OP here, disclosure: I worked with Monica for several years, so I know her professionally. Everything that I have read about this situation and how she was treated is appalling.
Very happy this has come to the attention of hacker news.
As a regular contributor to SO it has really bothered me with how she was treated, I think with the support of the HN community we can make a difference.
Maybe you can give some back story, or point to where it's summarized fairly well? (maybe it was even on HN and I missed it?)
All I see here are a list of what SO did wrong, but only from one side, and not why they felt the need to do so (even if only explained post-facto).
As a member of the HN community, I think it only makes sense to attempt to get as much information as possible, lest this turn into and angry internet mob situation that no longer cares about details and facts. We have enough of those already.
My personal take is that SO wants to go mainstream and has hired a new CEO who's first order of business was to assert his power and demonstrate the site's new direction: corporation instead of community. They decided to make an example of a well-respected moderator to show that nobody is above the needs of the party err corporation. They expected her to violate the terms of a new code of conduct regarding gender pronouns ("use the preferred gender pronouns of users if they make them known", the pronouns include neo-pronouns like ze, ey, thon, peh etc) that was being written and prepared to be released. When internally announcing the outlines, she asked to clarify whether the use of they/them would be allowed if an individual was uncomfortable using the preferred pronouns, and this was taken to mean she would aggressively misgender people out of spite.
The community has told them to bugger off, 15-20% of volunteer moderators have resigned and the divide between the users generating the content and the employees has increased even more. Users mistrust employees because of lies and deceit and employees are terrified of engaging the users because they feel like walking out of the palace to talk to a group of villagers wielding pitchforks. The CTO has protected his subordinates and taken the blame in an issued statement, meanwhile they've leaked selected details on reddit and slandered the moderator to the press (misgendering her in the process, violating their new code of conduct; can't have a show trial without making it obvious it isn't about the alleged acts).
Minor correction, this all actually went down before the new CEO was on board.
It's very hard to tell for sure from the outside, but there seems to be a Director (the person who blabbed to the Register) at the core of it. On the other hand, the CTO posted as well, effectively in the Director's defense, so who knows.
My best guess was that the person in question was suspected of being bigoted against trans people. That comes from the fact that she was actually called a bigot in the discussion that supposedly triggered the firing. That probably came from her suggestion that one could get around using pronouns they didn't like by using a more generic "they". Sort of like a racial bigot wanting a definite list of words that were racial slurs that they could avoid using.
Is suspicion of bigotry reasonable grounds for a firing? Well, if it was, there would be whole areas of the world with no employment. Normally people with such ideas merely need to keep them to themselves while at work and while interacting with coworkers.
Except that the person wasn't seeking "a definite list of words ... that they could avoid using" (emphasis added). On the contrary, they were objecting to arbitrarily compelled speech ("use whatever word X might prefer you to use, even if you don't know with any certainty what that word might be, or else!"). These two stances couldn't be more different. Objecting to compelled speech, especially if entirely arbitrary as in this case, doesn't make you a bigot; it just makes you a reasonable human being.
Yeah, that is why I used the expression "sort of". You have indirectly raised an interesting point. Perhaps SO was afraid that the person they ended up firing was in the process of pulling a Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson informed her university that he would not respect a students choice of pronoun. When the university asked him not to be a jerk he then publicly complained that the university was infringing his freedom of speech. The result was that a whole lot of discussion ensued that was of interest to Jordan Peterson.
SO would not be interesting in being the focus of such a discussion.
> wanting a definite list of words that were racial slurs that they could avoid using
That is a very bad example. Unless you are talking about living in a small village, you'll find that the Justice Potter test of "i know it when i see it" does not work! There is no such thing as "we can all agree that $X is bad, or $Y is an insult". Cultures vary WILDLY around the world, and the internet brings all those people together, giving them ability to say things that some feel are "clearly insulting and you should know it" and others feel are "completely normal discourse"
If you want to create a rule and apply it, you actually need to be rigorous and precise. This is why laws are written that way, and why we do not have laws saying "do not do bad shit, you know what i mean"
So yes, if you want to ban some types of words you had better be ready to provide a clear, complete, and correct list of what is banned. You may update it, but if you aren't prepared to provide it, you are not yet ready to create a policy around it!
Some reading to explore:
Baskin, Barry (16 November 2018). Implicit Bias in the Courtroom (PDF) (Speech). 2018 Afternoon Plenary Speakers. Contra Costa County, California: Contra Costa County Bar Association. Retrieved 29 November 2018. http://www.cccba.org/attorney/mcle/seminar-materials/2018/Pl...
Goldberg, William (October 2010). "Two Nations, One Web: Comparative Legal Approaches To Pornographic Obscenity By The United States And The United Kingdom" (PDF): 2121–2148. Retrieved 29 November 2018. http://www.bu.edu/law/journals-archive/bulr/documents/goldbe...
SE and Chipps mistreated Cellio and were obnoxious about firing Cellio, but I don't see anything in that post about "ongoing harm". Ongoing harm would be if, hypothetically, people were harassing Cellio on Twitter or in meatspace over SE's slander, or if employers or customers shuned Cellio.
Also kinda funny that she gets fired for using the term 'they' and then Stack Overflow goes and talks to the media about her firing and refers to her as 'they'.
As time goes on, StackExchange is becoming less concerned about what their users desire, and less concerned about meta in general. I hope Monica is vindicated, but I expect StackExchange will continue down this unfortunate path. To my knowledge, there are no decent alternatives to what StackExchange offers.
Thanks. Sometimes posts are really confusing. Without context this to me seems like some random person complaining very generically about their employer...
For anyone else wondering: It's about someone that got their moderator rights removed from StackExchange after they were sceptical of CoC changes that involved preferred pronouns and such.
It looks like this is her trying to avoid having to go there. As far as I understand, slander & libel cases are also extremely hard to win for victims in the US, so they typically avoid them.
35 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 95.6 ms ] threadAs a regular contributor to SO it has really bothered me with how she was treated, I think with the support of the HN community we can make a difference.
All I see here are a list of what SO did wrong, but only from one side, and not why they felt the need to do so (even if only explained post-facto).
As a member of the HN community, I think it only makes sense to attempt to get as much information as possible, lest this turn into and angry internet mob situation that no longer cares about details and facts. We have enough of those already.
The community has told them to bugger off, 15-20% of volunteer moderators have resigned and the divide between the users generating the content and the employees has increased even more. Users mistrust employees because of lies and deceit and employees are terrified of engaging the users because they feel like walking out of the palace to talk to a group of villagers wielding pitchforks. The CTO has protected his subordinates and taken the blame in an issued statement, meanwhile they've leaked selected details on reddit and slandered the moderator to the press (misgendering her in the process, violating their new code of conduct; can't have a show trial without making it obvious it isn't about the alleged acts).
It's very hard to tell for sure from the outside, but there seems to be a Director (the person who blabbed to the Register) at the core of it. On the other hand, the CTO posted as well, effectively in the Director's defense, so who knows.
Is suspicion of bigotry reasonable grounds for a firing? Well, if it was, there would be whole areas of the world with no employment. Normally people with such ideas merely need to keep them to themselves while at work and while interacting with coworkers.
SO would not be interesting in being the focus of such a discussion.
That is a very bad example. Unless you are talking about living in a small village, you'll find that the Justice Potter test of "i know it when i see it" does not work! There is no such thing as "we can all agree that $X is bad, or $Y is an insult". Cultures vary WILDLY around the world, and the internet brings all those people together, giving them ability to say things that some feel are "clearly insulting and you should know it" and others feel are "completely normal discourse"
If you want to create a rule and apply it, you actually need to be rigorous and precise. This is why laws are written that way, and why we do not have laws saying "do not do bad shit, you know what i mean"
So yes, if you want to ban some types of words you had better be ready to provide a clear, complete, and correct list of what is banned. You may update it, but if you aren't prepared to provide it, you are not yet ready to create a policy around it!
Some reading to explore:
Baskin, Barry (16 November 2018). Implicit Bias in the Courtroom (PDF) (Speech). 2018 Afternoon Plenary Speakers. Contra Costa County, California: Contra Costa County Bar Association. Retrieved 29 November 2018. http://www.cccba.org/attorney/mcle/seminar-materials/2018/Pl...
Goldberg, William (October 2010). "Two Nations, One Web: Comparative Legal Approaches To Pornographic Obscenity By The United States And The United Kingdom" (PDF): 2121–2148. Retrieved 29 November 2018. http://www.bu.edu/law/journals-archive/bulr/documents/goldbe...
https://twitter.com/bitandbang/status/1182389562846384129
She's not named, but the slander is obvious.
Also kinda funny that she gets fired for using the term 'they' and then Stack Overflow goes and talks to the media about her firing and refers to her as 'they'.
I can only guess it's because there is something else going on with SO the business and she is executing exactly according to plan.
However I’m not familiar with the situation.
For anyone else wondering: It's about someone that got their moderator rights removed from StackExchange after they were sceptical of CoC changes that involved preferred pronouns and such.