[jawns]

> We made a decision to act quickly, which I personally approved, but in doing so skipped several critical parts of the process.

Okay, got it. Acting in haste can lead you to make critical errors of judgment. Smart to slow down so you don't make the same mistake again.

> On Monday, October 7, we’ll be sharing a second draft of an update to our Code of Conduct with all moderators for feedback.

Good call. Get feedback on the revised plan from the moderators to whom it will apply. Smart move.

> On Thursday, October 10, the update to the Code of Conduct will be announced publicly.

Wait, what?

You just said that you need to slow things down because you acted too quickly the last time and ended up screwing things up and causing a lot of pain, which is the reason you're apologizing in the first place.

And now the timeline between "solicit feedback" and "release document publicly" is three days?

How in the world are you going to be able to thoughtfully incorporate any feedback other than typo corrections and still meet this deadline?

There is no reason to solicit feedback unless you actually plan to listen to it and to be prepared for that feedback to say that the draft still needs work. But this timeline does not allow enough time for that to happen.

[wendyshu]

I suspect they've essentially decided on the new Code of Conduct and any solicitation of feedback will be perfunctory.

[StudentStuff]

The CoC is almost certainly already written, but this quip is a cherry on top:

> We’ll be reaching out to her directly to apologize for the lack of process, privacy, and to discuss next steps. We’ll keep those discussions completely private unless we both agree to share any of it with the community.

So they're going to demand she stays hush about what they say to her unless they approve? Seems extremely dishonest and scummy to try and control someone you've already wronged.

[tempestn]

I think he's just trying to avoid suggesting that if they don't release it all, it's because she didn't agree to it. If he'd said, "We'll release it publicly as long as Monica's ok with that," it could easily be seen as pressuring her to do so.

[oliwarner]

The We in "We’ll keep those discussions completely private" is SE, not SE and Monica.

[simonh]

The "unless we both agree" bit implies they reserve a veto on her releasing anything.

[oliwarner]

Literally speaking, sure. Absolutely it could mean that or half a dozen different things.

In the context of an apology about being heavy-handed, I highly doubt it means they intent to suppress speech from a third party that they have no power over, implied or otherwise.

[fourthark]

She mentioned in her post that she did not think it would be legal to release some of the conversations she has had with SO employees.

[x0x0]

It seems to say that StackOverflow -- as is only professional -- will not share anything unless the fired mod agrees.

[StudentStuff]

> We’ll keep those discussions completely private unless we both agree to share

Reads to me as StackOverflow will not share anything if they feel revealing the conversation would hurt their PR.

[ryandrake]

The schedule is a dead giveaway that there are no plans to actually take significant action on feedback. The feedback process is likely only there so that they can say "We requested feedback," and to appease the type of person who thinks "there was a written process, therefore the outcome must be unassailable."

[thinkingemote]

Some CoC have an explicit "we will not discuss ${issue}" they are basically retrofitting this.

[commandlinefan]

And the funny thing about this and every other “code of conduct” is that it’s so vague that it reads like a corporate “mission statement”. So vague, in fact, that it can be (and is) used as a weapon arbitrarily by anybody with an axe to grind.

[qqwwqqww]

Perhaps they just want to find out who the dissenters are, so they can be summarily dismissed. There is at least one other instance in the gender wars of requesting feedback, only to publicly fire the hapless person which happened to take them up on their word.

[chii]

just leave the community. The only real vote you have is, well, your participation.

[irrational]

I did delete all my accounts when this first came out. Fortunately I've been around long enough that I don't find stackoverlow that useful for myself, but it does mean I won't be providing help to other people anymore. Hopefully a new stackoverflow will arise soon.

[yakshaving_jgt]

I would do this, but I wonder what damage it would do to people like me several years ago. It was a fantastic resource for me when I was a junior, and I see juniors today relying on it too. I don’t care about SE the company — in fact, I’d love to see anything with a hint of SJW meddling implode — but I don’t want to hurt the resources and opportunities of the people coming into the industry.

[luckylion]

I'm sympathetic to that line of thought. On the other hand, if you support SO.corp, nothing will change. If everybody kept supporting experts-exchange.com and not migrated to SO, we'd still deal with hidden text. My guess is that we will do that again, as SO is aggressively pushing for more monetization, and that might be the point for people to switch again - or they may not, because of the time and effort they've put into SO and not wanting to give that up.

[privateSFacct]

I think they were in a rush to beat / get in front of the dear stack exchange letter that was coming from the mods. It's not a bad tactic - they may be getting better PR advice.