thoughts from a former community manager at Stack Overflow

[cellio]

I came back from Shabbat to a link to this interesting blog post by Jon Ericson. Jon and I haven't discussed this.

The original post contains links that I haven't reproduced in this excerpt:

After contemplating the situation for many years, I've come to the conclusion that Monica ran into a wall of injustice veiled in the language of progressivism. Applying Bari Weiss' framing, Monica was powerful within the community so her behavior was suspect by default. The factors I thought were to her favor by the new ideology didn't seem to matter:

1. She has vision problems which puts her at a disadvantage in the age of screens.
2. She's a woman in technology which means she's in the minority.
3. She's Jewish which puts her in a minority that's been discriminated against so often there is a common word for it in English.

The analysis I should have understood was:

1. It's possible the people deciding her fate didn't know about her vision. In any case, vision is a problem that can be corrected with technology and money.
2. In the calculus of intersectionality transgender people are more marginalized than straight women.
3. What I thought were strong arguments that removing a Jewish moderator on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah was a bad look, turned out to not matter. I can't prove it, but I suspect it's the result of subtle antisemitism that comes from observing that Jews tend to be successful in certain fields. Jew might be a minority, but they aren't under-represented so paradoxically that must mean they are among the powerful.

I'm not an expert on these things and so I operated under the naive assumption that progressive ideology was working toward the goal of treating people as if we were all created equal. But the standard tools of the new morality are ineffective. Instead, the logical conclusion of the new ideology appears to require mistreating people who don't conform to its evolving standards.

Comments

[cyndin]

Interesting. I tried to comment on his blog but I'd have to create an account (at someplace?) to do so. Of course, I have trouble posting here without an account too but I finally broke down and created one. I'm going to assume Jon will see my comment here.

I disagree with Jon's political analysis. The problem was not "progressive ideology." The problem was not that one or more higher ups at StackExchange decided that respect for pronouns was important. The problem wasn't even that they were making noises about requiring all moderators to agree to use stated pronouns (if any, given that most people were anonymous on the site). I mean, I told you directly I did not support your choice to avoid they/them pronouns (regardless of the methodology) but you know I 100% supported *you* and your right to continue as a moderator. Loudly.

Nor was this an issue of competing identity statuses (as if!). It was about power in the sense of SE the company holding all the cards when it came to use of their systems, but you can't make an analysis based on one groups relative oppression in society vs. one person's affiliation with various groups who were also oppressed. That's not how it works! (and in fact, those who really hold power in our society work very hard to get oppressed groups to blame each other and not them)

Nope, the problem was that the people in charge at SE were a&&h***s.

They went after you, Monica, with a zeal that was so out of proportion and out of control it was frankly a bit frightening. They ignored moderators that stated outright that they didn't believe in transgender or nonbinary but still kept on about you.

They didn't follow their own rules and refused to make corrections after the fact. They could have warned you, but they didn't. They just yanked your moderator status out of the blue with no recourse. It made me and hordes of other active members rethink our dedication to the site and, even though it was an important place in my life, I left it behind.

I appreciate Jon speaking out about some of these things publicly, even if it's four years after the fact. And it helps to know that he tried to stop the steamroller at the time, even though he couldn't say much then and it didn't work.

- Cyndi aka Cyn (former Writing moderator)

[cellio]

I mean, I told you directly I did not support your choice [...] but you know I 100% supported you and your right to continue as a moderator. Loudly.

Yes, and I very much appreciate that! Thoughtful people can disagree and yet work together, remain friendly, discuss those disagreements civilly, and see each other as human beings deserving of decency, despite what one might conclude from the polarization in our society today. I am grateful to those who understood and understand that. I'm sorry we all lost a place we once valued together, and the way they jerked you around in particular.

I don't know more than what Jon wrote, but it has long puzzled me that they ignored gross, blatant violations of the code of conduct from other moderators. (You and I saw them; we needn't rehash.) If this was about the power dynamic we sometimes see in progressive circles, and SE somehow saw me as "powerful", that could explain a lot. I don't know. Correlation is not causation. There were also assholes at the company calling the shots, as you say.

(and in fact, those who really hold power in our society work very hard to get oppressed groups to blame each other and not them)

I've seen the "we're more oppressed than you so shut up!" thing in play (completely unrelated to any of this), and... WTF? It's not a competitive sport. We should all be helping each other, not picking stupid fights.

Thanks for creating a DW account so you can comment more easily! I know it's a hassle and I appreciate it.