We are posting this to add our names to the chorus of unhappy moderators across the Stack Exchange network about the sacking of Monica Cellio. If you haven’t already come across the controversy, there’s a lot of material to read: but in summary, she was, in our opinion, unfairly removed as a moderator across multiple sites, and then Stack Exchange unjustifiably criticised her in a statement to the press. They are now failing/refusing to withdraw either of these actions, several weeks later.
To be clear, we fully support the recent Code of Conduct changes, particularly as clarified by the excellent FAQ based on one put together by a moderator on another SE site. We are not complaining about “coerced speech” or pronoun requirements.
We are solely complaining that Stack Exchange has treated Monica abominably and the senior management responsible for it now appears to have retreated into its shell and there is no visible activity to fix it. The recently announced “reinstatement process” is by no means adequate for solving this specific situation.
We continue to have the highest respect for the Community Managers who are responsible for the Stack Exchange network day-to-day. We can’t pretend to know what they are thinking about the situation but we doubt that the relative silence on these topics is by their choice.
Our user pics and names now reflect our support of the campaign to apologise to Monica and reinstate her. We plan to leave them like this for the foreseeable future unless the situation is remedied. At this point we are not planning on resigning as mods.
Ganesh Sittampalam and JoeTaxpayer