Timeline for Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
108 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 27 at 8:49 | history | edited | TinkeringbellMod |
edited tags
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| Aug 23, 2023 at 1:33 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Add a link for context to the now-publicly released historical policy
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| S Aug 8, 2023 at 13:05 | history | bounty ended | gnat | ||
| S Aug 8, 2023 at 13:05 | history | notice removed | gnat | ||
| Aug 7, 2023 at 14:59 | history | edited | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
conclusion
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| Aug 5, 2023 at 4:23 | answer | added | Joako | timeline score: 2 | |
| Aug 3, 2023 at 14:36 | history | edited | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
clarification
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| Aug 3, 2023 at 9:08 | history | edited | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 262 characters in body
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| S Aug 2, 2023 at 17:09 | history | bounty started | gnat | ||
| S Aug 2, 2023 at 17:09 | history | notice added | gnat | Reward existing answer | |
| S Jul 31, 2023 at 12:15 | history | bounty ended | Resistance Is Futile | ||
| S Jul 31, 2023 at 12:15 | history | notice removed | Resistance Is Futile | ||
| Jul 28, 2023 at 8:49 | answer | added | Mark Johnson | timeline score: 8 | |
| S Jul 24, 2023 at 19:54 | history | bounty started | Resistance Is Futile | ||
| S Jul 24, 2023 at 19:54 | history | notice added | Resistance Is Futile | Draw attention | |
| S Jul 24, 2023 at 16:01 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| S Jul 24, 2023 at 16:01 | history | notice removed | CommunityBot | ||
| Jul 20, 2023 at 6:56 | history | edited | Martin |
edited tags
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| S Jul 16, 2023 at 14:56 | history | bounty started | 4b0 | ||
| S Jul 16, 2023 at 14:56 | history | notice added | 4b0 | Draw attention | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 22:42 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jul 12, 2023 at 3:16 | |||||
| Jun 30, 2023 at 13:15 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jul 1, 2023 at 4:54 | |||||
| S Jun 30, 2023 at 13:07 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| S Jun 30, 2023 at 13:07 | history | notice removed | CommunityBot | ||
| Jun 28, 2023 at 1:52 | comment | added | starball Mod | @CyberJ "when AI models will be more accurate and provide better results." data needed on that claim. | |
| Jun 28, 2023 at 1:49 | comment | added | CyberJ | My two cents. Since I started using ChatGPT for coding, I stopped asking questions on Stackoverflow. I think that Stackoverflow has to find a way to integrate AI otherwise it will be lost especially when AI models will be more accurate and provide better results. | |
| Jun 27, 2023 at 9:11 | history | protected | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | ||
| Jun 24, 2023 at 20:02 | comment | added | HippoMan | From @Shawn: "The great war between the humans and the robots begins..." It's simply a war between humans and other humans. The "robots" in question have no free will and no intelligence and no minds, and they are simply tools that are being utilized by humans. Calling this a robot/human war is like calling efforts at traffic-safety enforcement a "war between cars and humans". | |
| Jun 24, 2023 at 18:57 | comment | added | HippoMan | Per @agentv: "It would be a shame if after all this striking, we discovered that the striking moderators were not missed. ... As a user, I want accurate answers, and I'm not pedantic about how they came to me." I agree. I have had questions blocked simply because some moderator decided that they didn't like the wording of my questions, irrespective of the fact that the questions were asked clearly enough for a number of readers to easily understand and answer them. I hope that these nitpicky, overly pedantic moderators would not return from the strike. And I do indeed support the strike. | |
| S Jun 22, 2023 at 11:17 | history | bounty started | CharonX | ||
| S Jun 22, 2023 at 11:17 | history | notice added | CharonX | Draw attention | |
| Jun 20, 2023 at 13:13 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 216 characters in body
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| Jun 18, 2023 at 13:54 | answer | added | Russell McMahon | timeline score: 39 | |
| Jun 17, 2023 at 17:01 | answer | added | Carl | timeline score: 19 | |
| S Jun 14, 2023 at 19:19 | history | bounty ended | user3840170 | ||
| S Jun 14, 2023 at 19:19 | history | notice removed | user3840170 | ||
| Jun 12, 2023 at 16:41 | comment | added | Adam Rubinson | I don't see any serious changes being proposed. If you need to see real change because the mods can't keep pace with new AI-generated answers then here is a serious resolution: Have several prompts before the new user posts their answer warning them that posting an AI-generated answer results in a permanent ban of their account. If they post the AI-generated answer then permanently ban their account. I think perma-banning their IP is too harsh. But forcing them to create a new account from another e-mail address is a pain, and so this method will result in positive change. Am I wrong? | |
| Jun 11, 2023 at 23:44 | comment | added | Hack-R | I think this was well-written and thoughtful, but have the following comments (mostly geared toward StackExchange): 1. Consider me as a scab. I would love to be a moderator in place of any who strike. 2. I believe fighting AI and trying to block it is incredibly silly and non-sustainable. Do you usually ban tools? Is this really so different from any other resource? If StackExchange allows itself to linger in the past while other sites take an AI-first strategy with greatly enhanced ability to improve questions, provide answers, and mine data, then I'm using the other sites. | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 2:00 | answer | added | Someone | timeline score: 33 | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 20:37 | answer | added | tell | timeline score: -29 | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 18:15 | comment | added | Vaccano | As a random non-moderator and occasional meta reader, this makes no sense from SE's point of view. If they have the data, they would surely share it. At least with the moderators (as they have proven over and over again that they don't lead private data). The only thing that "connects all the dots" (to me) is that SE had planned to make this move and purposely planned to make the moderators take the fall. They figured no one would call them on their statements. They can't back down (because this was the plan) but they don't really have any data to share. Hard spot to be in. | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 22:51 | answer | added | leanne | timeline score: -92 | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 16:24 | comment | added | gnat | ...low quality answer stats page looks slightly better on a surface, it shows decent looking list of reviewers with half-decent amount of reviews shown for them. "246 needs review" message also may appear okayish... but it just happened that I saw this very page 10 days ago and it displayed 54 - like, about five times less of what I see today. Looks like folks who joined the strike, signed or not, made some impact, yes | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 16:12 | comment | added | gnat | @pippo1980ONSTRIKE have a look at close review stats page. Currently it shows me 7 (seven) reviewers with all but the top one having less than 15 reviews. Compare this to 90,000 users having sufficient reputation to do close reviews. How do you think it happened that only 7 of these decided to review today | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 15:24 | comment | added | kleopatra | @pippo1980ONSTRIKE are normal users joining it yes, me at least - didn't do any content/curation related action since the strike started and I signed the open letter :) there also are other high frequency high expert contributors to SO - which I know - doing the same .. nothing | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 14:45 | comment | added | pippo1980 | so how is the strike going ? are normal users joining it ? do we have stats about it or just the subscribers of the open letter ? | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 14:06 | comment | added | Gerold Broser | I know why I didn't change my profile image after the Monica incident... | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 2:01 | comment | added | 0Valt | @Someone to be more precise, everyone on strike does what they choose to, there is no official "guideline" on how to behave (apart from the general rule of not doing something that would be considered a punishable offence under normal circumstances anyway) - we are not SE, after all. Some chose to abstain from any and all activity, some - only from moderation duties (VTC/VTR/VTD/reviews/edits). Some chose to stop on all sites, some decided to continue moderating meta sites. | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 1:45 | comment | added | Someone | @starball so upvoting and downvoting continues as normal? I did read that, but I've read comments from a couple people saying things like "I would upvote this, but I'm on strike" | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 1:44 | comment | added | starball Mod | @Someone read the open letter: "Raising and handling flags, Closing or voting to close posts, Deleting or voting to delete posts, Reviewing tasks in the various review queues," etc. | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 1:42 | comment | added | Someone | What exactly are non-diamond strikers not doing? | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 1:20 | answer | added | Marco13 | timeline score: 51 | |
| Jun 8, 2023 at 0:46 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Make footnotes more screen reader-friendly
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| Jun 7, 2023 at 20:03 | comment | added | Skully | Such a shame to see how disconnected SE Inc. is with its own moderator network and how issues like this crop up time and time again. | |
| S Jun 7, 2023 at 17:49 | history | bounty started | user3840170 | ||
| S Jun 7, 2023 at 17:49 | history | notice added | user3840170 | Draw attention | |
| Jun 7, 2023 at 17:11 | answer | added | einpoklum | timeline score: 79 | |
| Jun 7, 2023 at 16:46 | comment | added | einpoklum | "SE Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers" <- It's been doing that for quite a while. I'd rephrase that as "SE Inc. cannot be allowed to ignore, mistreat and malign" etc. | |
| Jun 6, 2023 at 2:17 | comment | added | WillO | I see a lot of diamonds among the list of people who have signed the open letter, but without clicking on each name individually, there seems to be no way to tell which sites are represented among those diamonds. Is there a way to make that information more readily available? | |
| Jun 6, 2023 at 1:58 | comment | added | starball Mod | @Alex re: "i haven't seen anything that was aimed at improving the community in the past year" - see Plagiarism flag and moderator tooling has launched to Stack Overflow! | |
| Jun 6, 2023 at 1:32 | comment | added | Cascabel | @user202729 I don't really feel comfortable getting too specific, but to try to rephrase my previous statement: collectively, both full communities and the internal moderator community came to conclusions that were inconsistent with the policy that was ultimately published. To try to steer back to the original point: holding SE accountable, great. Suggesting that it's always just been them who's out of touch, and the issue is purely "they're not doing what we say": meh. | |
| Jun 6, 2023 at 1:29 | comment | added | Alex | "A change in leadership." is probably the only thing that will improve the situation. i haven't seen anything that was aimed at improving the community in the past year. i absolutely think the current ceo is not fit for the role. it's rather ironic seeing "button styling" (still featured) and "moderator strike" next to each other, just shows their priorities. oh, i'm sorry, "moderator action" - sure fooled everyone. | |
| Jun 6, 2023 at 1:18 | comment | added | user202729 | @Cascabel I'm sorry to hear that with you being a (♦)-moderator on one of the sites yourself. As a regular user I have no knowledge on what's going on internally between the moderators, but I hope some good policy can be made. (although I don't understand -- if a supermajority of moderators are against transphobia why would policies being shot down?) | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 19:54 | answer | added | sideshowbarker | timeline score: 512 | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 19:05 | answer | added | Thomas Owens | timeline score: 60 | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 18:50 | comment | added | Cascabel | @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Many of those posts were being made by moderators. I was on the receiving end of a significant amount of abuse from moderators. Attempts to shift policy starting from discussion among moderators were uniformly shot down. Yes, there were also community members moderating well, but the overall point stands. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 18:49 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Cascabel Most of what you said makes perfect sense - I saw some blatantly transphobic posts here on this site at the time. However, I disagree with your point that the company was "ultimately the grownup in the room" and that the community "couldn't be trusted" - many of those posts were being nuked by the community, not by staff. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 18:45 | comment | added | Cascabel | While I certainly agree that SE could and should have done better in 2019, that "debacle" does not rest solely on their shoulders - a substantial number of community members and moderators were being openly transphobic, to the point that the only way to make the sites friendly to nonbinary people (among others) was for the company to step in. I'm absolutely all for demanding better on the actual core issues here, but let's not weaken our position by tying those important issues to cases where the company was ultimately the grownup in the room, and it was us that couldn't be trusted. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 18:40 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @agentv ".. respond to content on the basis of its content, not upon its [..] provenance." Just as a general stance I could live with that. But it's also about copyright and average quality. Sure, some human users also post low quality but the community here is concerned with mass production of low quality content. The ban is temporary, until AI gets better. And it probably gets better at some point. But until then we need the tools to keep the quality high and the company doesn't want to allow these being concerned more with collateral damage, at least it says. Who knows.. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 18:10 | comment | added | Aaron | Regardless of AI policy I do not believe any LLM's should be permitted on any platforms at all until they can show their work, as in "Here is a full audit trail of how I reached this answer". | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 17:22 | history | edited | doppelgreener | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
add instruction
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 17:11 | history | edited | Proud anti-zionist | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Add notice of how SE members without a SO account may sign the letter.
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 16:59 | comment | added | mousetail | If you want to sign the letter but don't want to create a stack overflow account, DM me. I can add you manually @bobble | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 16:12 | history | edited | TinkeringbellMod |
edited tags
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 15:53 | answer | added | kaya3 | timeline score: 43 | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 14:29 | answer | added | Thomas Owens | timeline score: 162 | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 14:22 | comment | added | Proud anti-zionist | @Caimen See the comments under their new policy answer. SE staff is lying to you. Do not trust the point of view which they have presented in that answer. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 14:21 | comment | added | Proud anti-zionist | @hkotsubo The intention is to make them aware by our lack of moderation purposes. It's not just the moderators that are strike. The majority of the core curators are on strike, including the bots we use, such as SmokeDetector. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 14:16 | comment | added | Ian Kemp - SE killed by LLMs | @Caimen Nobody has been banned. Suspensions have been doled out based on the basis of human moderator review of posts that have been flagged as potentially LLM-generated. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 14:16 | comment | added | Mithical | @Caimen - Moderators do not rely on AI detectors to determine if a post is AI-generated. There are other heuristics used instead, and action is never taken solely because a purported AI detector claimed it was ChatGPT or whatever. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 14:14 | comment | added | Caimen | I'm concerned about the methods used to identify AI generated content and how accurate they are. I don't believe there is any software that can do this with any kind of accuracy, banning users based on flawed identification software does not seem the way to go and this open letter seems to have not addressed these concerns. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 13:56 | history | edited | CDR | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
trivial edits to wording/copy
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 13:50 | comment | added | hkotsubo | Although I agree with you, I'm really skeptical about the strike's effectiveness. Based on the company's actions in the last few years, it's pretty clear they don't care about quality or the community anymore. And the community members who still care are seen as a burden they have to deal with. With the strike, SE has the perfect excuse to remove all diamonds and make new elections, making sure that all new mods will be aligned with their goals. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 13:47 | comment | added | agentv | It would be a shame if after all this striking, we discovered that the striking moderators were not missed. Maybe some would discover hobbies, or plant a garden. As a user, I want accurate answers, and I'm not pedantic about how they came to me. Those of us remaining during this "strike" will continue to respond to content on the basis of its content, not upon its imagined provenance. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 13:34 | comment | added | R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE | @Mithical: This would absolutely be whistleblowing not "leaking confidential information". Someone in the leadership is on the AI scam gravy train and trying to tank Stack Overflow in the process. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 12:50 | comment | added | Anton Menshov | @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog there are several posts on the network where you can express the desire for the policy to be removed. The open letter, as well as this post, are specifically about the strike action, which you can join or not. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 12:41 | history | edited | iBug says Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
capitalize Strike in title in align with MSO post
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 12:23 | comment | added | nitsua60 | @bobble perhaps it's too on-point, but the historical membrane between SO and SE servers that creates multiple, small friction points like your sign-in issue has been mentioned perennially by moderators as an issue deserving attention for at least a decade :facepalm: | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 12:13 | comment | added | ꓢPArcheon | @Sklivvz even if you want to appeal to that, most mods probably never opted-out of the arbitration clause - also know as "we choose our turf" (because I would expect them to not be mod if they did) and the company has already shown its "easy trigger" in the past, name-calling removed moderators on mainstream news outlet sites in an attempt to ruin their reputation. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 12:00 | comment | added | Sklivvz | @Mithical I think the OP would consider leaking the information as whistleblowing, which has different ethics from just sharing confidential information. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 11:28 | comment | added | EarlGrey | The sites on the Stack Exchange network are kept running smoothly by countless hours of unpaid volunteer work, and, in some cases, projects paid for out of pocket by community members that's crazy. Good (if any) old times are long gone. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosus . Stop being exploited. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 9:37 | comment | added | Mithical | Stack Exchange moderators take their commitments seriously, @user3840170, and leaking private information is a massive breach of trust. Just because the company has broken trust does not mean that we will stoop to the level of leaking confidential information. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 9:34 | comment | added | user3840170 | I am surprised nobody has leaked the stated-in-private policy yet. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 9:15 | comment | added | ꓢPArcheon | This looks like the karmic conclusion to the hystorical disagreement about what constitutes NAA (is an answer that answers a different question that the one asked or violates some requirements still an answer?) and what should be done with wrong/dangerous/irrelevant answers (downvote or delete?). Now the new "defense in absurdity" is claiming that one may not have the experience to see if an answer is wrong, even when they have. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 7:46 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Andreasdetestscensorship Please add an option to indicate that someone supports removing the policy but doesn't want to participate in the strike. I'd like to sign the letter but due to its current phrasing it would state that I'm participating. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 7:43 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 194 characters in body
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 7:27 | history | edited | starballMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
add mirror note to editors
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 7:06 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | "The AI policy change retracted and subsequently changed to a degree that addresses the expressed concerns and empowers moderators to enforce the established policy of forbidding generated content on the platform." That seems to be a very important point. Not only because it's difficult to achieve but also because it formally puts the striking mods against the now existing moderator policies. I hope a solution can be found. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 5:47 | history | edited | tripleee | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Stack Exchange, not Stack Overflow (refactored to "the company")
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 5:06 | history | edited | starballMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 7 characters in body
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 5:03 | answer | added | starballMod | timeline score: 211 | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 5:00 | history | edited | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 159 characters in body
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 4:53 | history | edited | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited title
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 4:47 | comment | added | Proud anti-zionist | @bobble That’s an unintended issue on our part. Sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully will be fixed soon. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 4:35 | comment | added | bobble | Hey, I'd love to sign the open letter but I can't without a Stack Overflow account. Is there any possibility to make some alternative sign-in method? I'd be happy to use my SE account or my Meta SE, for example. I'm active in moderation on three sites to varying degrees, and I anonymously edit many posts (mostly ELL and HNQ), so that's what I'll be stopping. | |
| Jun 5, 2023 at 4:20 | history | edited | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Apparently bullet points don't copy in Markdown very well.
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 4:12 | history | edited | starballMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 176 characters in body
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| Jun 5, 2023 at 4:03 | history | asked | Mithical | CC BY-SA 4.0 |