[nudpiedo]

> Worse, through our handling of this situation, we made [members of the LGBTQ+ community] a target for harassment as people debated their right to express themselves and be addressed according to how they identify

I wonder how is that possible, the QA are as anonymous as each user wants to be and regarding QA, is there any question in which people cannot ask anything and should not be replied with a proper rationalized argumentation?

How does it help a bullied child to be the protected kid of the teacher? In the other hand the day we stop having open debates, QA and knowledge, we will be going backwards in scientific evolution, no matter what the topic is.

[mhuffman]

It really is absurd! Bullying anyone for anything will already get you kicked off of those sites. It is such an odd hill for them to want to die on.

[MauranKilom]

> the QA are as anonymous as each user wants to be

A queer mod that resigned shortly before all of this went off actually elaborated on this in their resignation:

> They [the community managers] draw vocal bigots from the woodwork with prompts to discussion, and then vanish, forcing us to decide between tacit approval through silence or defense of our own against an unchanging torrent of bigotry. I think they hope that the more we share, the better the situation will become. That has never been true.

Note that just because the core QA does not leave much space for harassment doesn't mean the other aspects of the site (comments, chat, mod chat, flags, mod messages etc.) are home free. In particular, there was no shortage of "prompts to discussion" in the context of the recent events.