past four years. I would like to continue to do so, but after witnessing how Stack Exchange treats their volunteers, I decided that I'm no longer going to volunteer for them.

I fully support your decision to resign. I've been reflecting on whether I'll continue participating in Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow in general since yesterday, when Monica was stripped of her diamonds for, um, disagreeing civilly. Not to mention the possibly illegal recent "retroactive" li...

Well, this was unexpected. All I can really do now is thank you for putting in the effort you did to help along Stack Overflow. Don't be too much of a stranger.

We’re sorry to see you go. We understand there are some folks upset about the decision made this week. We aren’t going to share specifics out of respect for all individuals involved but this is a site reaching millions of people and we have to do what we believe fosters a spirit of inclusion an...

In the time I've taken a break from the site, I've spent more time being made aware of what is going on than when I was active on the site. I'm sorry to lose you. I have a great deal of respect for you and enjoyed modding with you. I can't upvote your question - the downvote is because we're lo...

Goodbye. We will miss you. Thanks for all that you've done for our community. 😭

Effective today, I am resigning as moderator on Engineering and Software Engineering. I find that Robert Harvey's resignation expresses my thoughts more eloquently than what I would write, so I'll simply reference his post. It's been an honor, and I sincerely wish the communities well.

I'm resigning as a moderator from all Stack Exchange sites, effective today. I didn't make this decision lightly, frivolously or suddenly. A persistent pattern of corporate missteps, and a monumentally deplorable moderator dismissal, has compelled me to re-evaluate my relationship with Stack Ex...

Robert - well stated, and thank you for your service. I'm joining you in resigning from my post as moderator.

When efforts arise to formalize or corporatize a community, there's often understandable concern that the effort could destroy the very community it seeks to grow. [...] Any effort to grow will fail if members sense that the community leadership is neglecting important values or introducing unwel...

Common sense dictates: SE will consult with those moderators who have asked to resign and confirm that they actually want to resign and then remove their diamonds. SE will then assess the need for moderation cover for each site. SE will then ask the remaining, existing moderation staff to co...

In this discussion, ex-moderator Monica Cellio describes a change to the Code of Conduct: A director had dropped into the room to announce an upcoming change to the Code of Conduct; unlike the rest of the CoC, this rule mandates specific, positive actions. I raised some issues with the format...

Fifteen days ago, it was suddenly announced that the user-contributed content on Stack Exchange had been relicensed as CC BY SA 4.0. The change took immediate and retroactive effect and is still in place. However, serious concerns were immediately raised about the legality and morality of this ...

One week later... Okay, well, I guess we have our answer. To say that I am disappointed in this company's behaviour would be a gross understatement. I tried to politely offer the option of direct discourse, and you ignored me. Shame on you. We'll see where this takes us next.

As part of the 'project' to rescue TinyPic images (the site is shutting down), I've submitted a couple of suggested edits, including this one which was rejected by a ♦ moderator. Note: I don't want to discuss the reason why it was rejected, merely the strange fact that it still seems to be pendin...

Community bulletin might contain various items which are "network-wide". I mean blog posts and featured questions from Meta Stack Exchange.1 Depending on the site, some of them might be less interesting to the users of the specific site. They might be about issue unrelated to the site. (For exa...

Moderators used to be able to comment on deleted or locked posts. However I've just noticed I am unable to add a comment to a deleted question on Meta Stack Overflow, as the "add comment" link is disabled (but still visible). Is this an intentional change, or is it a bug? I've double-checked th...

The last weeks and days have seen some erratic behaviour by Stack Exchange Inc, such as likely illegal changes to the content license and the firing of a community moderator for no good reason. It would be nice if those just were examples of ill judgement, but the disturbing alternative is that S...

As many are aware of by now, a whole bunch of moderators are no longer serving in that capacity. Between all those individuals there are (as of now) about 20 moderator positions that became unfilled without much prior notice, and at least one site ended up losing the majority of its moderators. ...

It's been an honor to serve as your moderator for the past four years. I would like to continue to do so, but after witnessing how Stack Exchange treats their volunteers, I decided that I'm no longer going to volunteer for them.

I'm resigning as a moderator from all Stack Exchange sites, effective today. I didn't make this decision lightly, frivolously or suddenly. A persistent pattern of corporate missteps, and a monumentally deplorable moderator dismissal, has compelled me to re-evaluate my relationship with Stack Ex...

Effective today, I am resigning as moderator on Engineering and Software Engineering. I find that Robert Harvey's resignation expresses my thoughts more eloquently than what I would write, so I'll simply reference his post. It's been an honor, and I sincerely wish the communities well.

Currently, the question Why is "taking a biscuit" a bad thing in the UK? has an answer which is heavily downvoted (with a score of -19 last I saw), describes activities many people would consider very disgusting, doesn't cite any sources or otherwise back up its claim in any way, has several ...

When efforts arise to formalize or corporatize a community, there's often understandable concern that the effort could destroy the very community it seeks to grow. [...] Any effort to grow will fail if members sense that the community leadership is neglecting important values or introducing unwel...

Je démissionne de mon poste de modérateur volontaire et vous êtes en droit de savoir pourquoi. Je ne peux pas accepter ce que la société Stack Exchange vient de faire (en privé, mais je pense que cela va rapidement s'ébruiter). La vie en société conduit forcément à la confrontation de points de ...

I am stepping down as a moderator, and you deserve to know why. I cannot condone actions that the company has recently taken (behind close doors, although I expect more will become public soon). Social life means being confronted to different points of view. This is especially true on in an inte...

Losing moderators of your standing must mean something. I sincerely hope that SE learns something from this and don't just use their iron fist as a castle in which to hide and rule and expect everyone to unquestioningly keep tilling the fields while the gibbet swings above them...

I'm sorry we're loosing you. They say if you want to judge someone's character give them power over someone else and see what they do with it. You were always willing to put it the extra bit of effort to help and explain. Tough, fair, and kind. We were a better site with you as a mod. I dee...

Is Stack Exchange Inc still interested in cooperating with the community? What is the vision for this relationship? Obviously, no. Kicking Monica out is the last straw for me. I'm done giving SE any kind of help and won't report any bugs or request any feature requests from now on. I won't ...

I was surprised and disappointed to catch up on the events that has led to the dismissal and resignation of three of our moderators. I think that they, and all other moderators on The Workplace, past and present, should be thanked for the time and effort they've all put in guiding our community ...

I wasn't planning on writing an answer, but the so-called official response (copy one, copy two, not in that order - feels nice to be addressed personally, doesn't it?) was the triggering event for this answer. Magisch sums up this mess perfectly: That is incredibly weak. It would have been...

we're sad to see you go after serving the community for 8+ long years. You are a mod even before lots of people including me, joining this community. You people did a really hard work to create a good space for us to join, ask, answer and interact with others and we never felt getting abused or t...

I have been thinking of posting my thoughts and feelings for a long time, but I have never done so because I didn't want to hurt people. But since there are a lot of active users are opening up and posting their story, I feel I have put in mine. Is Stack Exchange Inc still interested in coope...

In the wake of recent events, I tried to find out how many moderators are left on one of the SE sites I frequent. On the "moderators" page, I found the following text: We believe moderation starts with the community itself, so in addition to privileges earned through reputation, we periodical...

With sadness I wish to make you aware that I am stepping down as moderator from this site. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary immediate causes are Stack Exchange's disgraceful treatment of Monica Cellio and new mandates that will soon be added to SE's Code of Conduct. I a...

Unlike the past, SO has changed a lot. It feels like they're focusing on how to earn more $$$ than anything else. This isn't the site where I signed up 6 years ago. I never seen this as a site. I saw this as a community of professional as well as newbies, learnt a lot, got a chance to interact wi...

I remember you from my very first week here. That's years ago. Thanks for your great service and for all your help!

With sadness I wish to make you aware that I am stepping down as moderator from this site. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary immediate causes are Stack Exchange's disgraceful treatment of Monica Cellio and new mandates that will soon be added to SE's Code of Conduct. I a...

With sadness I wish to make you aware that I am stepping down as moderator from this site. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary immediate causes are Stack Exchange's disgraceful treatment of Monica Cellio and new mandates that will soon be added to SE's Code of Conduct. I a...

I take a very different view of the situation than has been expressed in the other answers. In my opinion, this should not be a discussion about the handling of Monica specifically, but rather how SE employees through their incompetence, have once once again failed to provide users and moderators...

Is Stack Exchange Inc still interested in cooperating with the community? It seems that they lost any interest long ago. They are following a pattern. 1) October 2018: Twitter Driven Development Part 1 Someone complained on Twitter about titles of HNQs, esepcially questions on IPS. The iss...

I will bring a point not talked in other answers. Is Stack Exchange Inc still interested in cooperating with the community? What is the vision for this relationship? No, StackExchange got two points to solve in the minimum. A. The handling of a situation not wanted by the site CMs are a...

As I write this, Meta burns with the falling dominoes of moderator resignations. I suspect we've not hit bottom yet, either. The meager response hasn't been too reassuring either. This isn't another "I quit" mic drop post. This is more a caution to SO as a whole. There's no official response and...

I don't get it. Thousands of unanswerable questions a day come in, the experts and teachers who made this site wat is is are leaving faster than new ones join, comments under poor questions become harsher, the moderation tools never get improved, and suddenly someone tweets that the site is ful...

Many thanks for your service as a moderator and the support for your fellow mods! While I'm sad to see you leave, I fully understand your position and support your decision. I hope you will still find the time to ask and answer the occasional Latin question. Some users might wonder what all of...

I have had many moments in my time here, mostly good but some not. Most of them were kept going in a positive direction by our interactions. I consider you a friend, and support your decision completely. I am holding out hope that this wrong will be righted and things go back to the way they s...

Sorry to hear it. You've done a great job here. Best of luck. Let's hope the company doesn't muck up what has become an indispensable site.

In the beginning... 8 years, 1 month, and 6 days ago at something between 2 and 3am in the first few hours of this site being launched I signed up from a mobile phone browser and acquired account #30. I still remember being annoyed that the public release happened to fall while I was on a multi...

To make a long story short, Stack Exchange is rolling out a new Code of Conduct that and enforcing it on moderators in a way that would require action of me that goes against my conciseness and, in my view, the best long term interests of this and other sites. I am requesting to resign as moderat...

I was just reading a new post suggesting members go "on strike", i.e., stop moderation and similar type duties, for some period of time to get the attention of the SE staff. It was only on the site for a few minutes, and I was just about finished reading it, when it was deleted. I assume the OP d...

For those who don't know me well, it's probalby because I'm not very active in the form of questions and answers. As a moderator for going on three years, I've been far more active doing general moderation tasks; voting, dealing with flags, voting fraud, caustic comments, etc. When I was appoin...

I just requested that my profile for this site ( and 66 others ) be deleted permanently.

This past Friday, September 27th, Monica Cellio was removed from her position as a moderator without warning by Stack Overflow, Inc. She had been a moderator on Worldbuilding, Mi Yodeya, The Workplace, Beer Wine & Spirits, and Meta Stack Exchange, as well as a prominent member of communities acro...

I just requested that my profile for this site ( and 66 others ) be deleted permanently.

I just requested that my profile for this site ( and 66 others ) be deleted permanently.

I just requested that my profile for this site ( and 66 others ) be deleted permanently.

Looks like the meta room was frozen by Tim Post. AFAIU the meta room is supposed to be the place for extended discussion here on meta that would otherwise fill answers and questions. Won't this just spill into normal meta now? Looking at the past comments (though not terribly closely) it doesn't...

For the record: The company knows about the shame of canned responses (10k on MSE).

Monica, for all we both have fairly broad interests, they don't seem to overlap much. But the fact that you're a very level-headed and nice person is impossible to miss even without many direct conversations. Many times you had a nice word in situations where I would just have grunted, walked awa...

Caleb posted the following to Christianity.SE's meta (excerpted): Personally I have yet to face the specific issue [pronouns], nobody to my knowledge has taken offense at the pronouns I used for them. But the "law" laid down quite suddenly and directly to moderators by several staff members w...

As some (many?) of you have read it, there's a lot going on about SE network, staff, users and moderators. Let me be really clear on this one: I'm not pointing fingers or taking any side. This is NOT about discussing and arguing about who's right or wrong. But, as the *** might hit the fan, and ...

Not an answer, but clearly a necessity, as someone tried to edit me into this list on the question. I stepped down as a moderator before all these events. I stepped down because I'm tired. Ironic, as I've spent more time on here since all this broke out than I did when I was moderating. I suppo...

Esta pregunta es una traducción del original Firing mods and forced relicensing: is Stack Exchange still interested in cooperating with the community? por amon. Los enlaces incluidos son a material en inglés. Estas últimas semanas y días he observado cierto comportamiento errático por parte de ...

It's now not a secret anymore that the official CoC is going to support or require the use of preferred pronouns for moderators and the community at large. There has been a considerable controversy about this, however at the end of the day there are a couple of easy wins I want to propose, that ...