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Crossposted from Meta.Stackexchange

Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.,

We know you know about this already, so we'll keep this brief. The past two weeks have been rough. Lots of moderators have lost confidence in you; for some, it was the final straw. For many of us, though, we like being here and we don't want it to get to that point. So, in the past few days, a number of us have collaborated on writing you a letter.

We're worried about the direction that the company has been taking recently, and we're concerned that nobody in management has noticed or addressed that. The past couple of weeks have been the catalyst, finally, for us to write it all down in one place.

So, without further ado - please take 10 minutes out of your day to read the letter in full. It's not short, but we think it's important feedback that the company (and management in particular) needs to hear. Those of us who've already seen your recent meta post seem to be of the opinion that it's a good first step, and it's certainly touched on a number of the issues we've mentioned here, but there's plenty more work to do. We hope we can start working together with you again to get back to building communities.

Signed,
598 moderators, ex-moderators, and users.

Staff: Please do share this letter around the company. We think it's important that we have a shared goal, and to do that we need to start from some common ground.

Everyone: If you wish to sign this letter in support of the sentiments in it, you're welcome to do so - use the button at the bottom of the page. If you have your own further thoughts on the things we've touched on in this letter, feel free to use the answers here to add to the discussion.

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  • 7
    Very fine letter.
    – ab2
    Oct 8, 2019 at 19:06
  • 6
    Signed. Thanks for posting.
    – Ben Miller
    Oct 8, 2019 at 20:20
  • Thank you for posting this here. I didn't see the main meta post but this one showed up prominently in the app (the main one still doesn't), so without this I may not have known until the next time I opened the site on desktop.
    – briantist
    Oct 9, 2019 at 17:28
  • 1
    Perhaps it’s good that at Money.SE, I don’t believe we’ve run into this issue. I became aware of it through my interaction with other mods, other stacks.
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica Mod
    Oct 9, 2019 at 17:50
  • Signed. I believe SE/SO is funded by 'a foundation' to further their cause and Monica was made an 'example' of!
    – Mr. de Silva
    Oct 11, 2019 at 4:46
  • What was the catalyst that lead to this letter?
    – quid
    Oct 17, 2019 at 18:34
  • @quid - The post Stack Overflow Inc., sinat chinam, and the goat for Azazel is a decent public summary.
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica Mod
    Oct 18, 2019 at 3:02
  • 5
    @Mr.deSilva, care to elaborate on that? What 'a foundation' do you suspect is calling the shots here. To me this seems like yet another instance where disconnected managers think they are helping by using blunt tools against freely contributing members (and even worse, moderators) in some effort to grow the user population and be more inclusive. This is just an even more severe version of the "new member" badge, you need to be nice to everyone, but REALLY nice to this person. Why bother contributing.
    – quid
    Oct 18, 2019 at 20:49
  • @quid: Increasingly, organisations such a 'open societies', 'political parties', 'The xxxxx foundation', 'The yyyyyyy foundation', etc, directly or through other 'fronts' such as NGOs etc., takeover 'media' and corporations that have a large reach... The 'Monica' is is played well to make the rest of the 'community' aware... somehow, my 'gut' feeling is that this is the root cause here...
    – Mr. de Silva
    Oct 19, 2019 at 1:39
  • 6
    More than anything, the edit history on this mod resignation has me, yet again, reconsidering this whole platform: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/390444/…
    – quid
    Oct 19, 2019 at 1:42
  • 2
    @Mr.deSilva it doesn't have to be a conspiracy, its just a "new religion" that's sweeping many who the critical faculties to know better, and they proselytize it to the detriment of the day job. The "foundations", even if they started this, no longer need to, its got a life of its own now.
    – gbjbaanb
    Oct 24, 2019 at 14:11
  • Why bother? Nothing is going to change unless you all resign. So please do that if you want to make a difference. SE needs to really feel the pain from their mistakes, and I don't belive they have yet. SE has made it clear they don't give a shit about their mods, users, or the community as a whole. Time to make this site burn. They can't get anything done without their mods, and by continuing as moderators, you are directly contributing to the problem.
    – user91988
    Oct 25, 2019 at 15:52
  • 1
    @only_pro - 'Caring enough to sign an open letter' and 'caring enough to resign' are vastly different propositions.
    – Valorum
    Oct 26, 2019 at 22:14

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