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  • 7
    I presume a process to remove a mod should involve a suspension of mod powers during an inquiry. It makes more sense that Monica should be placed there, then the process continues as it should have originally. Kind of like being arrested, then you have a trial. Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 6:33
  • 185
    Stack Exchange has a duty to issue a retraction and apology to Monica via the same media outlet through which they made their first, unwarranted press release. YES Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 6:48
  • 2
    @fredsbend, at present there is no such mechanism, though it seems to be a reasonable feature to add in order to prevent a genuinely misbehaving mod from doing any further damage. However, I would add the suggestion that the mod so affected would still appear to be a mod until voted out of office. Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 7:14
  • 4
    Point 4 seems like a moonshot. Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 7:48
  • 2
    I'm not agreeing with this post. Whatever happens to Monica should be discussed between Monica and SE. I agree that SE should comply with (1) and (2) if she so wishes, but that kind of follows from the apology as well. Similarly, I think that how this is handled internally is up to SE. We don't know how this was handled internally before this and how hard people have been affected - even if that was (at least partially) their own fault. SE must of course avoid repetition of the incidents, but how this is done is internal policy, not something we should try and dictate. Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 10:03
  • 4
    They didn't "issue a press release to a media outlet", The Register reached out to them for comment and they provided one. Quite different things. Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 14:02
  • 29
    @MaartenBodewes re "I agree that SE should comply with (1) and (2) if she so wishes": she so wishes. We can then discuss further changes, but as I said in a post on Friday, we need to roll back to the last good state before the process failures. Then we can talk about how to proceed from there. Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 14:20
  • 9
    @MaartenBodewes there has been no communication from SE yet. All I can do is make my wishes known here. (I also sent in a "contact us" form about this, though I've no idea if anybody looked at it. All of my attempts to contact them in the last two weeks have met with silence.) Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 17:44
  • 9
    I don't agree with point 3. Stack Exchange is responsible, Mr. Fullerton as CTO is responsible, and acknowledges this. If an employee took a wrong decision, that may be due to many different causes: too much workload, insufficient or improper training, insufficient internal procedures, etc. If SE would proceed with "we've fired employee X" and then then they'd be trying to shift blame to an individual employee where the company is responsible, again seeking a scapegoat. In my opinion, that would only make matters worse, not better. Stand up for your moderators and your staff, please. Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 19:13
  • 2
    @phyzome, also speaking as a programmer, point 4 is by no means impossible. Not necessarily easy... but not necessarily all that difficult either. Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 1:26
  • 8
    @gerrit, All I ask for in Point 3 is that Stack Exchange discipline their staff. I don't care - or even want to know - whether they fire, reassign or re-educate... but the events in question have shown that at least one employee showed poor judgement that has endangered another person, and has brought disrepute to the company, and such actions typically attract disciplinary action. For SE to fail to do so would be indicative that such behaviour is condoned... and if they condone such behaviour, do any of us want to be involved with them any more? Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 1:33
  • 23
    @TylerH So what if The Register reached out to them? "No Comment" is a valid response, as is (to a lesser degree) "We removed moderator status from a person whom we will not name for reasons of privacy...". To give a response which named the de-modded person was irresponsible at best. Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 1:39
  • 3
    @phyzome, The DBA should not be a person who interacts with the community, so any request for a direct data change with respect to one user would have to come from another employee whose responsibility is community interaction... and a good DBA would be asking "Can't you do that through the UI? No? Then why should I do that on your say-so?" Additionally, many companies make live data off-limits to manual modification, in order to change live data, all sorts of hoops must be jumped through to push a change from a dev environment, through testing, to production. Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 1:45
  • 2
    As to the cost/benefit of my Point 4, had such a feature existed, Monica would not have had her name publicly dragged through the mud in direct contravention to SE's own protocols, a great many community mods would not have resigned or gone on strike, and SE wouldn't have suffered a great reputation hit. If it were up to me, such a feature would be top priority right now... SE can't afford a repeat of this debacle. Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 1:51
  • 13
    @TylerH, That's completely irrelevant. Regardless of who reached out to whom, a statement was made to the press that included Monica's name in a negative light. In pretty much every company in which I have worked, it has been drummed into every employee that unless your job description is "Press Liason", you never say anything to the press other than 'I can't comment, you should talk to X'. where X is whoever is responsible for that. Commented Oct 8, 2019 at 13:48