How do our strike-participating community members feel about the moderation-strike negotiation results?

Question

As of Monday, the call for a strike has ended, see the adjusted open letter and several organised groups are resuming operations:

See the moderator poll on Discord, which voted to end the strike. See the community poll on Discord, which voted to end the strike. See the SOBotics poll in Stack Overflow chat, who voted to end the strike. See the SOCVR poll, who voted to end the strike. The Charcoal team discussed this internally and decided to resume operation.

However, individuals decide if the negotiation result is satisfactory enough to stop striking. So while the coordinated call to strike has ended, I want to ask you as individuals:

How do you feel about the moderation-strike negotiation results?

What are things you are happy about concerning negotiations?

Are there still unresolved issues?

Answer 1

I'm very happy about it.

The strike not only achieved its main objectives, it uncovered a lot of breakdowns that go back years. We discovered, for example, that staff had been advised to not to converse with moderators over their actions and that moderators would be unresponsive to such conversations, which is the complete opposite of the truth: moderators were not only ready for such conversations, they expected them. This staff advice was a large part of how we got here—and the advice got that way basically through a game of bad telephone during a staff transition period. That's a bridge that had collapsed without anyone noticing, and it's been noticed and is being repaired.

If the strike only achieved its main objectives, we'd be looking at another strike being inevitable in only 1-2 years. That the strike not only did that but also negotiations uncovered some underlying problems that the company is genuinely interested in resolving is an extraordinary outcome.

For a few years Stack exchange seems to have been on a bumpy trajectory with some good points but overall heading downwards. This is the first sign of unambiguous upward momentum I've seen in a long, long time, and the first sign Stack Exchange the company might be capable of doing the work to earn itself an upward trajectory again one day.

Answer 2

I'm mildly optimistic and will soon resume my curation activities.

Currently, I'm waiting for the content warning implementation to resume my curation activities — from the negotiation results:

Stack Exchange, Inc. will implement a warning that will show to users pasting in content to the answer box, notifying the user about the prohibition on AI-generated content [...] Initial work on this has begun. Stack Overflow moderators have very recently been given a mockup of a first concept and their feedback has been requested.

My reasons towards optimism are similar to what doppelgreener articulates in her post. In addition, I feel like the infrastructure, while somewhat loose in organisation, proved that we can negotiate and achieve results. I immensely respect the representatives I voted for — Makyen and Mithical, in particular; I also value Cody Gray's work as one of our representatives and the contributions of many who participated and stayed on topic in the Discord.

But, I do not trust SE Inc. to handle their future direction towards what I consider the strong suit of SE (see Prashanth's new pet project — "the future of community & AI"), and one thing I'm unhappy about in particular is how Philippe phrases his apology:

I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my most sincere personal apologies to mods who felt that in our previous text we were accusing them of racism. While that was not the intent of the text that I wrote (nor did that sentiment reflect the feelings of anyone involved in drafting the text), I can understand how it could be read that way, and I regret that we allowed it to be published like that. You have my sincere apologies, which I will also deliver in person at the upcoming mod/staff meetup.

By omission, there is no apology for how SE Inc. handled the policy and communication in general. So while he extends a hand towards the moderators regarding the implication of racism, I see no apology for the many missteps that moved me to join the open letter on June 3rd.

SE Inc. has to eventually address the leadership's lack of understanding of its product to resolve the issues. However, SE's structure, community, and the value the community creates make it a knowledge hub and a place worthy of contribution. Otherwise, contributing elsewhere may be the best option, but it is unique in how the structure amplifies signal instead of noise.