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This is a shockingly unempathetic way to view the situation. These people have poured lots of their time into making SO work, and they deserve to be heard. Ther

This is a shockingly unempathetic way to view the situation. These people have poured lots of their time into making SO work, and they deserve to be heard. There's no way anybody could build this service without volunteers. These things don't just spring up from the ground on their own, and as someone who uses the SE properties for personal and professional reasons, I hope these moderators can find some sort of satisfactory resolution.

olingern 7y ago
I agree. Without these people the site could fall into a mess of bad answers or a self promotion answer driven platform like Quora.
- edoceo 7y ago
  Sounds like they are so important they should have been compensated. I mean, if they were so critical to the success.
  - mister_hn 7y ago
    They've got compensated in visibility. I don't know any moderator with less than 20k points to date. And the more points you have, the upper you stay in the ranks and you can always embed their badge in your website. So, yes, they don't earn money, but they receive visibility
    - p1esk 7y ago
      What does this visibility mean? Can it be converted to cash somehow?
      - godzillabrennus 7y ago
        Maybe create an ICO for these points?
      - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        I suppose if your profile on StackOverflow is high enough you could put it on your cv. SO also has a jobs site, which I suppose can be linked to your profile if you want it to. A company I consulted at one time was trying to improve it's profile for job applicants so they wanted people to put up their github profiles and SO profiles in some advertisements or whatever they were doing - I think it was on linkedIn they were doing this. Anyway I think they stopped because nobody had a particularly high impressive number so why would you even want to do that (but they did it)
        p1esk 7y ago
        Lots of SO points means I spend a lot of time there answering questions (usually during work hours). Not sure I’d want to advertise that.
        bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        I would totally agree with that, however I have over the years developed the suspicion that people who make hiring decisions might not be operating at the same logical level that I am. Given both that suspicion, and how they seem to behave about prominent github profiles and such, I think that being in the top 20th percentile or so on SO and a strong focus on the tags that correlate to the terms in a job announcement might be a big draw to some HR people/managers who just really don't want to mess up one more time! After the fifth complaint or so of programmers we hire don't know how to code or whatever - it might be soothing.
      - mister_hn 7y ago
        yes, if you do freelancing
    - edoceo 7y ago
      Sounds like they gave value but got none to me..."visibility" ain't worth shit. How much SO got in the bank? What's the ratio of visibility to dollars here? I've never seen an SO badge anywhere and never mentioned in any resume.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Some of them rise up to community managers and are then compensated. The person who recently got steamrolled was getting very close to that position. I think some sympathy is due for the working-for-free workers on stack exchange, at least from us, Hacker News' unpaid content authors.
  - godzillabrennus 7y ago
    They contribute to the community that is owned by the company that then profits from the community. In return they get points. Points allow for showing how important they are to the community. Points that have zero cash value. Disgruntled volunteers are not going to be easy to replace.
  - brian-armstrong 7y ago
    There are more forms of wealth than just cash. Some people find it rewarding to help others, and SE is set up to make it so that people could create the canonical answer to a particular question. This is a force multiplier so that helpful answers can reach a maximum audience. This probably won't continue to feel satisfying if SE doesn't show respect for its volunteers. The force multiplier only exists because the moderators keep the site clean and well-organized. It sounds like SE both explicitly and implicitly showed gratitude for this effort, but now they are failing to do so.
    - smhost 7y ago
      what're you trying say, exactly? that people who get more satifaction from doing a job should be paid less? if you want to start assigning a dollar value to subjective experiences like that, the argument goes both ways. you should pay more to people who experience more emotional distress from their jobs. but in that case a majority of companies would probably go bankrupt, since most people despise their jobs.
- milquetoastaf 7y ago
  Oops engineers might have to work again!
- Alex3917 7y ago
  The self-promotion is the main thing that makes Quora useful though. If you want to know what are all the startups that have attempted solving problem X, it's usually impossible to get a complete answer without using Quora. Just searching Google / Crunchbase / HN / ProductHunt etc. will miss the last third of startups, that you can only find mentioned in the relevant Quora thread.
x0x0 7y ago
Per Monica, a senior SO employee --Sara Chipps -- is publicly lying about Monica. Monica's claim is multiple messages went unanswered, and then... > Sara Chipps, Director of Public Q&A, left responses on various moderators' resignation posts maligning my character. You can see an example on my Mi Yodeya post. The cut-and-pasted message included, specifically referring to me: "When a moderator violates [inclusion and respect], we will always do our best to resolve it with them privately." Both halves of that statement are false. [1] Let's call publicly talking about an observant Jewish ex-mod on Rosh Hashana a lagniappe. This pretty strongly seems StackOverflow saying use personal pronouns and don't question our policy, or GTFO. Which is of course fine -- their house, their rules -- and frankly something I generally support. But given both the willingness to de-mod Monica, ghost her, and then (again, per Monica) lie about it in public, and (2) be far more responsive to a random twitter message than multiple longstanding mod requests, SO's position is quite clear. So yes, mods saving SO millions of dollars of paid employee time per year should certainly re-evaluate their relationship with their corporate beneficiary. [1] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html
na85 7y ago
>There's no way anybody could build this service without volunteers. Agree. Maybe it should cease exploiting the good will of its users and either pay them, or wither away.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

olingern 7y ago

I agree. Without these people the site could fall into a mess of bad answers or a self promotion answer driven platform like Quora.

edoceo 7y ago
Sounds like they are so important they should have been compensated. I mean, if they were so critical to the success.
- mister_hn 7y ago
  They've got compensated in visibility. I don't know any moderator with less than 20k points to date. And the more points you have, the upper you stay in the ranks and you can always embed their badge in your website. So, yes, they don't earn money, but they receive visibility
  - p1esk 7y ago
    What does this visibility mean? Can it be converted to cash somehow?
    - godzillabrennus 7y ago
      Maybe create an ICO for these points?
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      I suppose if your profile on StackOverflow is high enough you could put it on your cv. SO also has a jobs site, which I suppose can be linked to your profile if you want it to. A company I consulted at one time was trying to improve it's profile for job applicants so they wanted people to put up their github profiles and SO profiles in some advertisements or whatever they were doing - I think it was on linkedIn they were doing this. Anyway I think they stopped because nobody had a particularly high impressive number so why would you even want to do that (but they did it)
      - p1esk 7y ago
        Lots of SO points means I spend a lot of time there answering questions (usually during work hours). Not sure I’d want to advertise that.
        bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        I would totally agree with that, however I have over the years developed the suspicion that people who make hiring decisions might not be operating at the same logical level that I am. Given both that suspicion, and how they seem to behave about prominent github profiles and such, I think that being in the top 20th percentile or so on SO and a strong focus on the tags that correlate to the terms in a job announcement might be a big draw to some HR people/managers who just really don't want to mess up one more time! After the fifth complaint or so of programmers we hire don't know how to code or whatever - it might be soothing.
    - mister_hn 7y ago
      yes, if you do freelancing
  - edoceo 7y ago
    Sounds like they gave value but got none to me..."visibility" ain't worth shit. How much SO got in the bank? What's the ratio of visibility to dollars here? I've never seen an SO badge anywhere and never mentioned in any resume.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Some of them rise up to community managers and are then compensated. The person who recently got steamrolled was getting very close to that position. I think some sympathy is due for the working-for-free workers on stack exchange, at least from us, Hacker News' unpaid content authors.
- godzillabrennus 7y ago
  They contribute to the community that is owned by the company that then profits from the community. In return they get points. Points allow for showing how important they are to the community. Points that have zero cash value. Disgruntled volunteers are not going to be easy to replace.
- brian-armstrong 7y ago
  There are more forms of wealth than just cash. Some people find it rewarding to help others, and SE is set up to make it so that people could create the canonical answer to a particular question. This is a force multiplier so that helpful answers can reach a maximum audience. This probably won't continue to feel satisfying if SE doesn't show respect for its volunteers. The force multiplier only exists because the moderators keep the site clean and well-organized. It sounds like SE both explicitly and implicitly showed gratitude for this effort, but now they are failing to do so.
  - smhost 7y ago
    what're you trying say, exactly? that people who get more satifaction from doing a job should be paid less? if you want to start assigning a dollar value to subjective experiences like that, the argument goes both ways. you should pay more to people who experience more emotional distress from their jobs. but in that case a majority of companies would probably go bankrupt, since most people despise their jobs.
milquetoastaf 7y ago
Oops engineers might have to work again!
Alex3917 7y ago
The self-promotion is the main thing that makes Quora useful though. If you want to know what are all the startups that have attempted solving problem X, it's usually impossible to get a complete answer without using Quora. Just searching Google / Crunchbase / HN / ProductHunt etc. will miss the last third of startups, that you can only find mentioned in the relevant Quora thread.

x0x0 7y ago

Per Monica, a senior SO employee --Sara Chipps -- is publicly lying about Monica. Monica's claim is multiple messages went unanswered, and then... > Sara Chipps, Director of Public Q&A, left responses on various moderators' resignation posts maligning my character. You can see an example on my Mi Yodeya post. The cut-and-pasted message included, specifically referring to me: "When a moderator violates [inclusion and respect], we will always do our best to resolve it with them privately." Both halves of that statement are false. [1] Let's call publicly talking about an observant Jewish ex-mod on Rosh Hashana a lagniappe. This pretty strongly seems StackOverflow saying use personal pronouns and don't question our policy, or GTFO. Which is of course fine -- their house, their rules -- and frankly something I generally support. But given both the willingness to de-mod Monica, ghost her, and then (again, per Monica) lie about it in public, and (2) be far more responsive to a random twitter message than multiple longstanding mod requests, SO's position is quite clear. So yes, mods saving SO millions of dollars of paid employee time per year should certainly re-evaluate their relationship with their corporate beneficiary. [1] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html

na85 7y ago

>There's no way anybody could build this service without volunteers. Agree. Maybe it should cease exploiting the good will of its users and either pay them, or wither away.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]