I've been writing non-stop about the Stack Overflow
strike and there's a little
side-story that might slip by if you aren't paying attention. I'm
talking about the decision to not upload the Stack Exchange Data
Dump to the Internet
Archive. If you aren't deep in the weeds
of Stack Exchange, it's easy to miss this esoteric topic that looks
inconsequential from the outside, but might sit at the core of the
conflict.
A million thanks for your detailed, in-depth, yet very readable and shareable reporting around this incident! I’m thinking we should include all your posts in the recommended reading set for press and others who try to catch on up the situation and the background.
I noticed that too. It fits with my impression (formed first when I worked there) that internal communication is heavily influenced by marketing concerns. That’s weird and it wasn’t that way most of the time I was there. Maybe this is related to the feudalism I observed?
Why you still using the staff badge after all the poo you’ve done, remains the biggest question to me. Are you filling the diversity quota?!
To which I answered/appealed:
Nothing of what I wrote in my comment goes against the Code of Conduct. This suspension was either made by a vassal, showing work to the tyrant, or by the tyrant itself, in both cases, your days are numbered here. Sooner or later you’ll have what you deserve, and someone more competent and honest will rightfully take your job.
I would have suspended you for that comment too, for what it’s worth.
The path forward is for the company to open up about their struggles. I have problems too with that answer, but I’d rather have the answer than not. Insulting the messenger is the wrong way to proceed.
Also, and I hesitate to say this, is it possible you are under the impression that Jody is always a woman’s name?
While I’m currently on strike, and honestly keeping just enough track of meta that I’m aware of what’s happening, I’d have done it too. That’s unacceptable. It also gives reason to claim the community is toxic, and ignore the work that people put into communicating and building bridges to try to … fix things.
I feel like that’s never changed, and its not marketing focused on the core audience of SO or SE. I’ve brought up (more than once) of how its been very much focused on content that’s not very aware of who’s reading it, of dubious quality.
I know he’s a man, but I couldn’t care less for his genre or race, it’s irrelevant here, my point is that he’s incompetent and shouldn’t be working at SE anymore, and I don’t see any other explanation for that besides filling a diversity quota for white man /s
I’ve said it before but I just can’t understand why the company doesn’t value the communities that have grown up around the sites in spite of all of the obstacles like the “just the facts and no chit chat” guidelines and parts if the network being openly hostile to the major human contact point (discussion in comments).
Having a group of people emotionally invested in your site and wanting to share that good experience has to be a more sustainable source of value than chasing the page view/advertising dragon. I mean you have thousands of people willing to volunteer to do work to make the site successful. It is only a lack of imagination and will preventing the company from leveraging that in a way that benefits both the company and the community.