[pascalmahe]

Thank you for this!

Especially this part:

>SE rolled out a new Code of Conduct and insisted everyone will respect people's pronouns[1]. Long standing, well respected, polite, moderator Monica Cellio stopped being a moderator in uncertain conditions, but AFAIK she tried to use gender-neutral language when someone's gender was known, and SE steamrollered her for it.

I'd seen Monica Cellio's resignation and the general reaction when SE announced the new CoC and was really weirded out when all the answers to said CoC were of the "but do I _really_ have to use people's pronouns? And what if they post it after/elsewhere? Can I be punished for that?" variety. It looked (to me) like everyone was trying to avoid a weirdly specific case.

Knowing that's what happened to Monica Cellio makes it a lot clearer.

[esyir]

It's not just that. It's the difference between negative enforcement (don't misgender) and positive enforcement (use their pronouns, no exceptions).

One can be construed as "no attacks". The other is coerced speech.

[MauranKilom]

More precisely, Monica objected to singular they (both as gender-neutral form and if chosen as preferred pronoun), insisting she would rather write without pronouns at all. But to this day neither she nor we know what exactly her alleged violations of the existing CoC were (nor which warnings she allegedly received).

[jacobush]

She was also kicked out without due process, before the CoC was in effect, or its wording even known.

[jodrellblank]

I don't know if this is worth nitpicking, as an English person I'm less familiar with how people use "due process" casually; I assume its casual use means "a fair procedure was followed" and that is fine for your comment, but it is also "the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person"[1]. In other discussions I've seen wording that moderators were "fired", as if they had been employees.

If she actually was an employee, fired under strange circumstances and denied legal rights by the state, that would be more serious issue and change many views on StackExchange the company. I nitpick because I think it helps to keep an appropriate context that much of this is arguing about perceptions, experiences, fair treatment and site direction, but is not about any legal-related accusations that I know of relating to moderators. Especially as there is legal concern about the content relicensing[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process

[2] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...

[TraceWoodgrains]

There are legal-related concerns, but not precisely due-process ones. Monica goes into it more on her blog, particularly in the comments of this post [1] where she discusses the possibility of taking legal action against the company. She feels that StackExchange libelled her by making public accusations of specific & evidently inaccurate bad conduct to the press [2] while making themselves unavailable for any sort of communication and resolution.

As far as due process goes, there was an established process on the website for removing moderators, which StackExchange did not follow in her removal. Nothing legally questionable about it since they can run their site how they will, but certainly questionable enough to burn goodwill.

[1] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/15/stack-overflow-dela...

[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_cont...