Yay! Congratulations to everyone on the handover!
posted by NotLost at 5:37 AM on December 20 [12 favorites]

These 9 cent foreign transaction fees are killing us.
posted by Lemkin at 5:48 AM on December 20

Woohoo! MeFi officially a non-profit! Congrats, and thank you to all those who have worked so hard over the past few years!
posted by umber vowel at 5:49 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]

"MetaFilter LLC has been formally donated to MetaFilter Community Foundation" - that's great news - I'm very glad to see progress here. Congratulations!

Brandon, in the last site update thread, after we discovered that account wipes don't actually remove 'wiped' comments from the database, which means that they could be made public in future (which isn't, I think, what most users expect), I asked whether every IP address that a comment is posted from is likewise kept in the database for perpetuity, even after a so-called account wipe (which has obvious privacy implications). Do you have an update on this, please?
posted by siskin at 5:51 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

Ooh, lots of progress! Nice.
posted by Bugbread at 6:16 AM on December 20

Yes, this update shows good progress on multiple fronts!
posted by NotLost at 6:19 AM on December 20

Whoa, congrats everyone!

I don't think we ever got a chance to see bylaws, etc., and it might have been prudent to get some of that hammered out with community input before handing over the bank account, but I guess pressure was building to just get this done with, and that seems fine.

Thanks for shepherding this, founding Foundation board! (Don't go stripping the site for parts, pls.)
posted by nobody at 6:34 AM on December 20 [7 favorites]

This is a solid update and congratulations everyone.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:36 AM on December 20 [11 favorites]

Interesting to see the demo. I'm relieved to not see downvotes, that would drive me straight outta there, we don't need more Reddit like features.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:46 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter LLC has been formally donated to MetaFilter Community Foundation

So, theoretically, resignations could be demanded now, if persons were inclined to demand such?
posted by snofoam at 6:55 AM on December 20 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter LLC has been formally donated to MetaFilter Community Foundation

Yay! A treat!

Seriously, I’m glad to see it.
posted by nat at 7:01 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]

I suppose this is as eventful a moment in MeFi history as the re-opening of registrations.

I’m glad I was here to see it. And I hope I will be able to reflect on it for as long.
posted by Lemkin at 7:11 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

I'm delighted by the updates and all the progress made -- I know getting here was not easy. A great way to wrap up the year for sure. :)

Thank you!
posted by mochapickle at 7:18 AM on December 20 [3 favorites]

can the financial updates also include the current cash balance? i asked for that and got it a few months back but it doesn't seem to have made it into the recurring reports.
posted by mullacc at 7:31 AM on December 20 [7 favorites]

So, theoretically, resignations could be demanded now, if persons were inclined to demand such?

Speaking for myself here:

Management, you can feel free to cut me loose right now if you see fit, seriously and politely.

To be clear, I don't want to go, but there's no point in beating around the bush, so if changes need to be made, let's proceed what needs to done. 'Cause while I enjoy the work and like the overall community, the constant calls, demands, or jokes to be let go do get old.

It never encourages or inspires staff members to do better, it just become a crappy part of the job that you have to ignore or navigate around.

But yeah, if changes need to be made, let me know or just lock me out of the backend.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:39 AM on December 20 [43 favorites]

So, theoretically, resignations could be demanded now, if persons were inclined to demand such?

We all know nothing on that end will change.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:41 AM on December 20

Excellent, lots of good news here about the new site and transition.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:49 AM on December 20

(•_•) Looks like this community
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■) got owned.
YEAAAAAAHHHHHH–
posted by lucidium at 7:53 AM on December 20 [6 favorites]

Now that the transition has happened, let's immediately reduce our moderation costs so we can have the funds to hire/contract an ED or manager to do the rest of the transition and hopefully get the site back on track. We should do this ASAP while there's still a little money in the bank and coming in. I agree that there's no reason to drag this out. It has to happen and we should do it.
posted by snofoam at 8:09 AM on December 20 [3 favorites]

Some things in this update that sound very good. Thank you.

Frimble is working on a simple moderation log for the current site

Will this be the log users requested or just a compilation of the comments mods already leave across the site?

Can we get an ETA?
posted by trig at 8:13 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]

But yeah, if changes need to be made, let me know or just lock me out of the backend.

I can't speak for the board, but I would hope that even if that happens down the line that it would be handled much better than that. I don't think that's the only outcome from everything that's going on.

To be clear personally I agree with the idea that no one knows what current staff is capable of because it's been a leadership mess for a few years.

It also occurred to me that all the current mods were probably trained by, or trained by someone who was trained by, cortex at a time that cortex was already feeling underwater. I've observed in various environments that if you tell someone on their first week "your job is to hold the water back from this hole in the dam, see, put your finger here" they often won't go looking for a cement patching kit.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:18 AM on December 20 [25 favorites]

It never encourages or inspires staff members to do better, it just become a crappy part of the job that you have to ignore or navigate around.

FWIW, as someone who has repeatedly said I think the site is not in the right hands and that this needs to change sooner rather than later: I haven't been saying that with an intention to harass any of the staff, or make life unpleasant or help burn them out.

I made them because I feel there is a real need for change and accountability for the site to even survive, let alone thrive. And because there doesn't seem to be a manager in charge able or willing to (a) implement changes in effective and timely ways, and (b) hold staff accountable, with consequences, for inadequate performance over time.

I've said these things publicly because MetaTalk is currently the only avenue for even trying to hold staff accountable, whether for individual actions or for long-standing patterns of performance. Because it has been made clear there is no effective internal structure for accountability.

I know it's got to be deeply unpleasant to read as a mod. (And I know that for users who haven't really been following along, it probably feels unwarranted, mean-spirited, and off-putting to read.)

Still: taking this kind of feedback seriously, rather than ignoring or navigating around it, would go a long way towards eliminating my perceived need for it. I would be happy with an outcome where mods' stewardship of this site becomes good enough that it makes sense for the current staffing to continue.

But I think this absolutely requires a setup where there is a manager, or managers, actually ensuring good performance. With consequences if that fails to happen over time. I hope that the nonprofit team is thinking about this requirement, and its urgency, seriously. Recognizing how deep frustration around this is. And that we see discussion of it in the upcoming nonprofit update thread.
posted by trig at 8:33 AM on December 20 [22 favorites]

(by which I mean, recognition and discussion of this as a central issue in the post, by the nonprofit team.)
posted by trig at 8:42 AM on December 20 [4 favorites]

Hurrah! Thank you for this update, and congratulations to everyone who's been working to make this transfer happen.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:06 AM on December 20

So, theoretically, resignations could be demanded now, if persons were inclined to demand such?

Maybe you could wait a few days and do it on Christmas Eve to really turn the knife.
posted by kbanas at 9:07 AM on December 20 [16 favorites]

Gentle reminder that not everyone celebrates Christmas. Please be more culturally aware when deciding when to twist your knives. Thank you.
posted by phunniemee at 9:15 AM on December 20 [31 favorites]

Great news on the handover! Looking forward to positive change from the Foundation.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 9:29 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]

[Running to window, opening it, putting out head]

"What's to-day, my fine fellow?"
posted by snofoam at 9:35 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]

I guess pressure was building to just get this done with, and that seems fine.

Yep, for various business-and-taxes reasons, trying to wrap up before the end of the year was the goal. And, as the person who was doing legal-and-paperwork (with the help of the SC in the first part of it--my eternal gratitude to them--and then not) since 2022, it was past time. It would be a grace and a kindness to the incoming board to give them a little bit of time to get up to speed.

We're still doing a lot of transferring of the 15-20 accounts on the back end (a job that can range from a few clicks to actually-impossible) that make up the MeFi extended universe after signing paperwork on the 14th. Hoping for no major bumps but last time through this transition took six months and so far it's been less than a week.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:05 AM on December 20 [38 favorites]

I'm on the board of a nonprofit that got up and running as a 501(c)(3) in the last year, and another that is in the middle of 501(c)(3) paperwork right now. I can't take on another board role lest my partner stage an intervention, but if the incoming board wants to bounce ideas or questions off me I'm happy to support as I can.
posted by brook horse at 10:33 AM on December 20 [13 favorites]

Congratulations on getting it done. Such a labour of love.
posted by jouke at 11:19 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

Congratulations to all! ♥
posted by Lynsey at 11:52 AM on December 20

snofoam: So, theoretically, resignations could be demanded now, if persons were inclined to demand such?

trig: I know it's got to be deeply unpleasant to read as a mod. (And I know that for users who haven't really been following along, it probably feels unwarranted, mean-spirited, and off-putting to read.)

phunniemee: Gentle reminder that not everyone celebrates Christmas. Please be more culturally aware when deciding when to twist your knives. Thank you.

This endless hounding of staff and volunteers has to stop. MetaTalk has become too toxic to be useful.
posted by Kattullus at 11:55 AM on December 20 [72 favorites]

I'm glad someone is finally reading my comments with the dire and serious intent they're written in. I don't understand why people always think I'm trying to be funny.
posted by phunniemee at 12:14 PM on December 20 [12 favorites]

You are funny. I’ve laughed at many of your jokes though the years, but the jokes you aim at people in MetaTalk are hurtful and pointed, and it makes me sad to read them.
posted by Kattullus at 12:25 PM on December 20 [43 favorites]

Speaking for myself here
You can speak for me as well.

To be clear personally I agree with the idea that no one knows what current staff is capable of
Yes, I fully agree and I'm looking forward to seeing that (whether from here or from afar).
posted by loup (staff) at 12:26 PM on December 20 [2 favorites]

This is a truly solid update and a lot of hopeful progress. Thank you for that, to everyone involved. It feels apt to let old MeFi go and bring the new one in with the solstice.
posted by donnagirl at 12:34 PM on December 20 [7 favorites]

This endless hounding of staff and volunteers has to stop. MetaTalk has become too toxic to be useful.

That's a valid perspective, but please keep in mind that's not a universal perspective. Many of us started out with that perspective too. Today, I personally find the "all you critics are toxic" approach can itself be pretty negative, ugly, and dismissive. And I think a lot of us have been trying to present our criticism as patiently and reasonably as we can.

Anyway, from my perspective, a lot of the (encouraging!) changes in this update are a direct result of "endless hounding". Staff wasn't making needed changes on their own, and occasional polite requests for action weren't having any effect either. I don't know if it's the "endless" polite requests that have actually led to a little traction, or if it's the "toxic" comments that have done it, or the combination of both. But the staff has been making it clear and explicit - for years - that they would prefer not to, for almost anything that members have asked. Even as the site finances and membership dwindle.

Even the fact that we ever got to the point of having fairly regular site updates, with issues kinda-sorta tracked from update to update, took a huge amount of "hounding". Months and months and months of it. Same for getting even one mod to interact with members in those threads.

I too would prefer a staff that doesn't need to be hounded into even basic action. Improvements shouldn't require committed, sustained begging, cajoling, or hounding.


Which is why I am hoping very much that Mefi as a nonprofit will prioritize effective, capable, energetic leadership and staffing. I am hoping to hear a lot more about the new structure is going to help us get there in the near future. Without that, I worry that a nonprofit with the same internal systems and people is going to be much of the same.
posted by trig at 12:44 PM on December 20 [20 favorites]

From my perspective, the main thing that’s wrong with MetaFilter is the toxic atmosphere in MetaTalk.

If we are going to operate as community-run site, the forum for community discussions needs to be functional, and not a place where bullying is tolerated.
posted by Kattullus at 1:09 PM on December 20 [40 favorites]

I'm impressed by all the progress.

I had a quick look at the demo. It was a bit shocking at first to see reaction buttons below the post - so un-metafilter-y - but then I remembered how useful those buttons are for getting good discussions. So if, like me, your first reaction is an unpleasant one, I really would encourage you to give it a chance.

(I'm not quite sure how it helps, but it seems to steer the gut reactions towards the buttons so that the text reactions are both more meaningful and more thoughtful.)
posted by demi-octopus at 1:20 PM on December 20 [5 favorites]

It's a Festivus miracle!
posted by glonous keming at 1:28 PM on December 20 [4 favorites]

I think if you leave an angry emoticon choice for comment favoriting that it will be used for ill will towards users but thats my only apprehension.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:30 PM on December 20 [3 favorites]

About the demo, I'm not sure about an angry emoji.
posted by NotLost at 1:39 PM on December 20 [3 favorites]

Like. I don't want that level of emotion-leaving on my comments, I can just picture someone using "sad emoticon" to make fun of something I said. Favorite or no favorite is at least is somewhat neutral. But I might be biased because these are the same emoticon choices for my work email and I find them eyerolling and tiring sometimes.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:40 PM on December 20 [5 favorites]

Update: [the test site] will ... be open to all members by the end of February

Also Update, different section: Replies and quotes in comments similar to this demo [link]

user: I had a quick look at the demo. It was a bit shocking at first to see reaction buttons below the post

It seems like at least two plenty of people have understood "this demo" to mean "the test version of the new Metafilter".

I understood that "demo" link to be referring only to the feature "replies and quotes in comments" (and that bullet point is not in the "New Site Status" section). The link has no "Metafilter Demo" text or anything vaguely hinting in that direction. Or possibly, I'm Principal Skinner here, but I hope not, cuz that demo loses everything I like about metafilter's style
posted by sylvanshine at 1:42 PM on December 20 [6 favorites]

I'm glad there is not a plan to implement up/downvoting or comment threading, even though I know a lot of people feel those would improve Metafilter. I think reddit has become a really valuable, maybe indispensable, part of the internet ecosystem, but that doesn't mean its features need to be replicated everywhere. A linear and static conversation offers something, I don't know, egalitarian? participatory? that in my opinion still has value to keep around.
posted by dusty potato at 1:48 PM on December 20 [11 favorites]

Yeah - I just checked the linked demo (on mobile) and I'm not sure what I'm actually seeing.

Are we moving to threaded comments and emoji reactions? Is that link actual metafilter dev work? Or is the link just meant to be a generic example of what quoting and replying means, for people who don't know?

(If yes, and these major changes have been being worked on behind the scenes with no user discussion while we've been told "bear with us" for basic, much-discussed, much-requested changes and bug fixes for, once again, years - then sorry but what the hell?)
posted by trig at 1:49 PM on December 20 [7 favorites]

GIVE ME AN ANGRY BUTTON TO PRESS
posted by mittens at 1:50 PM on December 20 [5 favorites]

Great to hear this part of the transition is finally done. Hopefully, we can soon get beyond a legal transition and onto an actual one that involves some leadership for the staff and a chance for them to prove they weren't the problem all along. I don't think they were (definitely not all, anyway), but absent leadership will always make the whole team look bad.
posted by dg at 1:53 PM on December 20 [6 favorites]

It is huge to be able to announce an accomplishment like this as the year closes. Huge. Congratulations to all.
posted by eirias at 1:57 PM on December 20 [4 favorites]

From my perspective, the main thing that’s wrong with MetaFilter is the toxic atmosphere in MetaTalk.

I disagree.
posted by knobknosher at 1:58 PM on December 20 [7 favorites]

From my perspective, the main thing that's wrong with MetaFilter is that people think that the main thing that's wrong with MetaFilter is the toxic atmosphere in MetaTalk.
posted by april of time at 2:04 PM on December 20 [18 favorites]

Also, if this is where we're workshopping the features in the demo (?), personally I don't like the emoji reactions at all. Not really for social reasons-- I think there are already way more direct ways for people on here to antagonize each other-- but it just seems like unnecessary cruft that makes me feel like I'm on facebook or the comment section of a low-quality newspaper.
posted by dusty potato at 2:10 PM on December 20 [11 favorites]

Yeah as the best of the web we should be insulting each other with words, not emojis ♥️
posted by phunniemee at 2:12 PM on December 20 [18 favorites]

this 97-year-old web forum's users still antagonize each other the old-fashioned way
posted by dusty potato at 2:15 PM on December 20 [7 favorites]

I'm not sure what I'm actually seeing.

I did mean this as a serious question. What is that link means to show? What are the UI changes being developed? Does that demo page show how things are supposed to work and/or look? What are we supposed to understand about upcoming site changes?

Also:
- What are the upcoming improvements to flagging?
- What's the plan for community input on all these changes?
- Did the nonprofit board know about these upcoming changes and approve them?
posted by trig at 2:42 PM on December 20 [9 favorites]

The linked demo is just an example page on the Waterhole platform site, so I wouldn't read anything design-intent-wise into it beyond being a pre-existing functional demonstration of the "reply" button attached to each comment and the "quote" button that pops up if you select some text in a comment.
posted by lucidium at 2:44 PM on December 20 [2 favorites]

*inhales*
That said, I think emoji reactions can be a useful pressure valve.
posted by lucidium at 2:47 PM on December 20 [1 favorite]

I think the transition deserves its own post.

The nonprofit board has been working very hard to get this done. They deserve some kudos.

I think moderators coming to this thread to be negative are being quite disrespectful to the board, if I’m honest.
posted by knobknosher at 2:47 PM on December 20 [10 favorites]

I disagree
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:49 PM on December 20 [5 favorites]

I think moderators coming to this thread to be negative are being quite disrespectful to the board, if I’m honest.

Let me walk this back. I think I’m being too harsh because they are responding to negative comments aimed towards them.

I just feel the way this announcement is being handled is kinda depressing and that makes me sad. I don’t know anyone’s motives but it comes across as almost passive aggressive and that bums me out.
posted by knobknosher at 2:51 PM on December 20 [8 favorites]

trig's questions really need answering ASAP, imho.

Is the Waterhole site just an example of a similar Laravel-based discussion forum or is the new site going to be hosted on Waterhole? Because if Metafilter is going to turn into yet another cardboard cutout MS Teams-style "workspace".. yeah, no.
posted by fight or flight at 2:51 PM on December 20 [13 favorites]

I think the transition deserves its own post.

This post says there will be one
posted by Pre-Taped Call In Show at 3:13 PM on December 20 [10 favorites]

no jokes, no snark, i just want to say thanks to everyone who helped get this done, and let's keep building wins into the future, together.

here's to another 25 years.
posted by glonous keming at 3:16 PM on December 20 [25 favorites]

This post says there will be one

Thanks—I appreciate the correction. I think it would have been cool for the metafilter staff to make their own post but I will be the change I want to see in the world and shut up about it
posted by knobknosher at 3:38 PM on December 20 [2 favorites]

Kudos! It’s a big move and hard won. Thank you to those who have made this happen!
posted by samthemander at 4:03 PM on December 20 [4 favorites]

I think moderators coming to this thread to be negative are being quite disrespectful to the board, if I’m honest.

I just feel the way this announcement is being handled is kinda depressing and that makes me sad. I don’t know anyone’s motives but it comes across as almost passive aggressive and that bums me out.

My sincere apologies. I, personally, could not be happier and have never been more hopeful about the future of the site. And, truly, both Jessamyn and the Board have been fantastic and deserve nothing but praise for the huge amount of support, love, attention, care and dedication they have put toward this milestone. The LLC, felt like a new chapter for MeFi, but this feels like an entirely new book. I, too, hope we can soon get beyond a legal transition and onto an actual one.

I think it would have been cool for the metafilter staff to make their own post

There will be plenty of time for that, we just wanted to get the news out as soon as this happened.
posted by loup (staff) at 4:36 PM on December 20 [16 favorites]

Thanks loup, really appreciate this and hope the transition goes smoothly for everyone!
posted by knobknosher at 4:48 PM on December 20 [4 favorites]

I'm having one set of (good, hopeful, if a bit wary) emotions about the transition, and a completely different set of emotions about the oh btw side note we're turning Mefi into a threaded-comment emoji-full site stuff. Maybe, our communication's unclear. And we're not answering questions about it.

Seriously: what?
posted by trig at 5:13 PM on December 20 [11 favorites]

If anyone's not sure what I'm talking about, I'm referring to this part of the update:

- Replies and quotes in comments similar to this demo (log into see functionality)

If you haven't checked out the demo link, seriously check out the demo link. I'm hoping that much of it is irrelevant to what is actually being implemented for Mefi, but... could we get some actual clarification and communication about this?
posted by trig at 5:27 PM on December 20 [7 favorites]

Yeah that demo… is not Metafiltery at all. What is that?
posted by Vatnesine at 5:32 PM on December 20 [3 favorites]

It's just an example page from a code library the new site might use.
posted by lucidium at 5:36 PM on December 20 [6 favorites]

Also we have tiny flags now so what else is there to fix with that? As I remember, people pulled their hair out and screamed and gnashed their teeth about the flags and then they were changed. And since then it’s been a non-issue. So what is left to do with them?
posted by Vatnesine at 5:38 PM on December 20

In regards to what features are relevant from that demo page: Replies and quotes in comments similar to this demo

I took this to literally mean that only the replies and quotes shown in this demo are relevant, and not anything else, like the emojis. From what I can see there aren’t threaded comments but if you reply to someone then your comment will reflect that instead of us having to do it manually, which I am pretty into since this is a reply to trig’s comment above and I am too lazy (and fat-fingered on mobile) to make it clear who I am replying to at the beginning of my comment.

Also unrelated to the above except that I want to send some appreciation to people like trig: for what it’s worth, on the times when I happened to read MetaFilter and specifically MetaTalk in the past couple years since I basically stopped participating here at all, I would have agreed that people are really rude and harsh to the mods here, BUT, after recently spending a truly insane amount of time reading past Meta threads, I have done a complete turnaround on who I think is making this place less pleasant.

I truly appreciate every single person who is still making jokes, pointing out mistakes that have never been addressed, and asking for accountability, and it is because of you all and your supposed bullying that I want to come back and participate more across the site. I have seen you all respond in good faith and step up and try to propose solutions only to see those efforts get totally ignored over and over again. The fact that any of you are still here and engaged makes it obvious to me that you care about this site.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 5:39 PM on December 20 [25 favorites]

Brookhorse, that is a fantastic feedback document. I think it summarises a whole lot of really important stuff covered in the last few years (?) of contentious metatalks in a really good way.

Huzzah for progress! I hope that Jessamyn will feel better now not owning metafilter, and thank you for taking on an epic task to get us here.
posted by freethefeet at 6:00 PM on December 20 [9 favorites]

It's just an example page from a code library the new site might use

[Kicks empty Jerry can under couch, sheepishly blows out match]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:00 PM on December 20 [4 favorites]

The linked demo is just an example page on the Waterhole platform site, so I wouldn't read anything design-intent-wise into it beyond being a pre-existing functional demonstration of the "reply" button attached to each comment and the "quote" button that pops up if you select some text in a comment.

This is exactly right and I'm sorry for causing any confusion.

Is the Waterhole site just an example of a similar Laravel-based discussion forum or is the new site going to be hosted on Waterhole?

Just an example of a similar forum, from which I'll appropriate the most MetaFilter-like features.

I took this to literally mean that only the replies and quotes shown in this demo are relevant, and not anything else, like the emojis.

Yes, that's correct.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 6:13 PM on December 20 [24 favorites]

Just a reminder, from the perspective of a WebDev (IANYWD): I have seen a number of complaints about the new site not being done yet, and I also see lots of feature requests/condemnations from the community here in MeTa. These things are incompatible. Either we let the site be coded and then praise it/offer improvement ideas, or we keep arguing about ponies until the heat death of the universe. We can't do both.
posted by jet_pack_in_a_can at 6:17 PM on December 20 [22 favorites]

Ha, Kirk beat me to it.

let the site be coded and then praise it/offer improvement ideas
I agree! And no we won't have emoji reactions. Also, remember we will not be sharing the "final product" but rather giving access to a MVP of the site for testing. From there I think the path ahead is a lot more collaborative and open to feedback, given the nature and goal of MeFiCoFo.

Every week I meet with Kirkaracha and we go over priorities, planning, and overall philosophy behind the project. And here are some principles both agree on that can give you an idea of what to expect for the MVP:

– Prioritize functionality over appearance (we can get assistance with front end development later).
– Build it in a way that can be easily modified/upgraded.
– Prioritize accessibility.
– Make sure there's an easy way to grant different levels of access to different features (to account for different roles or even groups like the BIPOC Board, and, of course volunteers)
– Try not to build stuff from scratch (à la good devs copy, great devs appropriate)
posted by loup (staff) at 6:24 PM on December 20 [9 favorites]

This is a good update and it's been great to see the rush of details and enthusiasm from lots of staff in the last day or two.
posted by one for the books at 7:15 PM on December 20 [4 favorites]

Thanks, kirkaracha. I'd asked that a ways upthread ("is the link just meant to be a generic example of what quoting and replying means, for people who don't know?") and the lack of an answer, combined with other people's discussion of emoji reactions here, was worrying.

I think the path ahead is a lot more collaborative and open to feedback, given the nature and goal of MeFiCoFo.

Yes, please. Transparency and acting on feedback have been basically the two biggest asks for a long time.

(In the meantime, could you let us know about the moderation log plans and what the flagging improvement is?)

Given the (well-earned, pretty deep) trust gap between users and site leadership, I'm hoping communication is going to start being consciously more careful and more thorough. Please don't leave us guessing or in the dark about what's actually going on. A number of people asked questions in this thread besides me. Please don't leave us hanging.

the thorn bushes have roses, thank you. It's no fun to feel like a bad guy :-)
posted by trig at 7:22 PM on December 20 [7 favorites]

By the way, about replies: in that demo, you can follow a link from a reply to see the original comment it's replying too, which is nice. There's no link from the original to its replies, though. That's an unusual feature for unthreaded comments, but I've seen it in one forum and it's actually really helpful. Comments there have a display like "[0 replies]" or "[13 replies]", so for example - in a use case relevant to Metafilter - if there's some comment you feel angry about, you can immediately see that hey, 13 other people have also apparently felt that way, so maybe you don't actually need to rush in and add to the pileon. Maybe what you want to say has already been said. And if you click the "[13 replies]" you can see little snippets of said replies, with links to them. Which gives you the ability to follow a sub-conversation within the comments while maintaining an overall flat thread experience.

I'm definitely not expecting any complicated features like that at this point, but it might be a useful one for Mefi down the line and worth thinking about for the future.
posted by trig at 7:41 PM on December 20 [8 favorites]

By the way, about replies: in that demo, you can follow a link from a reply to see the original comment it's replying too, which is nice. There's no link from the original to its replies, though.

If you click the speech bubble next to the reaction emoji on a comment, you get effectively a sub-thread with all the replies to that comment.
posted by Dysk at 10:12 PM on December 20 [3 favorites]

Oh, nice! I missed that.
posted by trig at 2:23 AM on December 21

trig: Given the (well-earned, pretty deep) trust gap between users and site leadership, I'm hoping communication is going to start being consciously more careful and more thorough.

I don’t think that’s at all what’s going on here. I think this is a story that you, and a group of other people that hang out in MetaTalk tell yourself to excuse your behavior towards staff and volunteers.

You said in your comment that you didn’t like to feel like a bad guy. I want to be really clear about this, I don’t think anyone here is acting from a desire to hurt people, rather I believe that everyone here is deeply personally invested in MetaFilter as a place, and feels emotionally rooted here. This is community for a lot of people in a meaningful way, this is our home, and we all want our home to feel good.

However, it has somehow become socially permissible to make personal attacks on people who work and volunteer for MetaFilter. This is a textbook case of a workplace bullying situation (also known as mobbing, if that terminology is more familiar to you).

As a rule, people who are in a bullying group don’t feel like they’re participating in harmful behavior, and don’t intend to harm. And I genuinely believe that no one here is aiming to hurt people. For the people on the other side of this group dynamic, however, this is painful.

I know I’m like a broken record on this, but if we’re genuinely going to be a self-governing web community, our forum for community discussion and governance has to be functional, and it won’t be if bullying is socially permissible.
posted by Kattullus at 6:32 AM on December 21 [47 favorites]

I agree with Kattullus.
posted by JanetLand at 6:56 AM on December 21 [12 favorites]

Katullus, it's hard to have this discussion with you without knowing how much you've been following Metatalk over the past few months and the past few years. In other words, I don't know if we're seeing things differently because of different takes on the same information, or if our takes are based on different amount of exposure to what's been going on.

What does bullying mean to you? Is it about using ugly words or a sharp tone? Is it being direct about the staff's failures in any tone at all? Is it, after years of closely following things, coming to the conclusion that the current staff makeup is either unable or unwilling to fix the most important problems with this site, and has itself been responsible for several of them? Is it coming to the conclusion, after years of closely following things, that for any hope of real improvement to happen, this group needs to either be closely, firmly overseen by someone with better judgment and leadership skills, or just replaced by people with better judgment and leadership skills? Is there any way of expressing those admittedly harsh, but serious conclusions that you would find acceptable?

Will it be bullying, in the upcoming thread, to - if the board does not address this themselves, which I hope they do because I don't actually want to do it - advocate strongly for transparency as to the board's plans for the next several months, and to advocate strongly for bringing in leadership that will at minimum impose accountability on the site staff? Such that we might finally have a staff whose word means something, a staff that listens to input instead of ignoring or flatly rejecting it, a staff that doesn't moderate based on self-protection, a staff that doesn't repeatedly, baldly lie to users, a staff that can be counted on to complete projects in reasonable timeframes and to communicate in a respectful and thorough way?

(If that list of "doesn'ts" seems exaggerated to anyone, or you (anyone) can't think of multiple examples of what each refers to, then please, either withhold judgment, or really read all those frustrating Metatalk threads you've noped out of. For the past while I've made a particular effort in comments to look up and provide some explanatory links to things I mention, so that people who aren't following can at least understand at least a small part of where the frustration is coming from even if they don't agree with it. But for this comment, I'm too tired. Go back and read even just the past two months of Metatalk. Not enough? Make it four or six. If that's too big a time commitment that's fine - but again, consider withholding judgment if you're not willing to see what people are responding to.)

If bullying is, to you, less about the content of what's said than the way in which it's said - if it's the sarcasm and the jibes and accusations and so on that get to you - then I completely understand, but wonder at how you miss the sarcasm and jibes and accusations - mostly from a minority of users, occasionally from mods themselves - towards users who express criticism, or even just disappointment, about what's been going on. As for disrespect, I have no words for how disrespectful so much of the mods' communication and behavior has been. Not all of it - and I personally have made a point of trying to acknowledge and applaud the good stuff, and I think a lot of others have too - but the good stuff has been in short supply and swamped by the dysfunctional and the ugly.

I know I’m like a broken record on this, but if we’re genuinely going to be a self-governing web community, our forum for community discussion and governance has to be functional, and it won’t be if bullying is socially permissible.

I'm like a broken record on a different message: if we’re genuinely going to be a self-governing web community, our forum for community discussion and governance has to be one where community input is actually (a) heard and (b) not sent to /dev/null with varying amounts of stonewalling, delaying, obfuscation, or prejudice.

The term bullying does involve power, and right now the only power dissatisfied users have is to leave, withhold funding, or try to change things by speaking up on Metatalk. And speaking up on Metatalk has almost never created actual change - except when things get ugly, at which point some small concessions have been made. That is not a healthy structure incentivizing healthy behavior on any side. The power to change that structure is in the hands of the people who actually get to impose their decisions. Those are the mods, and now - in what will hopefully be a real change on this dynamic - the new board.

But the members of the board - and how many they are and who they are is something I'd guess a lot of people reading this thread probably don't know - have not been very active in MetaTalk, with the partial exception of Rhaomi. Have they been following along? Do they know what users are so het up about? Do they, like Katullus, think this is just a case of never-satisfied users bullying the mods and being mean?

If so, I'm worried.
posted by trig at 10:28 AM on December 21 [31 favorites]

Seems like there are few people here who will need a grindstone from Santa next week.
posted by adamvasco at 11:01 AM on December 21 [4 favorites]

I would actually love some good grinding tools :-)
posted by trig at 11:07 AM on December 21 [6 favorites]

There are some people (maybe me included) who could plausibly be seen as bullying or mobbing the mods. I tend to disagree with that characterization, given the history with specific people who are persistently harsh in tone and content (eg racially charged deletions/mischaracterizations), but I see how someone could get there.

Trig is 1000% not one of those people and has worked really, really hard to be fair and constructive and I’m unhappy to see them being treated this way.
posted by knobknosher at 11:16 AM on December 21 [12 favorites]

I think this is a story that you, and a group of other people that hang out in MetaTalk tell yourself to excuse your behavior towards staff and volunteers.

Separately, I think this is a story you and people who have not been paying much attention tell yourself to avoid acknowledging that there are not clearcut villains in this particular dynamic.
posted by knobknosher at 11:18 AM on December 21 [19 favorites]

What does bullying mean to you?

on the most basic level, it means using a power imbalance to your advantage.

Which I hope isn't overtly accusing anyone of anything. I haven't been in these threads enough to really have a firm position in that regard.
posted by philip-random at 11:34 AM on December 21 [3 favorites]

... and then on preview (and not wanting to abuse the edit window), I realize that's far too broad a definition. Because there's pretty much always a power imbalance in situations involving humans. I guess, what needs to be added is that bullying is when this power advantage is used to throw one's weight around, with the sly trick of power being that we often don't even know we have it. It creeps up on us/into us. It uses us in not necessarily benevolent ways without us really being aware.
posted by philip-random at 11:38 AM on December 21 [1 favorite]

knobknosher, trig literally admits upthread to hounding the staff over administrative details. I don't think anyone here is saying there haven't also been well-justified complaints recently, especially in damaging interactions with users where the staff themselves walked back decisions and/or apologized. Certainly incidents like those have unclear boundaries, and there may be others that are unresolved.

But it isn't right to conflate this with complaints over administrative delays, unclear job duties, lack of basic project and/or product management practices, and other backseat micromanagement, hall monitor, and/or Yelp review kinds of stuff. Personally, I am fine with a staff that keeps this place just north of Memepool with the caveat that users with the perspective to guide us on real notorious matters of systemic social impact need the latitude to say that how they need to.

But I definitely can't imagine thinking hounding people about administrative trivia was OK. Getting to a community-run site was certainly an achievement, but not only is getting there by hounding people not OK, it remains to be seen if any of it mattered. Honestly the new feature I'm most excited about is the muting function, because it's hard to quit a site I've been reading since August 2000 cold turkey and muting batches of people very gradually was very helpful in leaving Facebook and Twitter.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:48 AM on December 21 [4 favorites]

I don’t want to get into an extended back and forth over this, but will say that:

trig literally admits upthread to hounding the staff over administrative details

This is not an accurate characterization of their comment, which used about a dozen scare quotes around the word “hounding” and did not include the words “administrative” or “details”.

If you disagree with them, fine, but it’s not fair to misrepresent what they said.

Honestly, I see this as (1) Brandon, to his credit, putting in a lot of needed effort in and (2) that effort being spurred on by needed critical feedback.

It’s understandable for people to see the improved situation and then think that the effort it took to get there was obviously not needed. But the bullying/mobbing accusations seem unnecessary.
posted by knobknosher at 11:59 AM on December 21 [12 favorites]

where the staff themselves walked back decisions and/or apologized

One more thing—some credit to the staff for this, but it only happened after several people spoke up. The initial reaction was blaming users, giving timeouts, etc. I don’t believe in holding that over their heads forever, but I also don’t believe in whitewashing the incident by making it seem that the staff “themselves” walked things back. No. They did not do that independently or spontaneously.
posted by knobknosher at 12:03 PM on December 21 [23 favorites]

This is not an accurate characterization

What trig said included, "I too would prefer a staff that doesn't need to be hounded into even basic action. Improvements shouldn't require committed, sustained begging, cajoling, or hounding." Are you or trig saying this was limited to action on the rice cooker or Uber threads and debatably two others where the mod actions still stand? Because if it's in any way linked to this thread, I think it's administrative trivia.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:05 PM on December 21 [1 favorite]

whitewashing

I would be grateful if you applied your own standards of mischaracterization to your own comments.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:07 PM on December 21 [1 favorite]

I don’t think we agree on enough to have a constructive discussion so I’m going to move on from this at this point.
posted by knobknosher at 12:08 PM on December 21 [4 favorites]

I also agree with Kattalus.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:14 PM on December 21 [8 favorites]

The thing that's toughest for me is when the...loudest people here bring the full force of their rhetoric to bear against the more trivial of complaints. Like, often I can step back and see that they have a point -- they're not totally wrong -- but they've swept everything up into such a big ball of trouble that they've (to my eye) lost perspective about what's actually important, actually a danger to the site. (For one thing, they seem to have an outsized sense of how many people have actually buttoned, walked away, or even stopped donations recently in response to this stuff, even though at least one of those recent examples probably represents a real miscarriage of justice, and definitely represents a real slip from ideals we agreed to a couple years ago.^*)

There are a lot of ways in which I look at the blue and green and think: whatever's going on behind the scenes, and ignoring maybe a couple edge cases here and there, things are running fine. And since the blue and the green are the heart of the site, that means a lot.

But then in one of these recent threads someone started posting links to older mod/staff MeTa interactions, and it was kind of amazing to see how far we've...shifted from those days. We probably can't ever go back, but, as that person pointed out, it would be worth collecting some more of those as examples of what to aim a little closer to. (I think that may already be having some effect.)

Lastly, I think a lot of this stuff is congealing into something that's feeling very partisan, at least as an analogy. There are some differences in underlying ground-truth, or maybe differences in...focus, if not in values, that are leading to very different assessments of the current state of things and definitely to very different calls for what to do moving forward. And neither number-of-comments or favorite-counts in MeTa are cutting it to get a sense where the site as a whole stands on it (they've varied so much between the most recent MeTa threads). I hope we can hold a poll or referendum some time soon, on a bunch of these questions, so everyone inclined to position themselves on either "side" can have a better sense of what the site as a whole thinks. We need that, before anyone with really strong takes on this -- in either direction -- will be willing to bend.

^*The other most prominent recent example I'm less clear about. I think they may have just flamed out! And then repeatedly continued to flame out! But I can kinda see the other side to that, if I squint right.
posted by nobody at 1:49 PM on December 21 [13 favorites]

I, too, agree with Kattullus.

grindstone from Santa next week.
dude, so last night I'm doing research for a post and I thought I'd do it on Harold and Vita and then decided to do it on Vita and Virginia and I came across your excellent post
so I find a few things about just Virginia and vita, was going to start off with a quote from Nigel Nicholson's collection where is ....it....ah, look at me, dogged eared the page, bad, 10 January 1923.

"tomorrow I dine with my darling Mrs.woolf at richmond, a picnic more than a dinner, as the press has overflowed both into the dining room and into the larder. I love Mrs woolf and with a sick passion. so will you. in fact, I don't think I will let you know her."

so I was thinking of like doing a sub addendum kind of post sorta worked it out, good pull quote but it just it didn't augment the original post thought the work they wrote to another, Vita and Seducers in Ecuador with Virginia's Orlando was interesting.

so I'm going to do one on Medbh McGuckian

anywho, the flurry of updates and progress thus updated is encouraging, thanks.
posted by clavdivs at 2:04 PM on December 21 [10 favorites]

Trig, I just want to say again that when I was reading past threads in MetaTalk, your presence was immensely appreciated. I don’t know how to keep this from becoming a back and forth about you and other users Kattalus calls out by name but it just…feels silly when in this very thread you’ve been replying in good faith and humor to mod comments and giving credit where credit is due to improvements made. (Speaking of credit where credit is due, I think Brandon handles criticism with good faith and humor too.)

It’s entirely possible people have been engaged this whole time and disagree with me, and that’s fine, really. I don’t mean to imply if people just read all the things I did that we’d reach the same conclusions about other people’s intent and behavior, but since I completely changed my perspective when going from casual reading to prolific reader of contentious MetaTalk threads, I echo Knobknosher in wondering if people have been following along closely or just casually and if that would change how you feel about negative comments about moderation or staffing decisions.

Clicking through the comment history of some folks you (general you, not replying to anyone in particular here) think are acting like bullies could tell a different story, I did that a lot when trying to get “caught up” with a bunch of conflicts I missed while not engaging with the site. I cannot recommend the route I eventually took which was reading MetaTalk threads like novels for the last month or two because I am embarrassed to admit how many hours I put into that. However it made what I was reading as oddly hostile comments in isolation when I was just skimming MetaTalk threads turn out to be understandable and from people who were engaging in helpful or positive ways too and not just shitting all over threads no matter what.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 2:05 PM on December 21 [28 favorites]

Going off on a barista that you feel is regularly antagonistic, frustrating, or incompetent may feel good, garner some sympathetic “Right on”s, and possibly even lead to a constructive outcome, but one should also be prepared for other patrons and staff at the coffee shop to think you’re a giant fucking asshole.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:23 PM on December 21 [13 favorites]

Yeah, for sure, but is that what is happening here? Like Brandon replied, let's give each other the grace of believing the other person is suggesting, talking, arguing, or working to do what's best for the site — are people regularly going off on their barista or are you setting up them as some straw Karen analogy when generally they are just asking for accountability and getting frustrated by serious lapses in judgement but willing to keep engaging because they care about the site just as much as you do? I think we all agree the behavior you are describing is one of an asshole but I don’t think it describes any active mefites.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 2:33 PM on December 21 [12 favorites]

MetaFilter: you’re a giant fucking asshole

lol happy solstice!
posted by glonous keming at 2:33 PM on December 21 [4 favorites]

Ultimately, I don’t think that coming across as an asshole is necessarily a bad thing. It’s distinct from being an asshole, and it’s distinct from being wrong. I realize that for a lot of people, that point won’t resonate.

Anyway, there’s a bit of a double bind here. Going into detail about the history seems likely to lead to more accusations of bullying because it necessarily requires criticizing mods. And personally, I think it would be shitty for the mods so it’s not something I would enjoy doing.

However, not going into detail about the history allows for a lot of minimization and for the shaping of a narrative that I find insulting and unfair to many people.

That’s life, I guess!
posted by knobknosher at 2:38 PM on December 21 [10 favorites]

One other point—I hope my last one on this particular topic—I find it especially unfair to conflate the treatment of the mods with the treatment of volunteers. I think it has been very different, as is appropriate.
posted by knobknosher at 2:40 PM on December 21 [15 favorites]

MetaTalk: Ultimately, I don’t think that coming across as an asshole is necessarily a bad thing.
posted by box at 3:11 PM on December 21 [6 favorites]

Inevitably, one of the blind men poking the elephant will feel a giant asshole.
posted by lucidium at 5:37 PM on December 21 [7 favorites]

It’s more than being an asshole; it’s abuse. Like the abusive husband who tells his wife she is fat and ugly and then says “I’m only telling you this because I love you.”
posted by Melismata at 8:01 PM on December 21 [3 favorites]

The thing that's toughest for me is when the...loudest people here bring the full force of their rhetoric to bear against the more trivial of complaints[…] that they've swept everything up into such a big ball of trouble that they've (to my eye) lost perspective about what's actually important, actually a danger to the site

One hard truth for everyone here, I think, is that the actual biggest problems facing the site have nothing to do with MetaTalk, and only a little bit to do with moderation. More judicious moderation might have kept some people from walking out - beyond the people who explicitly walked out over moderation - but ultimately it’s a different internet than it was 25 years ago and people here manifestly don’t even all want the same things from it. The worst aspects of the culture show up on MeTa from time to time but they are actually more problematic on the blue has the green - you know, the places a new user would theoretically show up and try to post. Everybody could stand to keep these things in perspective.

At the same time, I don’t know how anyone could pay attention to MeTa over the past few years without noticing how dysfunctional the site is on an administrative level. Things that are promised don’t happen. Things that are happening don’t get communicated. An all-hands-on-deck volunteer-led effort was required to dig out of a financial hole. I don’t know the cause of these issues but I defy anyone not to notice them after reading all the threads. That one can use the site and not notice a lot of this stuff is a result of the fact that it is, in the end, a smallish message board at steady state, which doesn’t need a lot of intervention to function as such on a basic level. So again, on one hand, the stakes are not high enough to be an asshole about it, but on the other let’s not pat ourselves on the back for making that work with only a couple hundred thousand dollars in annual donations.
posted by atoxyl at 8:34 PM on December 21 [33 favorites]

In this case it’s feeling like the random internet commentator who is convinced a celebrity they don’t know is in an abusive relationship and comments on all their posts telling them they should leave their spouse.

I have enjoyed your contributions across the site for many years, and I know I have agreed with you in the past on many things, but I have seen the consistent accusations and insults that you’ve lobbed at people in MetaTalk and some of them I am surprised were allowed to stand, melismata. Claiming to know what Cortex and current mods feel and experience makes it more toxic here, not less, and I think if you want to push back on what you see as unfair you have to come with a lot more to back that up and actually engage with the criticism being given against mods beyond just saying it’s abusive. Especially when mods have engaged themselves with that criticism and apologized or changed behavior, which I think indicates that not all that criticism was meritless.

I think saying someone is coming across as an asshole because of how you yourself experience them is fair game but I don’t think it’s fair to claim you know why Cortex left or whether loup/Brandon/other staff and volunteers are experiencing objective abuse from members without providing any evidence.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:43 PM on December 21 [15 favorites]

And so I don’t appear totally obtuse, of course I have seen a ton of the “bitch eating crackers” phenomenon towards mods the entire time I have been a member, but the people being accused of being abusive or impossible to please have consistently shown up and celebrated every step forward, including the good news shared in this thread!
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:51 PM on December 21 [4 favorites]

knobnosher: One other point—I hope my last one on this particular topic—I find it especially unfair to conflate the treatment of the mods with the treatment of volunteers. I think it has been very different, as is appropriate.

I first realized that something was really wrong in MetaTalk when 1adam12 posted and asked for assistance in filling out a tax-form. He was greeted by a wave of hostility.

This was a month ago, but it still took me until this thread to really understand what was going on, that this was a textbook example of bullying.

When I read MetaTalk, and noticed the constant criticism that staff faced, criticism often leveled by MeFites I think very highly of, whose judgment I trust, I assumed that there must be a reason for all the hostility.

But no, there isn’t. When bullying happens, it’s because a group dynamic forms that defines certain people as being harmful in some way, and then isolates them from a larger community. Narratives are constructed to enable the bullying.

The thing is, even now, I thought this must be a recent phenomenon, because the switch hadn’t flipped for me until now. So I went browsing back in time through older threads. But no, this dynamic has been going on for a long time. Staff are greeted by hostility when there’s no cause. Reactions to minor things the staff do, to nothing things, are way out of proportion. This has been going on for months, possibly even years.

Looking back, this dynamic is really obvious. But I didn’t see it. In thread after thread, threads I read at the time, this is plain as day, and I didn’t see it.

I feel really fucking ashamed of myself. I should’ve known better, and I should have said something, but I didn’t. And I have to live with that.

I know it’s essentially meaningless in face of what they’ve had to deal with, but I’d like to offer my apology to the staff, to volunteers, and to everyone else who’s been bullied in MetaTalk.

I’m really ashamed of myself and I’m really sorry.
posted by Kattullus at 10:35 PM on December 21 [25 favorites]

Surely calling other users assholes is against the Guidelines?

No "fuck you"s or name-calling
directed at others in a conversation. (Pointing out that a statement is racist or otherwise problematic is not name-calling.) In general, cursing is fine on the site, but cursing at another member or a staff member is not okay.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 10:39 PM on December 21 [1 favorite]

I’m really ashamed of myself and I’m really sorry.

Well, I guess I'll just say that I think differently about things and hope you're able to find peace and resolution on this particular issue.
posted by knobknosher at 11:09 PM on December 21 [14 favorites]

the people being accused of being abusive or impossible to please have consistently shown up and celebrated every step forward, including the good news shared in this thread!

I think I’m a second tier complainer at best but

Things that are promised don’t happen

given that this thread is about some long-awaited things happening, I honestly regret the overall negativity of my last comment. I don’t want my main response to some of the more significant updates in a long while to be getting baited into arguing about the same old shit. Credit to everyone who has worked to move the site forward, and congrats to the proud ex-owner! (absolutely joshing here, no meanness intended)
posted by atoxyl at 11:22 PM on December 21 [4 favorites]

Surely calling other users assholes is against the Guidelines?

I described behavior that could contribute to a user being perceived as an asshole. If no one recognizes themselves or their actions in my comment, I guess that means no one has anything to be offended about!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:25 PM on December 21 [1 favorite]

I do agree that there has been some bullying, but I think it's easy to mistakenly think since some criticism has been bullying, all the criticism has been bullying. That's not, in my opinion, the case. For a while there I was getting a little worried that while the criticisms were valid, the motives of the critics were not, and it really didn't matter what happened, they were just going to criticize it anyway. That's why this thread was a big relief, as I've seen people who have been very critical in the past now expressing positivity.

It's not everyone, of course. Some of the people who were critical were criticizing as bullies. But some weren't. Believing that "the criticism was just bullying" and believing that "the criticism was all valid" are both, I think, inaccurate. I think it was/is highly dependent on the person.
posted by Bugbread at 11:41 PM on December 21 [10 favorites]

I'm really pleased that the site is moving forward on both the technical and nonprofit fronts, and I appreciate the work staff and volunteers have put in on it. Thanks!

As for the other stuff, I stick my head in the grey to read the mod updates and occasionally to put in my $0.02, but mostly I don't want to hang out here because it's always so mean and particularly to the mods. I'm not saying the mods are angels or that they're fast and responsive, but it feels like there's an active section of the commentariat in mod posts that takes everything mods say in the worst possible way. And likes to kick them for it. It always seems to me like some progress is being made in the regular updates, which, yay! But it also always seems like it's not enough, or staff is working on the wrong thing, or whatever.

Y'all who are criticizing the mods all the time are certainly right about some of this stuff, but you're not making Metafilter a place I'd want to invite my friends to hang out. Metafilter isn't a group marriage, enspousening jokes notwithstanding, but there is a question of whether we'd rather be right or get along here. Some folks are heavily on the "be right" end to the detriment of getting along.

And I'm not being passive aggressive about not naming names; I just generally nope out when the mean quotient gets too high, so I don't remember names. I spoke up this time because I know Katullus' name and the work he puts in for the community at large and I think his complaints have some merit.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 12:44 AM on December 22 [21 favorites]

Ultimately, I don’t think that coming across as an asshole is necessarily a bad thing. It’s distinct from being an asshole, and it’s distinct from being wrong. I realize that for a lot of people, that point won’t resonate.

It's not that it doesn't resonate, I just think you have to at least momentarily take stock of your approach if you're needing to split this particular hair.

I do agree that there has been some bullying, but I think it's easy to mistakenly think since some criticism has been bullying, all the criticism has been bullying.

I think the difficulty is that MetaTalk bullies have carved out a lane where any attempt to rein them in is going to be seen as Mod overreach and that the increasingly hostile approach is seen as justified by the lack of progress. I think putting this particular toy back in the box is not something the mods can do and site norms will need to change where users who may agree on some level with the general points being made but not the method need to clearly distance themselves from the bullies, else the bullies will continue to use the mob to fire off their one liners unabated.
posted by formeruser14 at 4:05 AM on December 22 [10 favorites]

The root problem here has been the leadership vacuum. Now that we have new ownership, I’m looking forward to us hiring a good manager who can help the org deliver on whatever’s important, and deprioritize any stuff that isn’t. I’m really excited!

I’m also hoping we can give the snark a rest. I hear warriorqueen when she points out that many online communities are worse places to work, and I have to acknowledge her greater lived experience here, but well — I’m put in mind of my dad, who used to say that Black people who complain about 21st century racism don’t know how good they have it, compared to what he grew up witnessing in Texas and Kentucky. Gross is still gross, tiresome is still tiresome, and whatever grit may be needed in a practical sense for staff to survive working for a social media entity, I want us to aim for better than that. Critical, yes, fine, it’s been helpful and needed, but keep it measured to the size of the problem, and leave the nastiness for your workplace. It’s not just the staff you’re hurting, and I remember the crudeness here and carry that memory with me when I read the stuff you say on the other parts of the site.
posted by eirias at 5:17 AM on December 22 [9 favorites]

The bullying accusation doesn't make any sense to me since the users have no power of any kind. (As individuals, at least. If everyone stopped donating that would be a different story.)

Things are contentious. They could be a lot less contentious if staff/management? chose to make it so. There was a lot of tension about the MetaTalk queue, but if there isn't a queue, or posts are just approved fast enough that it doesn't seem like they are being suppressed, then there are no gripes about that. If it was possible to have a reasonable discussion about staffing without it being characterized as "harassment" then we would be free to have that discussion in a more straightforward way. If there was a moderation log, then there would still be disagreements over some mod actions, but we wouldn't have the more contentious issues around transparency and misrepresentation. These are all choices, and the users didn't make any of these choices.

Obviously the biggest thing is that the site needs to have some decision-making structure, like an ED accountable to the board. The current staff team has been making decisions while eschewing all accountability for their decisions like Family Circus Not Me is in charge. That's not sustainable. People have been overall, and should be, courteous to volunteers and grateful for their service. People will be, and should be, supportive of an ED who comes in to deal with the site's issues and get it on the right track, as long as it is someone who is open to making whatever changes are best for the site in the long term.
posted by snofoam at 5:34 AM on December 22 [17 favorites]

I can see how you took that as my takeaway eiras. And overall I agree; there shouldn’t be calls for resignations, etc.

But I think my point still gets missed which is — there are in any business or organization unhappy customers/participants. On a discussion forum whose brand is basically overthinking things, you’re gonna have people who want to discuss moderation. There are ways to manage that differently from all fronts.

I think calling the mods bad people and lazy is wrong. I think calling the complainers bullies is wrong. I think there are ways to make discussion (ETA: about modding/growing/running the site) more productive and I think 75% of the power in that rests with the organization and mods and 25% rests with the members. I won’t go into it right now because I think the most important thing right now is to give the community 6 months to get some structure in place, but I have offered to help on that front. I encourage everyone to see if they want to do the same.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:38 AM on December 22 [14 favorites]

Kattullus is correct in that that the thread where 1adam12 asked for help with a tax form was very harsh to 1adam12 and the rest of the board.
posted by NotLost at 6:04 AM on December 22 [16 favorites]

Maybe we can print out all the mean comments, papier mache them into an effigy, then set it alight to purge our sins and please the gods and welcome a new era for Metafilter. We could call it the christ what an asshole tax wickerman.
posted by phunniemee at 6:12 AM on December 22 [11 favorites]

I've been reading along this saga as a lurker (longtime mefi reader for many years who ended up finally signing up again for unclear reasons lol).

I'm not seeing users, especially trig, bullying the mods/admins, if anything there seems to be pretty extreme social pressure against raising concerns with either the system of moderation or individual mod actions. There have been plenty of harsh and insulting comments directed at others in the various meta threads I've enjoyed reading over the past few months, some directed at mods/admin, and many directed at those who raise concerns, but I'm not seeing either side bullying the other, and I think the framing of "sides" and "groups" might be part of the problem. Just my two cents!
posted by Hawthorn at 6:19 AM on December 22 [25 favorites]

> christ what an asshole tax wickerman

AAAAA NOT THE BEEANS
posted by lucidium at 6:33 AM on December 22 [12 favorites]

Kattullus is correct in that that the thread where 1adam12 asked for help with a tax form was very harsh to 1adam12 and the rest of the board.

That thread is about 20% the “angry” people explaining that the criticism is NOT directed at volunteers, and one person being a jerk to the volunteers.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:53 AM on December 22 [12 favorites]

Bowbeacon, it does appear that the discontent with the volunteers in that thread was not as broad as it first appeared to me.
posted by NotLost at 7:08 AM on December 22 [6 favorites]

warriorqueen: six months to get some better structures in place sounds really smart. Yes.

I'm hoping by June we have an ED and a "non interim" board. Though it's completely fine with me if interim board members want to volunteer -- I just think the instinct to establish board processes under non-emergency conditions is really sound.

I don't know if there is an extant list of startup tasks that could be usefully farmed out to volunteers. Sorry if I missed this. I am 100% useless re: legal paperwork or any of what was asked for in the November post but am curious whether there are any places I could help. I know making such a list is itself work...
posted by eirias at 7:36 AM on December 22 [3 favorites]

I don't know if there is an extant list of startup tasks that could be usefully farmed out to volunteers.

Maybe we could help with that here. Here are some ideas for earlyish tasks or committees. Anyone have other ideas?
* ED search and related tasks.
* Elections committee.
* Finance committee.
* Fundraising planning. Maybe fundraising doesn’t need to, and shouldn’t, wait until the usual time.
* Nominations for permanent board.
* Technical development and testing.
* Volunter-mod idea -- Possibly speak to board members about whether they have any interest in volunteer mods, and working on a proposal for that.
posted by NotLost at 7:48 AM on December 22 [3 favorites]

I’m talking to a couple interim board members early next week about helping with elections and can see and help coordinate if the board wants. In case anyone is wondering, I reached out via MeMail.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:22 AM on December 22 [7 favorites]

Calling what has happened here in MeTa either abuse or bullying is so, so offensive to someone who has seen actual abuse in their life

I’m not saying I’m that person or that it’s offensive though, in the spirit of the person who wasn’t calling anyone an asshole, so don’t @ a ghost
posted by B_Ghost_User at 9:42 AM on December 22 [15 favorites]

The general tone that people use to talk to mods is so mean. One can make substantive arguments about change without demeaning people who work here.
When I read metatalk I'm ashamed and tbh don't want to be here. Which doesn't befit a web community I don't think.
I'm glad Katullus spoke up. I have to follow suit.

I personally wouldn't speak of abuse. I'd say: you don't talk to people like that.
posted by jouke at 9:51 AM on December 22 [20 favorites]

Katullus appears to have buttoned.
posted by NotLost at 10:30 AM on December 22

his account still shows active to me?
posted by glonous keming at 11:03 AM on December 22

People can and do have different thoughts and outtakes about things and that's fine. Hopefully everyone (especially mods) will consider how their words and actions may appear and strive to be considerate.

In the end, we all want the site to be better and part of that is being respectful of each other, even when we disagree. Criticism is absolutely necessary and needed, but let's try to keep it constructive so we can all work together towards the common goal of making the site healthy and long lasting.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 11:09 AM on December 22 [7 favorites]

Kattullus is correct in that that the thread where 1adam12 asked for help with a tax form was very harsh to 1adam12 and the rest of the board

Other people addressed this but mostly what happened here was that 1adam12 posted at a moment of elevated tension in MeTa (they all are, I know, but it was right after some other stuff had kicked off) asking if anyone wanted to help with a tax form, acknowledging that they could have a lawyer do it but

Our attorney has quoted us $5,000 to complete this task. We would have to raise or borrow this

People seized on this as another example of the fecklessness of the MeFi pros, not the volunteers, because what do you mean you’d have to raise or borrow funds, doesn’t MeFi have funds, aren’t they helping you with this? Jessamyn clarified that, sure, they could use MeFi funds, they just weren’t certain it was a big enough deal to justify, but it just introduced a new premise for people to be mad about, that site management wasn’t supporting the volunteers enough (though one or two did eventually take it as an opportunity to go off on everyone).

It’s true though that if I were 1adam12 and I were not paying much attention to MeTa and my post stirred up that reaction, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t feel like the hostility was skipping me. That’s a thing about MetaFilter’s unthreaded threads - they take on a vibe. But it is also an example of a blow-up that didn’t have to be except something somewhere didn’t get communicated. People could stand to be more willing give the benefit of the doubt in these situations, but a lot of frustration results from balls pretty frequently being dropped on communication, IMO.
posted by atoxyl at 11:12 AM on December 22 [13 favorites]

Yes. A lot of the criticism of the site's administration and moderation is of the She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By The Sink variety. It seems like an overreaction if you don't know or ignore the history and context. I agree no one should be using abusive language in either direction, but there are only so many times over years and years one can keep saying the same thing, in response to the same mistakes and questions about how to fix or avoid those mistakes, without it eventually coming across with a rather short tone.
posted by lapis at 12:49 PM on December 22 [13 favorites]

My mistake. I was misspelling "Kattullus".
posted by NotLost at 2:08 PM on December 22 [3 favorites]

there's goes 5 minutes that I don't think you'd like to read but it all led to a working definition of smocking.

all is well within the realm.

LEON.
posted by clavdivs at 2:27 PM on December 22 [3 favorites]

B_Ghost_User: Calling what has happened here in MeTa either abuse or bullying is so, so offensive to someone who has seen actual abuse in their life

I take it that this is directed at me.

I was severely bullied as a kid, from about 9 years of age through 16. It took me decades to work my way towards self-acceptance, and even today I have suicidal ideation that began during that part of my life, though thankfully it’s rare and fleeting. Thanks to therapy and help from loved ones, I am mostly free of the chronic depression that marked most of my life.

Close family members and friends were bullied in childhood or as adults. Some of them killed themselves later, and I can’t help but think that I was more lucky than anything else in that I didn’t join that particular group. I mourn those loved ones every day.
posted by Kattullus at 2:34 PM on December 22 [10 favorites]

Of all sites to try to pull the "you wouldn't call this bullying if you had experienced bullying yourself" card...
posted by Bugbread at 3:14 PM on December 22 [9 favorites]

I think it’s worth trying to de-escalate things a bit here because I think everyone has good intentions. A lot of people here have had experience with bullying, some of it very serious and damaging. That may color their view of this situation in vastly different ways, and doesn’t necessarily mean they will react the same way to the same situation.
posted by knobknosher at 4:25 PM on December 22 [14 favorites]

A lot of the criticism of the site's administration and moderation is of the She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By The Sink variety.

One of the moments when I moved significantly closer to leaving my ex (which I did two years ago, after 29 years together) was when I sent him this article, hoping that it would get through to him when nothing I'd ever said to him did. His reply was, "I don't understand why you sent this to me."
posted by Well I never at 5:28 PM on December 22 [12 favorites]

Kattullus is not the only person to raise concerns about bullying, and I find the number of "well actually" responses to be disheartening. Some of the same people who have consistently used the strongest language to attack the mods appear poised to make decisions about the future of modding MeFi, please have the grace to listen when a long time member of the community who has consistently contributed (imo) a lot of great stuff, and in a respectful manner, shares concerns.
posted by ginger.beef at 7:38 PM on December 22 [11 favorites]

Perhaps they are listening, but they just disagree?
posted by Bugbread at 7:54 PM on December 22 [12 favorites]

How many times have people described the 'exhausting' lack of response/action from mods, I don't want to litigate whether multiple concerns raised about bullying are warranted. A positive sign about the future of modding MeFi doesn't resemble (this), surely?

I will be the first to say I think modding is harder than it looks, I haven't always appreciated all the mods' actions and decisions all the time, and at the same time a new way of modding this community may not improve things.
posted by ginger.beef at 8:01 PM on December 22 [2 favorites]

I'm going to try to say what I want to say briefly, but I'm godawful at brevity and I don't have a lot of time to condense so sorry for the length that could probably be cut from this.

First: I think bullying is a serious and terrible thing, and a pretty serious accusation, and opinions can legitimately vary but I really, really do not agree that it's a fair description of what's been going on. I think a lot of people have posted a lot of very serious, very thoughtful comments, in this and pretty much every other Meta policy/admin thread for probably the last decade, explaining why they've taken a critical approach. I don't think those are "well, actually"s. Yes, in addition to thoughtful stuff, there's also drive-by stuff, careless snark, inflammatory language. That is hardly restricted to any "side" here. To be honest, with some exceptions, I've overall found a lot more thought being put into the "here's why I'm critical of admin/modding" comments than the "here's why I'm critical of you critics" comments. So if you're reading this with a "people are so mean" perspective, I do urge you to try to notice and acknowledge the meaty stuff that is written in good faith, even if you disagree with it.

I'll also add that coming in in the middle of a discussion and being offended by one participant's angry tone is kind of unreasonable, because it's possible that if you'd been in their place and participating in the entire discussion, from the start, you'd have a similar tone yourself. There's no way to know without knowing the full context.

When it comes to users criticizing staff, part of the difficulty in getting to know that context is that what users do is totally visible. Someone makes an angry comment, and you can see it just by dipping briefly into a thread. It stands out. But much of what people are angry about is not very visible. In fact, one of the mod actions that has caused the most frustration over the years is silence. Silence in response to questions. Silence in place of promised updates and followups. Silence after bombshell moderation decisions. It's hard to see silence when you're just stopping by.

Missed deadlines (like, years' worth of missed deadlines) are hard to see if you're not following along. Broken promises are hard to see. Outright lies (doesn't happen a lot, I don't think, but it absolutely does happen and has happened recently) are hard to see. Obfuscation is hard to recognize when you don't know the context.

There was a comment here that described me as complaining, in this thread, about "administrative trivia". I looked over my comments here. What can I say - I can see how someone who has not been following along would see questions about the mod log or flagging changes as that.

I want to say that I'm taking a long break from Metatalk (not Metafilter in general). I don't feel great with how much of this thread was about me (although I think that's mostly on me since I gave that long answer to Katullus's comment, plus I've been probably too vocal here and in other threads, plus I'm verbose as hell) but that's not why - I've been trying to be less online for a while now, not so successfully, and it's New Year's resolution time and maybe this time it'll stick. I'm saying this publicly here in part so that the prospect of feeling like an idiot if I can't stay away will hopefully be a disincentive :-)

The other reason is to not give ambiguous impressions about the reason, and also because I did try in these threads (not always successfully, because I have been truly frustrated, but I tried) to balance out the more "mean" comments somewhat. It's funny because Metafilter has historically had a pretty strong consensus against tone arguments in theory, and I actually don't fully agree: I think both that it's bad (like, seriously bad) to ignore the meat of an argument because of its tone, but also that tone always affects how people interpret content - we're wired to be affected by it - and so it's worth trying to use it effectively. Not saying that I really succeeded at that (I definitely don't feel like I've been effective here) but that if you ever felt like my comments balanced out the overall tone, and if you felt the balance was helpful, then this is just to say I won't be doing that now so the "mean" stuff might stand out a bit more.


Finally: I said in this thread that I hope the nonprofit board, in their next update, will recognize and discuss the trust gap between users and mods, and how that gap was created and the frustration around it. I also said I was worried the members of the board do not understand the trust gap, the reasons, or the frustration.

That thread that 1adam12 started last month, where a lot of people were shocked by the aggressive response it got - that worried me, because the response was really predictable given the not-careful way the post was framed and the intense context it was dropped straight into.

Transparency, accountability, and communication are huge sore spots and have been for long enough to stretch a lot of people's patience to near a breaking point. I hope the new board will understand that because I want the new board to succeed. I think if they do not understand it, they're likely to unwittingly do problematic things and unwittingly fail to do important things. And in both cases I think the response will be predictably "mean" and frustrated and disappointed.

So to the board - if you see this - please: be transparent. Way more than you have been. I know you're volunteers with limited time but now you have employees who will hopefully be up to the task of helping you carry this out. Be accountable - we haven't seen real accountability in years. And communicate, again, more than you have been. I meant it when I said I'd bet a lot of people here don't even know who you are. There was even a whole subthread in the BND thread last week trying to figure out what still-active committees/boards actually exist and who is on them. Include the community, have public discussions where you listen to people. Encourage and act on publicly-offered input. Communicating with you shouldn't have to involve behind-the-scenes private emails (and there's been a lot of Meta discussion lately about why community discussion is important for a community site - hopefully you have been paying attention, and are well aware.)

In the last nonprofit thread, none of you answered the questions there after the first day. A single day. Again, volunteers, I know. But I think this will not lead to good results. And I think that will be predictable, and avoidable.

warriorqueen mentioned 6 months as a reasonable transition period. I agree. I hope in 6 months to be one of those people dropping by in Meta for the first time in a long time and shocked by - well, hopefully, how vibrant things are, how well-run things feel, how healthy the relationship between "management" and users seems to be.
posted by trig at 11:52 PM on December 22 [35 favorites]

Of all sites to try to pull the "you wouldn't call this bullying if you had experienced bullying yourself" card...

Nobody did that. Kattullus responded as if that were the case, but the person actually said that anyone who had experienced abuse would disagree, not bullying. Now whether you think the two things are equivalent somehow it's up to the reader, but it's mischaracterising the original statement to suggest it was explicitly about bullying.
posted by Dysk at 11:55 PM on December 22 [4 favorites]

ffs, I misspelled Kattullus too...
posted by trig at 12:00 AM on December 23 [1 favorite]

Dysk,

If they were separating abuse and bullying, then I misunderstood them and I apologize for mischaracterizing them. At the same time, if that's the case, I don't really understand the point of the comment. It becomes something like "Anyone who had experienced getting their hand slammed in a door would disagree that X felt like getting your foot burned on hot pavement." But, regardless of whether I think it makes sense, if they were distinguishing between abuse and bullying, then I misunderstood them and accidentally mischaracterized them, for which I apologize.
posted by Bugbread at 12:04 AM on December 23

I think the conflation of abuse & bullying was magnified by Melismata's comment which characterised the criticism of the mods as akin to dynamics within an abusive marriage.

Trig, count me as someone who rarely comments but is a long-standing reader of all MeFi sites, who has really appreciated your level headed comments and input. I'm sorry you're stepping back for the moment but hope to see you back on Meta soon.
posted by rosiroo at 12:34 AM on December 23 [18 favorites]

There was a comment here that described me as complaining, in this thread, about "administrative trivia". I looked over my comments here. What can I say - I can see how someone who has not been following along would see questions about the mod log or flagging changes as that.

For what it's worth, I meant every single time beyond the first few hundreds that you and many others have nagged, badgered, and belittled other human beings--e.g. you on Dec. 12, "I wouldn't say they're the only visible bad-decision maker"--about missing site updates, missed deadlines, apparent contradictions, use of time--e.g. you on Dec. 12, "how much of a mod's shift is spent on"--and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

It is not that I haven't been paying attention, because I have. Here's the context that may help: I truly don't care who owns Metafilter or how the day to day operations work. I do care when human beings, certainly including users affected by bad calls, get mistreated. But the paperwork, the site updates, the moderation log--it is all administrative trivia to me. If you care about it or cared, that's great--everyone needs some kind of passion. My feeling is--was--just figure out how to work through it without hounding anyone ... or else leave it alone. Would you have gotten here without hounding everyone endlessly? Who knows. But whatever point you reached, whether the site persisted or failed, you wouldn't have anyone thinking you ought to be ashamed of yourself for knowing you were hounding other human beings but continuing to do it anyway.

But that's not what happened.

I want to say that I'm taking a long break from Metatalk ... I don't feel great with how much of this thread was about me (although I think that's mostly on me since I gave that long answer to Katullus's comment, plus I've been probably too vocal here and in other threads, plus I'm verbose as hell) but that's not why - I've been trying to be less online for a while now, not so successfully ...

For my part, what I responded to was you being held up as someone who couldn't be viewed as a problem, and I definitely didn't disagree there were worse.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:41 AM on December 23 [3 favorites]

You’re pretty much hounding them at this point, man. They already left, maybe lay off a bit.
posted by knobknosher at 1:05 AM on December 23 [16 favorites]

Sure, if one single direct response to trig amounts to hounding, I hope the point isn't missed that you were the one who picked trig's contributions as the matter to discuss. I doubt I'd have ever mentioned trig otherwise. And if this is now the threshold of consideration we're aiming for, good--but also wow, how much that ought to put the last couple years into perspective.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:14 AM on December 23 [2 favorites]

It kinda does, in the context of this thread and your further four comments about trig in their presence.
posted by Dysk at 1:29 AM on December 23 [13 favorites]

My apologies to trig. I am sure I could have picked someone else, and I did hear you on that preference for a break--which was plenty of signal to move on.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:54 AM on December 23

Trig has commented a lot here. But all of their questions were ones I had too.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:30 AM on December 23 [20 favorites]

It's funny because Metafilter has historically had a pretty strong consensus against tone arguments in theory[...]

I've tried a few times recently to get a comment about this jotted down, but I've never managed to finish one and post it, so I'm using this quote just as a place to hang these thoughts (despite it being from someone who's said they're trying to step away from the thread now):

If there's been a (not quite firm) consensus against 'tone arguments,' I think that's been specifically in the context of racism, sexism, transphobia, etc., where the point is that tone policing is a tool the dominant culture uses to find yet one more reason to dismiss the grievances of people who have been both historically and presently wronged. An implicit "Oh, if only you could be nice about it, stop getting so mad about it, maybe we'd stop using slurs (etc.) at your expense, but you know what, you just sound crazy right now."

But...I just don't think it's legit to take such a framework and employ it in the service of...[specific list deleted, because I don't want it to sound like I'm belittling anything], but even if the complaints included literal theft of funds I'm not sure that would rise to the same level, where we'd decide as a community: hey, this is a serious justice issue, and we're going to make a serious effort to avoid criticizing any anger it naturally engenders.

(Taking a step further back, sometimes it feels like one of the things that might separate various people here is whether or not you're intuiting, on a gut level, that potential mismanagement of user-donated funds is or isn't inherently a question of justice. Or, about other issues now, whether you intuit, on a gut level, mods/staff to be a source of power and authority, and yourselves as subject to that power and authority. But I get that most of the people who have been the most vocal just want to see everything run well, and just want to see the site keep on surviving. I do too.)
posted by nobody at 6:20 AM on December 23 [2 favorites]

(probably should have skipped that last paragraph; the only point I really wanted to make was in the rest.)
posted by nobody at 6:36 AM on December 23

Bugbread: I did only make my comment in reference to abuse, not bullying specifically. It was rather funny watching a mini-pile on occur as a result.

*creepy hallway noises, ghostly chains rattling*
posted by B_Ghost_User at 8:05 AM on December 23 [3 favorites]

It was rather funny watching a mini-pile on occur as a result.

... like when Don Knotts moved into the haunted house.
posted by clavdivs at 10:35 AM on December 23 [3 favorites]

From 20 years of being on metafilter I've learned that making my point will lead to no enlightenment.

But I think basic human decency is a bridge worth dying on:

When I basically say "don't be a dick to the staff, they don't have a choice in dealing with you" the response is about how tone arguments = patriarchy = bad. And you being a dick is ultimately for the betterment of all.
It's verbally complex but intuïtevely obviously wrong.

I can't stop you. But I don't want to be around you.
posted by jouke at 10:55 AM on December 23 [11 favorites]

And you being a dick is ultimately for the betterment of all.

my basic line these days is, the means are the end*

In other words, if you resort to dickish means to achieve your ends, don't be surprised if you end up in a dickish place, however benevolent your intentions.



* except in war. It's impossible to avoid extreme means in war. Metafilter is not war.
posted by philip-random at 12:36 PM on December 23 [4 favorites]

I really appreciate the thoughtful comments, and I’m heartened by how the discussion is evolving. But there’s something important that I feel most people are missing.

Bullying is a group dynamic. For example, in workplace bullying, there isn’t a workplace bully who does all the bullying. What happens is that a narrative takes hold within a group that is part of a community, and that narrative justifies why it is okay to treat certain people poorly.

To understand bullying, you have to think about it from the perspective of the bullied. From skimming old threads, I’d hazard a guess that in the last year there has been, on average, at least one comment per day telling them that they’re useless, bad at their jobs, failures, and so on and so forth. Think about being at work for a whole year, and hearing 365 times that you’re worthless. That is a difficult place to work in.

Yes, some days there were no insults, and some days had a lot of them, but still, it is not good for anybody to hear, over and over again, that they are not only incompetent, but harmful to the community to which they belong. Even if they do get praised from time to time.

As an aside, I just want to say that the reasons given for these comments, in this thread and elsewhere, make little sense to me. There’s talk of missed deadlines, of silence, of flags, and so forth, and none of that rises to the point that people should hear 365 times a year that they’re worthless.

The post by 1adam12 was eye opening to me not because I thought that everyone was angry at him, but because a minor statement in the post led to a storm of replies, many intemperate, which he then had to wade through to get answers to his question.

This is something the staff have had to deal with, that some fairly random issue can lead to a large amount of angry replies directed at them. That is a difficult working environment.

No individual MeFite has told the staff that they’re worthless 365 times in the last year. And that’s worse. It’s coming from a group of people, who all firmly believe that the staff are worthless. When it’s one person constantly criticizing you, it’s easier to compartmentalize than when it’s a group of people.

Another important point to keep in mind, is that the people inside the group dynamic are behaving rationally, according to the narrative. If you believe that the staff are useless and harmful, then it’s perfectly normal to tell them that. It’s perfectly normal to say that they need to perform better, that they need to change their ways to fix the problem.

I want to use as one example something that warriorqueen wrote. I don’t choose it because it’s egregious, or given in bad faith. I choose because it is small, and because it came from a MeFite who is a thoughtful, considerate member of this community.

When warriorqueen assigned the power to affect how discussions in the community go, the split was 75% on the staff, and 25% on the members of the community. Whatever the members of the community have done, it is a minor issue, literally just a quarter, because we ultimately only have the power to affect things at the margins.

From inside the group narrative that the MetaFilter staff are terrible at their jobs, this is a very reasonable statement to make. From outside that narrative, from where I’m standing, this is a bewildering assertion. I had to read it multiple times to understand what was being said there, and I’m honestly not sure I understand it still.

Because as I read it, this takes responsibility for our behavior away from the community as a whole, and places it on the staff. And by making the staff uniquely responsible for the whole, it serves to isolate the staff from the community, making them out to be categorically different from us. It makes them not us.

As a member of this community, I am responsible to the other people in the community, and for the members of this community. The staff are members of the community. They are MeFites. They are us. We have a responsibility to everyone in the community, we have a responsibility to ourselves. On MetaFilter we cannot operate from the assumption that there are MeFites who should be considered categorically other. We are responsible to each other, and for each other.

We are us. All MeFites are us.
posted by Kattullus at 12:40 PM on December 23 [20 favorites]

Although I have rarely commented on these contentious MetaTalk threads, I have read every single one of them, and I just want to say that I have also found trig to be consistently thoughtful presence in these threads whose comments I have generally agreed with.

Also warriorqueen's comments in these threads have been so incredibly helpful and enlightening in these MeTas around frustration with mods/admin stuff.

And while I'm handing out "kudos", I get where all the frustration with current mods/administration is coming from, and I agree with it, but I also have to say that I have appreciated Brandon Blatcher's continued participation in these threads. Sure, he's made some screw ups, but he's the newest mod (I think? With so few mods hanging out in MeTa, I feel like I barely know who they are), and I really appreciate having him around here. BB reminds me most of the modding we used to have - mods who are actively engaged in the site, recognizable users, who engage in MeTa.

I think the general users vs mods vibe in MeTa is a natural result of how things have been handled on the mod/admin side, and I really hope to see things change for the better as the nonprofit gets going in the new year.
posted by litera scripta manet at 12:49 PM on December 23 [17 favorites]

As a data point the kind of abuse I experienced growing up was the kind where people are nice as pie to your face and especially in public and then ignore and neglect you to death (luv 2 WASP), so we all have a perspective I guess.
posted by phunniemee at 1:05 PM on December 23 [9 favorites]

And by making the staff uniquely responsible for the whole, it serves to isolate the staff from the community, making them out to be categorically different from us.

The mods are categorically different.

In the current configuration, the mods have the power to ban users, delete words (the only means users have to communicate to the rest of the community), run or refuse to run a fundraiser (the only means users have to raise money collectively), publish or refuse to publish the minutes to a meeting (the only means users have to communicate their findings in a "community capacity" to other users). That's a lot of power, and they are being well-compensated for it, to the tune of ~$250k user-donated dollars/year. Jessamyn disavowed her leadership role here from the start, leaving the mods with no accountability other than community pressure applied in these threads just recently.

So not only don't I think Trig and other commenters here were bullying the mods, I think the community as a whole was too nice to speak up for too long.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:11 PM on December 23 [27 favorites]

Yeah, all I can really say is that reading that, I'm forced to conclude that Kattullus interacts with the world in a VERY different way than I do, that I respect that, but I have no desire or intention to see the world in that way. We clearly have very different expectations of society.
posted by bowbeacon at 1:14 PM on December 23 [6 favorites]

Because as I read it, this takes responsibility for our behavior away from the community as a whole, and places it on the staff

I missed the original comment referenced but I do agree that the biggest issues on the site are down to users more than staff as a whole (this was kind of the spirit of my original comment). But there is subset of issues that’s only staff because they are issues with staff-only functions.

The staff are members of the community. They are MeFites

I articulated something a couple of times in a couple of other threads but I’ll say it once more here - I think this feels less true now for reasons that are not wholly the responsibility of users. And I don’t meant that it’s anything sinister - in fact when the site hired two mods from outside the community entirely a few years back, I took it as a deliberate experiment in the face of some previous mods getting overly personally involved in a way that wasn’t good for them or for the users. But I think it’s a fact that some mods are largely invisible as community members at this point, and unsurprising that people start viewing them more as employees. I don’t really know what to do about that, and I’m certainly not saying that it’s okay to be an asshole to front-line employees over the organization being dysfunctional, either, but I think some of the commenters criticizing the critics could stand to be more charitable about recognizing that people have legitimate frustrations, that as mean as it is to say that a specific individual is bad at their job, sometimes a job is done badly and people have to be allowed to express that somehow, and that people have generally been directed to file their concerns with the Nowhere Department. I am hopeful that having an explicitly community-involved governance structure will alleviate this fundamental issue.
posted by atoxyl at 1:16 PM on December 23 [17 favorites]

The post by 1adam12 was eye opening to me not because I thought that everyone was angry at him, but because a minor statement in the post led to a storm of replies, many intemperate, which he then had to wade through to get answers to his question.

I also agree with this view of how these threads can feel (and said as much in my narration of that particular thread) but one of my takeaways is that the way the site works exacerbates this (especially with every MeTa being a megathread, we’ll see what effect letting more posts through has). Which is something that makes the accusation of bullying seem a little unfair, that I think you can have a lot of people individually being reasonable enough but that the long scroll of criticism feels like a pile-on anyway.
posted by atoxyl at 1:25 PM on December 23 [8 favorites]

Somewhat aside from the issue of whether or not the mods are being bullied, I've seen a few different things being stated as essential elements of bullying which I don't think are.

On the "this isn't bullying because" side, I've seen that bullying requires power, so a powerless person can't be bullied. I don't think this is true, because I've seen bullying in real life without any sort of power. There was a kid on my school bus who people nicknamed "Jeremy Decker, the red-headed woodpecker" (I have no idea why we considered this such an insult, but we were little kids). He was absolutely bullied, teased constantly. Were the kids bullying him physically stronger than him? No. Older? No. Richer? No. Have powerfully connected parents like some 1980s movie? No. Literally zero power imbalance, but it was clearly bullying anyway. I guess if you were dead-set on declaring there to be a power imbalance, then you could say "well, the other kids had the power of numbers" but if that's the case, then the "this isn't bullying because MeFi users have no power" argument doesn't really hold, because users have the power of numbers. But it brings me to the next "bullying is..." definition that I disagree with.

On the "this is bullying" side, it has been stated that "bullying is a group dynamic." I don't think this is necessarily true, either, because I (and everyone else on my street) experienced bullying from a single kid. Curtis used to pick fights with us at the bus stop constantly. You'd be at the bus stop talking with a friend and he'd walk up and be like, "What'd you say about my mother?" (Note: literally none of us ever said anything about his mother, he was just very bad at making up convincing intros to fights) We'd all be like "Nothing, I promise, I didn't say anything about your mother" but he'd just amp himself up "Don't be talking about my fucking family you f****t, I'll fuck you up" and we'd apologize and then eventually he'd get you in a headlock or punch you or both. He was a big, strong kid, so it didn't matter that there were three or four of us and one of him, even if we tried to gang up on him, we'd lose, and we knew that if we showed the temerity to fight back, that would just enrage him more and it would amp up. Since it's Christmas, think of Scott Farkus in "A Christmas Story." Definitely a bully, by any definition, but it's not because of Grover Dill (his sidekick). If Grover Dill moved to another neighborhood, it doesn't mean that Scott Farkus beating up the neighborhood kids would no longer be bullying, it would just make him a solo bully, like my neighborhood's Curtis.

Again, not super-related to whether or not this particular MeFi dynamic is bullying. It just kind of stuck in my mind that people were saying that this was or wasn't bullying because of some particular requirements of bullying which I don't think are actual requirements.
posted by Bugbread at 1:33 PM on December 23 [4 favorites]

Bullying is a group dynamic.

serves to isolate the staff from the community, making them out to be categorically different from us

The staff totally are different in a lot of ways. They are paid to work for the site. They have some responsibilities that they can follow through on or not. (And, unusually for most jobs, these responsibilities are largely self-determined and self-monitored since there is no management structure here.) They can delete your comments for good or bad reasons. They can lie about what you said after deleting your comments, etc.

There are a handful of staff and many more users. The fact that some portion of users notices and comments on the same shortcomings of the staff is totally natural and not an indication of bullying. If anything, the group dynamic is that many people are justifiably disappointed with the management of the site. Sometimes many people disagree with specific mod actions. There's nothing weird about that. It's not bullying just because many people feel the same way.
posted by snofoam at 1:46 PM on December 23 [13 favorites]

When warriorqueen assigned the power to affect how discussions in the community go, the split was 75% on the staff, and 25% on the members of the community. Whatever the members of the community have done, it is a minor issue, literally just a quarter, because we ultimately only have the power to affect things at the margins.

Well first Kattullus, I'm sorry you were bullied as a youth. I was too; I actually have a couple of physical scars and was removed from a classroom for three months (I spent it in the library) because that was how the school supposedly kept me safe. It really sucks.

In my life, one reason I worked in martial arts professionally was because I found something that empowered me on a physical level that I never had been. I also saw how you can set up an environment where you are literally hitting each other which absolutely has not just zero tolerance for bullying, but is so consistent that bullying at the dojo becomes almost unthinkable. I actually experienced something similar at a really good summer camp, although the controls were less and a bit more social stuff went on. (I'm not suggesting that you can achieve in an online environment what you can at a martial arts academy but...I also think you can try.)

And it's because of that experience in part -- but also in online environments - that I don't see an organization like MetaFilter simply as individuals relating to individuals. I see it as a discussion environment, and the staff have a lot of power to impact on that environment. Some examples are - and these are non-comprehensive:

Technological
- Metafilter is specifically constructed without threaded comments, with favourites but not down votes, and with user names of favourites visible. All of these things lead to different dynamics; I know who has favourited my comments
- MetaFilter also does not have a block/hide function except I think by tags in specific areas; members cannot block other members
- staff can disable their MeMail (I don't think I can but maybe I can?)
- staff can install language filters like the one that prevents words
- meeting accessibility standards or not has a huge impact

Constructive
- staff can comment early in threads and say how they want things to go - this tends to have more weight with the staff tag but is probably the closest to member power
- staff can add comments in the staff comment box which highlights them and gives them weight
- staff can change the rules and have - examples include allowing more chatfilter in AskMe, the free threads on the blue, etc. They can also say no I/P discussions, or discussions only in particular threads.
- staff can highlight expectations and enforce that through deletions like for example not misgendering people
- staff can declare sites 'forbidden' for example, not linking to right-wing sites

Punitive
- staff can ban people. In fact, someone was permabanned - they actually closed their account but they were initially not allowed to open another account and eventually re-banned - for calling for a resignation.
- staff can give people a time out and delete their comments as they did in the Global BIPOC thread
- staff can delete posts and comments, silently or with notes - silent deletion + not allowing a post through the queue led to nouvelle_personne's final buttoning
- staff can close threads
- staff can not approve posts coming through the queue

Some things staff could do around recent discussions include:
- they could maintain a proper and up-to-date list of who staff are, who the volunteers are, and everyone's roles prominently on the site. Admittedly Adam and any volunteers also could post that more clearly in their posts and include a standard paragraph at the bottom of Interim Committee posts explaining briefly what the committee is and who's on it - just basic coms stuff. The information on this site is so old, including the wiki and the footer, that this causes a lot of confusion that becomes acerbic fast.

- staff could maintain a visible list of what's being worked on and where it's at and who is in charge, which would help a lot with accountability - I am a bit neutral on this one because I don't think there would under normal operations with a leader need to be that level of visibility into things. But that would remove the need for people to ask, or at least for people to answer beyond "check the list"

- staff could also be clear when something is not on the table - the recent queue discussion is an interesting one because it seems to have changed, but the original comment was "no change to the queue." I'll note that in this case the staff just trained everyone that if they say it's not happening and people kick up enough fuss, it might happen. I personally think that being responsive does mean changing one's mind sometimes, but frankly that pattern did reward pushback.

I would argue staff have even more power than that, a whack of soft power, deciding which kinds of posts are added to the sidebar and the blog, inviting off-site experts to post officially, creating log in environments that encourage participation, creating rules or codes of conduct...all kinds of things. The creation of the BIPOC committee, listening to them or not, compensating them or not.

When it comes to money and resources there's even more possibilities. Removing or adding coverage. Advertising, tech platforms, etc.

And all of this is before we discuss them emailing/MeMailing people with corrections or encouragement.

Members do have power to influence discussion for sure. I don't think 25% is nothing - I think it's a critical 25%. But if the staff suddenly changed all the technology, things would change really rapidly.

Also, bottom line - if the staff decide I'm a problem, they can ban me. They just banned two people who complained about them, one permanently and one temporarily who was then un-banned and apologized to - whether you agree that it was a good decision or not, they were able to do so.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:19 PM on December 23 [19 favorites]

Kattulus, thank you for your comment. I very much agree with you and am glad you spoke up.
I tried to express my concerns in the October Update thread but since gave up, yet it really upsets me how aggression is justified and any push back belittled.
And yes, i daily read the Grey and have for years. all the threads and comments.
One of the reasons i comment here right now is because several times comments were made that if only people read all threads on the grey they would come to the conclusion the aggression towards the mods and jessamyn was justified.
Well, no, i don't agree. I simply rarely comment because i am not as brave as for example Kattulus.
posted by 15L06 at 2:24 PM on December 23 [8 favorites]

And, to separate it out, I'm going to say again that when you have a public-facing internet job, criticism is a part of the job. That doesn't mean there aren't limits and yeah, there have been things said in this thread that if I were The Manager, I would say hey, uncool, cut that out please. But criticism itself is as much part of the job as spam and people drunk-posting and losing their passwords.

You can shut it down more, but not to was a decision clearly made by matthowie, cortex, and jessamyn back in the thread that was referenced in the queue thread right here - and in creating MetaTalk itself. The staff could shut that down tomorrow and then they'd probably get all the critique in their email boxes instead, or be taking it out of the blue and the green etc.

I really don't understand why some people want to ignore the power dynamics of the site, but for me, that honestly reads as less healthy - pretending we're all the same, when that's not the case. There are a few things I would love to change, but I have zero power to do so.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:31 PM on December 23 [17 favorites]

And I'll also say that this is the comment I agree with most in this thread: I think the framing of "sides" and "groups" might be part of the problem. Just my two cents!

I think it's kind of lousy to group people who are expressing concern with the health of the site or moderation with bullying, especially in light of some of the decisions lately. But that's how the 'net and frankly MetaFilter go a lot lately; you're in or out according to some yardstick. That is something that frequently drives me further away from participating here.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:37 PM on December 23 [16 favorites]

I've also been reading along on every one of these threads going way, way back. I mostly lurk (as is my way) because generally other folks have already responded with reactions or thoughts similar to mine and have articulated it better than I would have.

But I've been taking a break from participating (except occasionally in Ask) because it also feels a lot meaner around here to me, and while some of that perception is me and my personal baggage, it's not all just me. I know I would just get shouted down for speaking up and expressing my discomfort, because I've seen it happen over and over again and I don't *want* to button and walk away like so many of my friends have.

So I'm waiting for the transition, hoping the new team and site gets a real chance at surviving through this, and sitting in my uncomfortable reactions to the conversations instead of participating because I'm afraid of all that attention turning on me, and having people yell at me, too.
posted by ApathyGirl at 2:37 PM on December 23 [5 favorites]

Well today I got yelled at ApathyGirl,* so can't disagree with you.

*It's hard to take Kattullus's statement about what I said as anything but them deciding that I'm a bully, and that sucks, but c'est la vie here.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:39 PM on December 23 [7 favorites]

If you identify as a bully please favorite this comment.
posted by phunniemee at 2:59 PM on December 23 [4 favorites]

If you identify as not-a-bully please favorite this comment.
posted by phunniemee at 2:59 PM on December 23 [2 favorites]

Thank you. Both lists will be submitted to the interim board for adjudication. The group deemed unworthy will be executed banned. Ladies, theybies, and gentleman: let the 76th hunger games commence.

Honestly this has all become completely absurd. If we ever get time machine technology, I am betting big money dollars that like 85% of this spiral to madness would not have happened if loup had come back on October 26th and said some version of "you know what folks, I got way ahead of myself here in planning. The Halloween Gala isn't going to happen. Will revisit this once I get my feet back under me." People understand "shit happens, my bad."

I believe the refusal to engage at all with the Halloween Gala snafu was the final and most visible straw in a series of instances of avoidance, obfuscation, and broken promises and folks got fed up.
posted by phunniemee at 2:59 PM on December 23 [22 favorites]

I think you're trying to lighten the mood, phunniemee, and point out few will agree to see themselves as fundamentally perfect or fundamentally imperfect, but I wonder if you've missed a chance to absolutely rack up favorites with options for 'wish staff had been treated better' and 'wish users had been treated better' where I hope most people would be able to check both boxes.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:20 PM on December 23 [6 favorites]

warriorqueen: It's hard to take Kattullus's statement about what I said as anything but them deciding that I'm a bully, and that sucks, but c'est la vie here.

I don’t think you’re a bully. I’ve been reading your comments on this site for years, and you are thoughtful and considerate. And I appreciate your kind words about my past bullying, and I’m sad and sorry that you’ve experienced bullying too.

I think everyone here is acting in good faith. It’s really obvious to me that people are coming from a place of real concern about MetaFilter.

What I want to really harp on, is that bullying is only really apparent when you think about it from the perspective of the bullied. It’s very rare that anyone sets out to bully. And no one here did.

However, for the staff, reading hundreds of comments a year that they’re worthless, is difficult. To me, and this thread has made me realize that opinions differ, that is clearly workplace bullying.

I’m not saying that they should never be criticized, I think everyone agrees that’s part of the job. Being criticized is part of being in a community.

The staff are doing a job for us, the community, and I completely agree with you that they have special responsibilities to the other members of the community. But I feel that we who aren’t staff also have a responsibility to them. We can, and should, disagree with them, but we shouldn’t tell them over and over that they’re useless at their jobs.

My main concern is that a narrative has taken hold, which justifies calling the staff worthless. I don’t think that narrative is describing reality.

I admit I haven’t been taking part in MetaTalk as much as I should have, and I feel ashamed of that. But nothing that I have read, either in this thread, or the previous threads, makes me feel that the staff deserve receiving hundreds of messages a year telling them that they are useless.

That’s just way too much. I know we disagree on many things, and I really appreciate that you took the time to explain your thoughts on this issue, but I think we can agree on that.

Thank you and everyone else for engaging so sincerely on this. Without really realizing it, I had become fairly cynical about MetaTalk, and this thread has shown me that my cynicism was unwarranted.
posted by Kattullus at 3:21 PM on December 23 [9 favorites]

I agree with Kattullus; I think the dynamic on MeTa has become poisonous.

A few thoughts:

1. MeTa has always been a contentious place where angry outbursts, extreme rhetoric, bannings, and buttonings have been central features.

2. From that base, things have gotten a lot worse in the last few years, I think driven in part by the continual firehose of terrible news we are barraged with. People are on edge and on their last nerve, so they get mad more quickly, and they take it out on targets who they feel they can hurt (consciously or not). This is how stressed people are.

3. I have backed away from MeTa over the past couple of years because I get plenty of aggravation at work and I come to this site for some fun and some serious reading, not to fight with people. Additionally, the rhetoric has become significantly worse over time. I think that a lot of current "MeTa habitues" have been absorbing the escalation and don't really notice how extreme it's gotten. Then, when people come into a given thread and are aghast, the others don't understand why. They are trying to improve the site, after all.

4. People have a right to be grumpy about slow progress, dropped initiatives, broken promises, and the like, and a lot of these things have been happening too often for too long for people to relax. But the answer can't be an escalating spiral of angry invective. One things mods are pretty good at is pointing out when a dogpile gets out of hand, but they can't very well do that when they are the ones getting dogpiled.

5. MeTa has gotten way too free with the bad tempered snark. It was always an annoying distraction, but cruel one-liners are common; I see them in most threads, and they make everything feel worse.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but more hostility and invective can't be it. I remember a few times in my childhood getting drawn into group bullying, much to my shame, and I think Kattullus called it right.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:28 PM on December 23 [18 favorites]

I'm not sure what the answer is

The answer is what is finally happening: management, oversight, and an administration separate from the mods who will actually be empowered to do something. Anything.
posted by bowbeacon at 3:31 PM on December 23 [22 favorites]

Well today I got yelled at ApathyGirl,* so can't disagree with you.

*It's hard to take Kattullus's statement about what I said as anything but them deciding that I'm a bully, and that sucks, but c'est la vie here.

I didn’t have a “yelling” read of that exchange at all, warriorqueen — and Kattullus’ follow up suggests none was meant. If we’re going to take the position that constructive criticism is helpful and necessary, it’s better not to read heat into statements where a more charitable explanation is present (easier said than done, I know). Your words carry weight for a lot of reasons — you’re insightful, you have relevant industry experience, and you were involved with the transition team. Kattullus engaging with the best of the critics instead of the most poorly behaved ones is actually the better way to move forward a conversation about who we want to be.
posted by eirias at 3:37 PM on December 23 [7 favorites]

For sure eirias, and thank you for the follow up Kattullus but - the thing is when someone just starts talking about bullying, and doesn't specify people or behaviours and instead about "narratives" when you're on the end of the narrative that is kind of like "hey this wasn't cool," it does read that way.

At my academy, one thing we don't let young staff do is talk about kids as bullies, because it's not meaningful with kids - and it also doesn't help them understand what that means. We say "hey, we don't ____ here." To me, that's a meaningful conversation. "Hey, you're a bully" is...not. Like there are points in life to say that but they are pretty rare.

I get why people haven't engaged with comments as they've come in - and I think that again speaks to staff power here; as members we are essentially trained NOT to take things up with people directly, a la 'flag and move on." But another thing we do both there and in my current workplace is address behaviours right away. I don't expect that the members here talking about bullying would necessarily do that, but leaving it for weeks and then expressing that people are bullies in broad general terms makes it really hard to understand what exactly is perceived as the problem.

Right now, I'm left with any critique of the mods is a dark, bullying narrative. I'll reread the thread at another time for sure and see if I change my mind, but that's the way it is coming across to me.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:45 PM on December 23 [16 favorites]

Also, I agree with this: We can, and should, disagree with them, but we shouldn’t tell them over and over that they’re useless at their jobs.

However, I don't see hundreds of comments saying that. I definitely have seen a few. But nothing like hundreds. I might go check at some point but not Xmas week.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:47 PM on December 23 [8 favorites]

I think it's kind of lousy to group people who are expressing concern with the health of the site or moderation with bullying

Speaking for myself, I don't care for this phrasing. The way some have chosen to express concern is what some of us have commented on. People have used terms like harrassment and bullying to characterize some of the activity over the last while. Some of us who have mentioned tone have our own ideas about site health, modding choices and communication, etc. It's a mistake to cleave that into groups. At no time have I seen a blanket statement from anyone: all you people with concerns are bullies. Nor did I feel it was implied in any comments.

People seem to care about MeFi and that's a good starting point along with some of the positive signs over the past few days.
posted by ginger.beef at 3:48 PM on December 23 [2 favorites]

Okay Kattullus, you know what, sorry, no, gonna have to hit pause for a moment.

I was on board for the everyone brings a different experience to this and is going to read this in a different way thing, sure no problem. And yes, I am often harsh, no argument. (Also petty! And a smart ass! My credentials are unassailable!) But you have now in two separate comments stressed that the big ol meanies of metatalk have been calling the mods "worthless" and "useless":

in the last year there has been, on average, at least one comment per day telling them that they’re useless, bad at their jobs, failures, and so on and so forth. Think about being at work for a whole year, and hearing 365 times that you’re worthless

staff... receiving hundreds of messages a year telling them that they are useless

we shouldn’t tell them over and over that they’re useless at their jobs

Wow, that's pretty strong language! And you are completely correct that repeatedly calling these folks useless and worthless would be quite shitty. I've been in most of these threads and I don't remember that being the case at all. But maybe I was wrong?

So I went and checked. Back all the way to September, through all of the threads that were mefi-related or got hot. No one is saying this. Literally nobody has said that the mods are worthless or useless, at any point in the last fiscal quarter, full stop.

If you want to have the moral high ground, you don't get to slander dozens of people to do it.

For those playing the home game, eirias is "useless" at legal paperwork and praemunire notes that the actions of the moderation team treated nouvelle_personne as if they are "worthless" to metafilter.
posted by phunniemee at 3:50 PM on December 23 [22 favorites]

I'm prepared to have a rethink, but for clarity, this is the statement to which I'm referring:

From inside the group narrative that the MetaFilter staff are terrible at their jobs, this is a very reasonable statement to make. From outside that narrative, from where I’m standing, this is a bewildering assertion.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:58 PM on December 23 [2 favorites]

I believe the refusal to engage at all with the Halloween Gala snafu was the final and most visible straw in a series of instances of avoidance, obfuscation, and broken promises and folks got fed up.

The Halloween Gala and the Pet Tax Wall really are MetaFilter’s version of “I can’t believe she divorced me over the dishes” aren’t they?
posted by atoxyl at 4:13 PM on December 23 [9 favorites]

Literally nobody has said that the mods are worthless or useless

empirical evidence that the $250,000 spent on metafilter each year is not a waste and has a verifiable use.
posted by clavdivs at 4:25 PM on December 23 [4 favorites]

I’m not worthless or useless, but if you put me in charge of cooking Christmas dinner everyone involved would be unhappy. And reasonably so.
posted by knobknosher at 5:37 PM on December 23 [6 favorites]

We can, and should, disagree with them, but we shouldn’t tell them over and over that they’re useless at their jobs.

Agree to disagree? Everyone has value, but that doesn’t have to be tied to their ability to do their job. People could be great at some things but fail miserably at others. In a perfect world, we would all realize when we weren’t in the right place, but I have often slogged along far too long before changing jobs or making some other life choice. Not having a competent decision maker is actually just as bad, or maybe worse, for employees that aren’t a good fit as it is for a community that is collapsing due to mismanagement.
posted by snofoam at 5:37 PM on December 23 [6 favorites]

in this whole discussion i would in the main rather read than participate --- my feelings aren't neutral but i'd rather indicate them with the odd favourite because i have rarely followed the ins and outs of mefi governance/management closely enough to have a defensible opinion except regarding very specific decisions where i've felt directly affected. this all being said, i would like to ask in a spirit of genuine neutral curiosity: what in the actual zoological fuck is a Pet Tax and why is it on the wall? i keep seeing references to this, IIRC i have seen the thread where it was introduced/promoted, and i still haven't a clue. #pleaseanswer
posted by busted_crayons at 5:41 PM on December 23 [6 favorites]

The 'what' is this.

The 'why' is a great question.
posted by Diskeater at 5:51 PM on December 23 [9 favorites]

what in the actual zoological fuck is a Pet Tax and why is it on the wall

Definitional answer: the pet tax is an internet meme with a goal of seeing people's cute pets. Ask a question about your cat's weird litter box habits? Better pay the cat tax and post a picture of the cutie. Here I am paying the dog tax. Etc. The Pet Tax Wall in theory was an opportunity for many mefites to share photos of their critters, which would then be collaged into a print/poster/something to put on the wall, which would then be auctioned (?) off as a fundraising initiative.

Literal answer: this

Contextual answer.
posted by phunniemee at 5:52 PM on December 23 [3 favorites]

Ask a question about your cat's weird litter box habits?

I could post an AskMe but we brought a stray in, he's lovely, but I swear to god he has a little backhoe hidden somewhere and he empties half the litterbox doing his business. How do you train a cat out of that?
posted by ginger.beef at 6:07 PM on December 23 [4 favorites]

mike and mary anne are rad. i'd totally forgotten about mike mulligan. maybe they'll be the ones to build the Pet Tax Wall. and get MeFiCo to pay for it.
posted by busted_crayons at 7:33 PM on December 23 [3 favorites]

mike and mary anne?
posted by NotLost at 7:43 PM on December 23

The answer is what is finally happening: management, oversight, and an administration separate from the mods who will actually be empowered to do something.

I'm extremely happy to learn about the transfer of ownership from the LLC to the community foundation and hope this leads ASAP to some semblance of management structure. The lack of guidance and direction to staff over the past few months has been deeply unfair to them and to users. Once someone with authority--call them a manager, executive director, or whatever--is in place, they can begin to turn things around by clarify roles, expectations, and performance metrics, and hopefully begin the process of re-establishing trust on both sides.

The levels of frustration in some MeTas, and the ongoing, public negative performance reviews of the site and some of the staff have made me deeply uncomfortable over the past few weeks. It can't be fun to be on the receiving end of that kind of commentary. However, the best way to avoid being called out for poor policy, bizarre priorities and missed deadlines is sound policy, clear priorities, and met deadlines.

Once the community starts to see those, I'm confident the atmosphere will improve as we all want this place to succeed. I'm very glad we're on the way.
posted by rpfields at 7:45 PM on December 23 [15 favorites]

mike and mary anne?
posted by NotLost

A illustrated allusion of a mechanistic system in transition and retirement with human traits interlaced with continuance after economic factors that shift specific means of production power source.

what is little known is that Mike and Maryanne, while enjoying the many visitors, secretly plotted to have electrical strip mining machines the size of Rhode Island then created a whole new submarket for scrap metal down the road.

With the Advent of the atlas rocket, Maryanne secretly plotted, with a group of nuclear engineers and scientists to look beyond Earth, to-the-Stars to form a mining consortium, Mullianne Mining corp.
posted by clavdivs at 9:01 PM on December 23 [6 favorites]

what in the actual zoological fuck is a Pet Tax and why is it on the wall

it was a silly fundraiser thing that involved collecting photos of members’ pets and putting them on a poster and selling it through a print-on-demand shop, to raise funds

but as a result of its delayed release and a comment that appeared to cite it as holding up other fundraiser business, it became a symbol of the site’s ability to set a low bar, yet not clear it, and thus a snarky in-joke
posted by atoxyl at 9:28 PM on December 23 [6 favorites]

Mary Anne is the boy. Mike Mulligan is the steam shovel.

the pet tax wall is the ramp out of the cellar.
posted by glonous keming at 9:34 PM on December 23 [3 favorites]

NotLost: I was as puzzled as you were, but it turns out it's an old children's book.
posted by Bugbread at 1:03 AM on December 24 [4 favorites]

Here in Finland the “Yuletide Peace” was declared at noon. It’s a custom dating back to medieval times, that an official of the city of Turku, the old capital, reads a declaration to a gathered multitude on the main square, which says: “In God’s holy name, no stabbing each other with swords, Jeezy Chreezy on a holy jet ski, it’s Xmas already, okay, or you’ll get no desert and there will be no presents, capiche” (this is a paraphrase).

Anyway, I had kind of promised myself that I’d leave MetaTalk well enough alone during the Yuletide Peace, but I want to reply to two good points raised by phunniemee and warriorqueen.

I should’ve been clearer in my language. I didn’t mean that people had said literally that the staff were “worthless” and “useless”, but I was collating a lot of disparate comments, for example calls for resignations, or statements to the effect that the staff are responsible for whatever is wrong with MetaFilter, or simply that they’re bad at their jobs. To me, if I were confronted by hundreds of messages like that over the course of a year, or even just dozens, I would take them to mean that I was useless at my job, and my self-worth would take a hit.

Again, I don’t doubt that every one of those comments were offered in good faith. However, I think they’re based on a narrative that has a life of its own, which doesn’t conform to reality as I see it.

Which brings us to warriorqueen’s point, about what that narrative is. As I see it, to sum it up in a sentence, the narrative is: The staff are bad at their jobs.

Looking back through MetaTalk threads, I don’t see any evidence for that narrative. What I see is harsh criticism for minor errors, that only make sense if you take it as given that the MetaFilter staff are so incompetent that their presence is actively harmful to MetaFilter.

However, if I try to look at it objectively, or as objectively as I can from my subjective point of view, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.

On the Blue, which is the subsite I participate in the most, discussions have never been as constructive and informative as they are now. Derails are uncommon, and threads very rarely turn acrimonious. Compared to, say, the megathread era, or the boyzone years, this is remarkable. Fanfare is likewise very friendly, and different opinions are respected. I don’t go often on the Green, but when I do it seems to be in good discursive health.

Now, for all I know, Projects, IRL and Music are all vicious snakepits, with Music Talk famed far and wide as the very embodiment of the Hellmouth, but if so that hasn’t spread to the rest of MetaFilter.

Really, the only part of MetaFilter that’s rancorous is MetaTalk. What I see when I look back through previous threads, I see a staff that is trying to deal with a very difficult work environment. Where every error, no matter how minor, becomes a full blown crisis.

Meanwhile, and I’m attempting to state things as objectively as I can, the staff has managed to maintain the finances on the right side of zero, and are ready to deliver the ownership to the non-profit.

To me, that speaks to the staff’s competence.

To reiterate, I see no evidence for the narrative that the staff are bad at their jobs. It seems to me that when it comes to their main responsibilities, the financial health of the company, and the quality of discussion in threads, with the notable exception of the Gray, they have performed admirably, even while their work environment has been very challenging.

What worries me is that there is discussion of making major changes to the way site operates based on the supposed incompetence of the staff. Which is why I think this is ultimately a site governance issue. We are taking control of the site as a community, and if we want to make changes, and I think we should, we need to have a clear understanding of what the site is like.

Anyway, I’ve already rambled too much. I’ve found this discussion extremely heartening, and it has filled me with confidence for the new era we’re all embarking upon. So, in the Finnish spirit I want to wish you alla Hyvää Joulua, and my inner Icelander would like to add a Gleðileg jól.
posted by Kattullus at 5:02 AM on December 24 [10 favorites]

Just chiming in with several notes:

staff can disable their MeMail (I don't think I can but maybe I can?)

Oh yeah, anyone can disable MeFiMail via prefs>Contact Privacy Prefs>Opt-out of MeFi Mail

- staff can comment early in threads and say how they want things to go - this tends to have more weight with the staff tag but is probably the closest to member power

That's a work in progress, at least for me. That last time anything like was done was in MeTa with a past mod, which members became quite negative about, so I've been reluctant to try and shape the discussion, but willing to give it a go

- staff can delete posts and comments, silently or with notes - silent deletion + not allowing a post through the queue led to nouvelle_personne's final buttoning

That is not accurate, not sure where you're getting that information from.

NP submitted a MeTa post, and then choose to leave. So we weren't going to post a meta made in anger by a member who then choose to leave, that was just a general rule. But the post wasn't removed from the queue, I was guessing she'd return. When she did, I communicated that the post wouldn't go through as is, but she was welcome to rewrite it.

- they could maintain a proper and up-to-date list of who staff are, who the volunteers are, and everyone's roles prominently on the site.

Yeah, we don't have the ability to add things to the footer by ourselves (am assuming that's what you meant by "proper" in this context), but the staff is mentioned in the FAQ. I doubt we'll have that problem with the new site, so fingers crossed on that being an easy fix!

Another FAQ about the transition and who the board are is actually in the works!

staff could also be clear when something is not on the table - the recent queue discussion is an interesting one because it seems to have changed, but the original comment was "no change to the queue."

The full quote was "Just a note to say this was pushed through for members to talk about, but there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas".

You're right that changes were made to the queue, but not really articulated, so that's been done, thanks for the prompt!


Finally, as general note about the "sides" in this thread, I'm reminded of two quotes:
"perception is reality" and "the axe forgets, but the tree remembers". Meaning that arguing about the definition of bullying, while understandable, probably don't do much for either side. The point is that people feel a certain way and trying to logically convince them of something else rarely works. We are beings of emotion, with occasional flashes of rationality.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:06 AM on December 24 [11 favorites]

How do you feel about users speaking on behalf of the staff's mental wellbeing?
posted by Diskeater at 5:36 AM on December 24

Now see, Brandon posted a pretty even-toned message. Gods know everyone has had their say and then some. Is that question necessary? I am thinking: no-one refutes a member's right to raise criticisms and concerns, but the combination of tone, repetition, and sheer volume is counter productive imo
posted by ginger.beef at 7:00 AM on December 24 [12 favorites]

Eh you’re right, it’s not necessary. My apologies.
posted by Diskeater at 7:27 AM on December 24 [5 favorites]

Thanks for the correction on the sequence of events with n_p, Brandon - I was going on my memory of events. I eagerly await her participation on the site if she's back - she is such a valued member.

I'm a bit baffled that you argued with me about it since the two points I was making, that her comment was deleted without a note and her post was not allowed through the queue, are the same.

And Kattullus - yes, we do disagree on the health of the site. I don't really want to flood this post -- which is a positive one! Things are moving! -- with my analysis but the two critical points are "monthly active users" and "contributions" and both are trending down. (AskMe is also kind of apocalyptical if you look at it - and that's the beating heart of new members.) MetaFilter lives and dies on its posts and comments.

I think it's a bit hard to track stats with the account wipes going on too. I have so many questions about stats on this site. For example, how are comment deletions recorded? The 12-14 comment stat that I personally have been throwing around - is that based on moderation notes that are left or is it an actual count of deletions? Something I heard yesterday made me wonder about that.

I understand that your experience on the site is positive, and that's a really good thing. I would expect that as a default for most people on the blue and the green. It wouldn't make the organization financially or long-term viable though.

For moderation, in the past I have pretty close to never been critical of day-to-day moderation. The moderation fusses lately (I just deleted a list of them) have shaken my faith. I cannot express how extremely disappointing it is to not have trust in the mods' ability to leave notes, and to be told in a thread around moderation of a BIPOC point of view, right after a major skirmish around deletions of a BIPOC members' post in MetaTalk and associated thread in the blue on anti-Asian racism, that someone was too distracted to leave a note. Like...we all make mistakes.

We all have seen where mistakes look worse than they are, but that's not the only explanation for what happened there. I really don't want to relitigate it, but when you say false narrative I sort of feel like I have to?

It's okay for us to disagree. I just would like to think that we can see each other's points of view.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:09 AM on December 24 [15 favorites]

For what it’s worth while I have been 👻 obfuscatingly critical 👻 I will say without a doubt this is the best website I’ve ever haunted and BB has struck me as someone who cares deeply and is professional.
posted by B_Ghost_User at 8:49 AM on December 24 [12 favorites]

Kattullus, your interpretation of events is just another narrative. It's not any more objective than what the people criticizing the staff have been saying. I think it's very misleading to frame it as such and claim that it's a more clear-eyed and accurate description of the state of MetaFilter than what the "bullies" have been saying (and even calling them bullies is another rhetorical tool to shape the narrative).

The mods have a strong incumbent advantage when it comes to shaping the narrative because MetaFilter is in more or less a steady state. I haven't seen anyone claim that the other subsites are "vicious snakepits." If the mods are bad for the site in the long run, it can be hard to notice on a day-to-day basis because there just isn't that much that can go wrong.

I think there's also a self-selection bias if you look at who's still here compared with everyone who has left. MetaFilter is slowly bleeding users and it makes sense that people who are unhappy with the site will leave at a higher rate than those who are happy with it. The user base that's left will be self-selected to believe that everything is going smoothly.

But how much richer would the site be if it the people who left were still here? Some people would have left anyway, but I think the mods share a lot of the blame for neglecting the health of the site and being hostile to its users and dismissive of their concerns. The mods don't even seem to care when people leave as a direct result of their actions (for example, look at the way they've talked about n-p and moggies - it reads like detached indifference to me).

Meanwhile, and I’m attempting to state things as objectively as I can, the staff has managed to maintain the finances on the right side of zero, and are ready to deliver the ownership to the non-profit.

The site has managed to lose $13,748.76 in the last 5 months according to the profit and loss statements. The last two fundraisers have failed. People keep talking about hiring an ED as part of the transition but as far as I know there isn't any budget for that. Can you explain what "right side of zero" and "ready to deliver the ownership" mean?
posted by april of time at 9:47 AM on December 24 [18 favorites]

It can also be a 'yes, and' situation. There's a tendency to push everything to the nth degree - I get there sometimes especially when tired out; it's actually a consequence of trauma to feel like you can't just be expressing your own experience but you must be Aligned With The One Truth -- but it can be true that:

The site is not yet dead AND
The site is not in a long-term healthy position AND
The experience on the subsites is mostly positive for long-term members who have stayed AND
Other members have left AND
New members aren't really joining (the blip this month is partly that one guy creating a bunch of new accounts) AND
Moderation decisions are badly understood and may be inconsistent or thoughtless AND
Moderators are working without leadership and for shorter shifts AND
People should express their concerns respectfully AND
The quantity of comments on a post can be overwhelming (I'll note that MetaFilter is essentially designed for this to be the case, that you have more comments on a post than posts) AND
It's okay for members to express discomfort with negatively AND
It's okay to not be positive all the time AND
The negative comments can be grounded in concern AND
Some negative comments can be more snippy one liners than productive AND
There might be axe grinding (given the topics I'm actually personally surprised there's less of it) AND
It's the darkest point of the year and for some people family stressy time

Like there doesn't have to be A Narrative.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:03 AM on December 24 [41 favorites]

can we pin the above?

I can live with that. I'm pretty sure a lot of us type out our missives with the underlying assumption that we have the totally correct and accurate take on things, but I'm also sure that with one moment of reflection we are seeing multiple narratives, plenty of disagreement, but ultimately people who care about the site and want to see it continue

I hope we all catch up to that eventually to mostly work together to realize any positive momentum
posted by ginger.beef at 10:08 AM on December 24 [1 favorite]

And it was in MeTa that this lonely ghost discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

The end.
posted by B_Ghost_User at 10:20 AM on December 24 [14 favorites]

AND happy holidays to all!
posted by warriorqueen at 10:29 AM on December 24 [12 favorites]

Meanwhile, and I’m attempting to state things as objectively as I can, the staff has managed to maintain the finances on the right side of zero, and are ready to deliver the ownership to the non-profit.

This is not a very good description of the site's financial history, as far as I know. The site was on the brink of financial collapse, then an amazing team of volunteers put in a heroic effort to run a very successful fundraiser that left the site with a surplus that would have allowed for the hiring of an admin person. The current team has, through two years of fundraisers that could be charitably described as uninspired, been depleting the site's finances, despite not actually doing some of the things that the money was meant for. The financial decline is slow enough that the site is not yet bankrupt, which is better than actually being bankrupt.

It remains a bit unclear if the site is in a good state to deliver to the nonprofit. There isn't really money to hire an ED, so it is unclear who the management will be in "new management."

It is also possible that the site may have liabilities regarding employment. The possibility has been raised that it may actually be in appropriate to staff the moderator positions as independent contractors if they are working shifts at set times. If the site is choosing not to employ workers that should be employed as a way of reducing costs (or complexity, which is reducing cost by not having someone to deal with the complexity), then the operating budget is hiding an externality that is being pushed off on the staff. I am not knowledgeable about these things, but if the site is denying employment to persons who should be employed then that is exploitative, even if it isn't 100% illegal. Regardless of what one might think of the performance of any of the staff, that's not right. It's also potentially a bigger issue when the site transitions to a new structure that could be subject to more scrutiny, or would have well-meaning volunteers becoming responsible for the operations of the site.
posted by snofoam at 1:42 PM on December 24 [7 favorites]

I really don't want to relitigate it, but when you say false narrative I sort of feel like I have to?

Yeah, this is the issue with the points that are substantive (meaning, about the actual issues at hand rather than about tone). I think people are mainly trying to give some grace, especially given the season and the transition. At least I am. But it is frustrating to feel like doing that means I have to accept being mischaracterized, particularly by someone who is asserting that their stance is both more morally correct and more rational than my own. But, thems the breaks, I guess.
posted by knobknosher at 9:13 PM on December 24 [8 favorites]

METAFILTER: someone who is asserting that their stance is both more morally correct and more rational than my own. But,

108 characters and very possibly the the truth.

thank you to all, and Merry Happy Whatever-it-is-you-celebrate-this-time-of-year. And if you don't celebrate anything, you should swing by my joint. The music is good. The beer is strong. The marijuana is legal.
posted by philip-random at 9:34 PM on December 24 [2 favorites]

yeah, happy christmas if you celebrate, if you don't, happy clearance sale season <3 <3 <3 !!!
posted by knobknosher at 10:12 PM on December 24 [1 favorite]

snowfoam: It is also possible that the site may have liabilities regarding employment. The possibility has been raised that it may actually be in appropriate to staff the moderator positions as independent contractors if they are working shifts at set times.

Speaking as someone who had successfully brought a NY Department of Labor complaint against a former employer who claimed I was salaried when I was actually more appropriately an hourly worker with all the oversight that kind of work brings along with it and whose current work as a contractor is also subject to "shifts" and expected hours at work, it's those little workplace definitions that can really spell the difference between whether you can actually hire someone as an employee (and go about paying payroll tax, social insurance, etc.) versus to give them a constantly renewable contract as a freelancer. Based only on the recap of the situation in snowfoam's introductory paragraph of their response and my cursory glance of the P&L statement, I don't think that the foundation is in any kind of shape to hire anyone full-time to act as a manager and any kinds of calls for it are a bit premature until a stable source of funding can be established.

It doesn't mean that it can't happen, though. I don't know if there's such as thing as being a freelance manager, but it sounds like that's what the site might need to consider as an option for the kind of administrative oversight (which is separate from moderation duties) that this website needs during these times.
posted by TrishaLynn at 10:37 AM on December 25 [3 favorites]

1. I think a manager could easily be a contract position, moreso than moderation.

2. On a different subject, now that we have new ownership, what about getting "Board" tags or some kind of marker to indicate when board members are speaking officially?
posted by NotLost at 1:19 PM on December 25 [4 favorites]

Seems like a great update! I'm really glad that things seem to be moving in a positive direction.
posted by Kwine at 8:53 AM on December 26

If the takeaway from this discussion is that there are multiple valid narratives, I can more than live with that.

I want to mention that the “vicious snakepits” was supposed to be a joke about the less-traveled subsites of MetaFilter. It was supposed to be a joke, but it would have helped to make that clear if it had been funny.
posted by Kattullus at 10:19 AM on December 26 [7 favorites]

On a different subject, now that we have new ownership, what about getting "Board" tags or some kind of marker to indicate when board members are speaking officially?

agreed but if it can't be up by the time it's needed, perhaps a board member could us an acronym first. I think this is important for when these folks post as to be clear on the duties they are responsible for to the community.
I won't say a badge is a symbol of authority per se in this case but it does help if members are confused about the handover and it does make them more visible to the rest of the community as board members as such in the future.
posted by clavdivs at 1:13 PM on December 26 [2 favorites]

Board member here.

I don't want a badge - I'm just another member of the community and no one even elected me. But I am fine opening comments or posts where I'm speaking as a board member with "board member here."

Yes, we are aware of the potential labor law issues. We are working to address this.

Yes, we are aware that some people have been calling for us to simply fire everyone, and this is not going to happen. Unless you have a specific complaint against a specific mod that would qualify as a fireable offense in your workplace then the answer is "no." We are rearranging things so that the board, for now, is guiding moderation policy, with the view to standing up a committee of volunteers to deal with moderation complaints and mistakes as they arise. The board will have the final say-so in the event that a volunteer can't resolve the issue. There are some ready-made solutions for some of these tasks, but plugging them into the site as it's currently implemented is (I am told) a non-trivial task. It's going to be a bit janky, process-wise, for a good while, but for now I think it's more important to get systems into place than that they be technically perfect.

Why are we doing this? People here deserve to be listened to when they aren't having a good experience. They deserve to be listened to by someone other than the mod who made the disputed call, and by someone who is empowered to actually do something about it. That will take time, but it's a high priority and we're not ignoring it - this is probably our most important task, since it feeds directly into the sore feelings that compel people to leave. Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa. If you think that comment might be about you, it is.

Calls for volunteers for at least three committees will be coming soon - moderation, elections, and member outreach. The moderation part is already in process.
posted by 1adam12 at 2:56 PM on December 26 [41 favorites]

this is probably our most important task, since it feeds directly into the sore feelings that compel people to leave. Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa. If you think that comment might be about you, it is.

Well, it’s been a mostly fun 16 years. Good luck!
posted by knobknosher at 5:24 PM on December 26 [17 favorites]

First off, I largely agree with, or at least get what you've said even if I disagree, 1adam12. I am also quite willing to acknowledge that I, personally, have lost my temper at times and I regret that.

That being said, this makes me feel angry:

Why are we doing this? People here deserve to be listened to when they aren't having a good experience. They deserve to be listened to by someone other than the mod who made the disputed call, and by someone who is empowered to actually do something about it. That will take time, but it's a high priority and we're not ignoring it - this is probably our most important task, since it feeds directly into the sore feelings that compel people to leave. Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa. If you think that comment might be about you, it is.

People have left because they were tired of getting shat on, or because they got kicked out for bullshit reasons.

People who have stayed and who are friends with those people are rightfully furious.

Does this mean a blanket layoff/restructuring is warranted? I'm genuinely unsure about that, or what the process would even be there. But MeFites who feel that way should not be dismissed as people who are merely gleeful mod-kickers.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:46 PM on December 26 [25 favorites]

> Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa.

i appreciate your willingness to lead by example!

i'm glad the holiday good cheer is dissipated and we can get back to what's really important: sniping at each other.
posted by glonous keming at 5:59 PM on December 26 [15 favorites]

Wow.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:09 PM on December 26 [9 favorites]

I just want to chime in that I approached the board to help with whatever they need, and had a chat, and I feel very positive about the board’s commitment to supporting members who may have questions or concerns about both moderation policy and specific moderation actions — first and foremost by listening. So please let’s get some of that moving and see where we get to.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:21 PM on December 26 [6 favorites]

Board member here.

But MeFites who feel that way should not be dismissed as people who are merely gleeful mod-kickers.

I'm not dismissing anyone's feelings. People have been cheesed off for a good long while, they have good reasons to be cheesed, and their concerns deserve to be heard and acted upon, because they're right. That said, the line between "I'm angry and I want people to know about it because this needs to get fixed" and "I'm angry so let's make others angry too, including people who are trying to help" is neither thin nor subtle. I have no quarrel with those in the first category, who I believe represent the vast majority of people commenting on and reading these threads - I don't just want to hear from them, I can't do my job without their input.

If anyone is curious, the next pressing task on my list is preparing and submitting Metafilter LLC's beneficial ownership information to the IRS. Angry as you might be, are you angry enough to fill out IRS forms? Because I don't know if I've ever been that angry.
posted by 1adam12 at 6:22 PM on December 26 [14 favorites]

I'm imagining that mainstay scene in movies where someone gets super pissed off -- maybe they got kicked off the police force, maybe their wife was murdered, maybe they were double-crossed by another member of their gang -- and they go through their apartment throwing lamps and smashing furniture and just totally destroying their own home. Except now I'm imagining instead of them doing any of that, they just grab a stack of 1040s and just start filling the fuck out of them. Just blasting through those Schedule As and Form 8829s and Schedule 8812s.
posted by Bugbread at 6:40 PM on December 26 [4 favorites]

You are the best, 1adam12!
posted by Melismata at 6:57 PM on December 26 [3 favorites]

I appreciate the honesty and clear language. I’m not sure anger alone can make someone competent to fill out IRS forms about an org that they don’t have any actual information about, but I suppose only a fool underestimates the power of anger. I think technically it is not possible to fire someone who is not an employee, for fun or for more practical reasons.
posted by snofoam at 7:08 PM on December 26 [4 favorites]

tivalasvegas: "But MeFites who feel that way should not be dismissed as people who are merely gleeful mod-kickers."

People have valid complaints. We're thinking of ways to help get those complaints heard and reasonably addressed. A small subset of those people express those complaints in a needlessly hostile, insulting, and non-constructive way, which makes discussions charged and defensive and less likely to go anywhere useful.

That doesn't mean *everybody* who has a complaint is acting in an unhelpful way, and that's not what 1adam12 said. Most of his comment was about the importance of getting people's grievances heard, which would be a weird thing to prioritize if we thought everyone with a grievance was just trolling.

Our hope is that offering a more productive outlet will curb the kinds of bitter, frustrated sniping that makes discussions here worse for everyone, and make things more welcoming for those who want to help make healthy and positive changes to how the site works.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:26 PM on December 26 [13 favorites]

I'm not dismissing anyone's feelings.

Look. You are.

People have been cheesed off for a good long while, they have good reasons to be cheesed, and their concerns deserve to be heard and acted upon, because they're right.

"Cheesed off" is not an appropriate phrase to use in response to what I said.

To be clear, I do think you and the rest of the committee have good intentions, and are doing good and difficult work. But this is the sort of language that comes off as really dismissive. Figuring out how to get past that kind of defensiveness is going to be part of the work of developing Metafilter into a healthy and democratic space.

Small communities or organizations in crisis tend to have a pattern where the faces around the leadership table change, committees get organized and re-organized, everyone acknowledges that there are serious problems, but nothing seems to change. The way you break that pattern is by really sitting down and listening to people who are on the outside -- both community members who are not formally in a leadership role, and also, even harder but more crucially, people who are not in the room at all.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:06 PM on December 26 [23 favorites]

We are rearranging things so that the board, for now, is guiding moderation policy, with the view to standing up a committee of volunteers to deal with moderation complaints and mistakes as they arise. The board will have the final say-so in the event that a volunteer can't resolve the issue.

Ironing out the details will matter, of course, but it's a good sign that the board is placing a high priority on getting grievances addressed as systemic function of the site. That's really going to matter in the long run.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:31 PM on December 26 [10 favorites]

Wow, that comment from the board member. Time to look into the account wipe option after I export stuff.
posted by lazaruslong at 12:59 AM on December 27 [10 favorites]

Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa. If you think that comment might be about you, it is.

Pot, meet kettle, black.
posted by Dysk at 1:41 AM on December 27 [13 favorites]

We are rearranging things so that the board, for now, is guiding moderation policy, with the view to standing up a committee of volunteers to deal with moderation complaints and mistakes as they arise.

Cool. Some follow up questions:

• Will this involve changes to the current policy? If so, what will those changes be? When will they be implemented, or is there a timeline for making the community aware of these changes?
• Will these volunteers be drawn from the community or from the board?
• Will the outcomes of complaints be publicised in any way?
• You note that complaints will be heard by someone who is "empowered to do something about it". What will this look like? How will moderators be held accountable for their mistakes or poor behaviour? Will there be a process of review of moderator performance?

The impression I'm getting from the kvetching here is that a decent chunk of community members would like greater transparency and accountability from whomever is running the site. I hope the board is taking that into consideration as something that's genuinely needed and not dismissing it because the language being used is unsavoury. Having members who are occasionally hostile, bitter or frustrated is a fact of life when it comes to running a community of any kind. Not every discussion is going to be productive or even pleasant. That is reality. I suggest not spending too much time trying to find ways to sanitise discussion to acceptable levels and concentrating on rebuilding trust instead.
posted by fight or flight at 2:53 AM on December 27 [8 favorites]

knobknosher buttoned.
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:00 AM on December 27 [2 favorites]

lazaruslong: "Wow, that comment from the board member."

It’s disheartening to see a volunteer’s comments met with such pessimism, especially having served as one for a time yourself. We all know how easy it is for things to be misunderstood or get heated, and lead to reactions that are scornful and cruel. Based on conversations in our recent calls, those are the kinds of comments Adam was talking about -- I hope we can all agree we need less of that energy around here.

Quoting directly:

People here deserve to be listened to when they aren't having a good experience.

They deserve to be listened to by someone other than the mod who made the disputed call, and by someone who is empowered to actually do something about it.

their concerns deserve to be heard and acted upon, because they're right.

it's a high priority and we're not ignoring it - this is probably our most important task

I have no quarrel with those in the first category, who I believe represent the vast majority of people commenting on and reading these threads - I don't just want to hear from them, I can't do my job without their input.

There's a lot to like here. Focusing instead on the brief mention of the few derogatory and hostile comments -- and assuming it's talking about *anyone* with a grievance -- is overlooking a wide-open opportunity for feedback, oversight, and reform of how the site operates. For our part, we'll keep working with members like warriorqueen to give people ways to get involved and make the site more responsive and accountable for everyone -- that's the whole reason we're doing this. And there's a standing invitation if you ever change your mind.

On preview: fight or flight, that is something we're trying to figure out now -- stay tuned.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:25 AM on December 27 [13 favorites]

There's a lot to like here. Focusing instead on the brief mention of the few derogatory and hostile comments

🤔 Seems like a whole lot of the cranky folks are being judged by the sainted ones on the last few months of being cranky instead of their literal decades of providing the content that makes Metafilter what it is.


and assuming it's talking about *anyone* with a grievance

1adam12 literally said "if you think that comment might be about you, it is" on a site full of cat people with anxiety. Of course folks are going to assume it's about them lol


I was one of the first people to favorite 1adam12's comment because it seems like a step toward progress and I'm capable of holding more than one thought in my head at a time. I can see the good parts while also rolling my eyes at others. But it's laughable af that here in this thread where everyone is pissy about people's tone and poor delivery of reasonable arguments that we've come right back to. You kick at other members but it's different when I do it.
posted by phunniemee at 4:22 AM on December 27 [35 favorites]

It’s disheartening to see a volunteer’s comments met with such pessimism, especially having served as one for a time yourself.

Perhaps you could channel that disheartening feeling into some metacognitive reflection on why a person like me who had been here for over 20 years, donated hundreds of dollars in cash, and much more than that in donated time equivalent, would read that message from the board member and be persuaded it is finally time to wipe their account.

The whole “more energy spent of breaches of etiquette than breaches of justice” thing is particularly salient here.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:24 AM on December 27 [26 favorites]

(What counts as a breach of etiquette and what counts as misjustice is obviously a bit of an eye of the beholder thing here -- which one is 1adam12's quip? -- but why not stick around and try to make things better? You'd probably be a good person to sit on an oversight board, to help fix the problems that matter.)
posted by nobody at 4:50 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

Metafilter.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got so many tempests wedged into so many teapots, or why.
posted by Bugbread at 4:54 AM on December 27 [8 favorites]

Wading into this because why not.

95% of what the board members have posted is good and fine. The 5% that's not touches on some long standing Mefi and MeTa issues. Lack of transparency / not understanding what transparency means is a top three issue. The feeling of an ingroup / cool kids / cabal is another.

"WE know who YOU are and WE want YOU to leave - YOU know who YOU are" is....pretty not great. Who are you talking about? What behavior do you see that is worse than people leaving the site? Post some receipts.

The 200 members of the MetaTalk Committee aren't the best at running the site even if the intentions are decent. I've been drafting a MeTa about moving the community run talk offsite but that's a beehive I will not kick. I do believe that basic tech improvements will drastically improve the Mefi experience for everyone but the site doesn't have those so this is the best Mefi can do. For now.

(Missing a deadline on a not-difficult project by fourish months, on top of the years of performance issues, would get you the side-eye at most jobs.)
posted by Diskeater at 6:15 AM on December 27 [19 favorites]

You cannot say "if you think that comment might be about you, it is," and then get annoyed that people are taking it personally. It's literally an instruction for everyone with any ability at self-reflection to take it personally. You probably don't want to run off the people with abilities to self-reflect.
posted by lapis at 6:49 AM on December 27 [39 favorites]

(Missing a deadline on a not-difficult project by fourish months, on top of the years of performance issues, would get you the side-eye at most jobs.)

Can you clarify what specifically you are referring to?
posted by NotLost at 7:09 AM on December 27

babe are you new here

I don't think it's productive at this point to relitigate the Pet Tax Wall, you can catch up on some of the unmet deadlines in this thread where some of the specific fundraising issues, among others, were discussed at length.
posted by phunniemee at 7:17 AM on December 27 [13 favorites]

Can you clarify what specifically you are referring to?

If the staff reads my comment and thinks it might be about them, it is.

(That is a joke. We all know the staff doesn't read MetaTalk)
posted by Diskeater at 7:20 AM on December 27 [17 favorites]

Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa. If you think that comment might be about you, it is.

I have read each thread over the past few months about the necessary changes in how the moderators do their job and the lack of tools that the mods and members have at their disposal. I’ve rarely commented in these thread because I don’t think that I can express myself as well as I need to with these highly charged and sensitive topics. For example, I could have easily written the italicized sentence above with no realization that it would be taken in ways that I didn’t intend or think of. I also tend to think, likely naively, that most people have good intentions. I’m definitely not trained in or have much talent for diplomacy.

Many of the people who have made their thoughts and opinions about the site very clear have also said that they sometimes express themselves in an angry and hurtful way, to which I say, valid and thank you for having the self-reflection and willingness to publicly acknowledge that emotions sometimes take over. I have a long list of people that I very much respect for their clear-eyed approach and ability to write as well as they do. I’m sometimes filled with awe at how well they can express themselves.

I definitely feel that I would be made fun of, or kicked at, or denounced, or piled on, or drowned out by some if I added my two cents to these conversations. I realize that this has just as much to do with my own perceptions of how I write and think as anything else but nonetheless, I have no doubt that all of those things would happen. The point that I want to make is that although I may be wrong, I feel that some of the people I’ve just described do kick at mods and members while expressing themselves, and that this should be acknowledged.
posted by ashbury at 7:25 AM on December 27 [9 favorites]

Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa. If you think that comment might be about you, it is.


knobknosher just buttoned. go [fill out an IRS form], i'm out too.
posted by busted_crayons at 7:28 AM on December 27 [10 favorites]

Can you clarify what specifically you are referring to?

I was assuming it was about any number of apparently simple requests from the userbase which we were told would be implemented, only for them to fail to appear.
posted by fight or flight at 7:28 AM on December 27 [7 favorites]

Y'all in here seriously acting like the harshness came first, when it came after years of asking for change, years of weird abuse and gaslightiing by at least three current or former paid staff members, years of financial mismanagement, years of failing to meet deadlines or deliver projects that were self-determined, and dozens of thoughtful, engaged members buttoning in threads just like this one because of it. There's context and history here and I can't help but notice most of the "Stop being mean" commenters lead with "I don't come to MeTa much". Maybe, just maybe you lack the frame of reference for the emotion you're deriding.
posted by donnagirl at 7:34 AM on December 27 [39 favorites]

1adam12’s comment unintentionally does an excellent job of highlighting the systemic issue with MeFi leadership and moderation culture that underlies the issue he’s (appreciatedly!) seeking to address.

The consistent underlying pattern when we’ve lost longtime, thoughtful users (who we are continuing to lose here by re-demonstrating this cultural issue) is that users have been penalized or otherwise made to feel unwelcome for expressing their pain about genuine issues the wrong way - which not only impacts the user in pain but makes other users feel less welcome and safe to express their own concerns as well by leaving them wondering "am I on the wrong side too?". And, indeed, that the site sees users being in pain the wrong way as a bigger problem than users leaving…

Again, this is a cultural issue, not an individual-leader one. As an older site MetaFilter has cultural norms around prioritizing politeness over repairing harm and creating justice, norms that have been passed from mod to mod, from user to user.

We can’t fix those norms by putting different people who hold the same norms in leadership positions - the only way to change the culture is for whoever is in leadership (whether current leaders or new leaders) to work to question and change those norms in themselves and others. (I highlighted ways site leadership could do this in this previous comment.)
posted by beryllium at 7:36 AM on December 27 [22 favorites]

So I've been (mostly) in lurk mode for 18 months in reaction to the shitty way that the site has been run in the last few years but never closed my account due to my hope against hope that the conversion to a community supported non-profit would turn things around. The current roster of mods have shown themselves time and time again to be completely incapable of moderating consistently and transparently and have shown a long-standing pattern of hostility towards the user base, gaslighting when called on it along with a strong tendency to circle the wagons. This site is never going to recover with the same staff, the same attitudes and the same behavior.

Now we've transitioned to non-profit and it looks like more of the same. What was the point then if nothing is going to change?
posted by octothorpe at 7:49 AM on December 27 [23 favorites]

We haven't even elected a "permanent" board yet. It would be an unimpeachable choice if the founding board had decided to do nothing but set up elections (and it would be an indefensible choice if they unilaterally started clearing house). That they're implementing this change, to create oversight over mod decisions, means they think at least some of the concerns people have raised are serious enough to warrant it.

It's a little soon to be saying it's all just more of the same.
posted by nobody at 8:09 AM on December 27 [15 favorites]

Interesting thread. I heartily second what's been said just above about the need for cultural change, not just structural change. The impetus toward becoming an independent entity was so the site could be community-driven. Honest and occasionally painful contention is sometimes what a community needs to do; take it from a Quaker. Transparency, accountability and respect for users/members should be core values.

don't want a badge - I'm just another member of the community and no one even elected me.

Kindly, no you're not "just another member." The allergy toward responsibility is a cultural issue of MeFi's management group that needs to go away. You, and other members of the board, have accepted a unique role with unique powers and responsibilities. Yes, the readers of this site should know who you are and be able to place you in that context when you interact here. You and the other board members have both a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the site as a fiscal entity and keep it focused on its tax-exempt purpose and mission, and a cultural responsibility to manage it and its community so as to achieve that purpose. Board members should have a badge, as should staff, and volunteers in any capacity.

One other note on the response: complaining about the workload for a responsibility you have accepted is not a great look for those people who have vested power in you. The BOI form has now been brought up twice as a burdensome expectation. People should know that it takes under 5 minutes to file. I had to do it for my business too. It is not a big deal. In general, when you accept a responsibility you accept the administrative tasks that come with it. We know there are administrative tasks and don't mind them being enumerated. But again, just as with the 1023, making people who aren't aware of the responsibilities think that there is some onerous burden being lifted isn't a fair representation of reality.

I'd suggest calling your "elections" committee "governance." It's not only more standard terminology, but it covers a wider remit that allows that committee to deal with revising bylaws as needed, making nominations, managing elections, and calling out governance issues that need discussion. In general, creating a small number of stnading committees with wider charters is more sustainable than creating highly specific one-off committees that proliferate unchecked. I generally recommend no more than 3 or 4 committees. When you have a time-limited project or need, you can stand up a working group for that that can convene and disband when the work is complete. For example, site redesign is a working group-type task. It has an endpoint. Fundraising/development will never have an end point, so that makes sense as a committee. The most common committee types are finance, governance, development, and program/membership (overseeing whatever the content/product is).

Lastly, I've read with interest and consideration the discourse about "bullying." At least for me, I have no intention to bully. I am a 20-year member of this site who has given a lot in terms of content and trying to uphold high standards of interchange, for the most part. I began getting concerned about this site's management more than 10 years ago around the time of the transition when it became clear that there was simply no long-term plan for its leadership and management at all. Those concerns intensified during the financial crisis of 2019. The more we learned about what was going on behind the scenes, the more disappointing and confusing it was. Then I began to become more aware of the private interchanges between mods and users that spoke to a really, really negative internal culture of contempt and hostility toward users. My comments have come from both my own analysis of the site's culture and professional management, based on career experience, and from a sincere desire to see it gain a new balance and continue as a healthy entity that celebrates and serves its remarkable user community. Many of the others whose names I recognize from conversations here over the past several years show evidence of similar motivations. I can understand how it might seem otherwise, but also might suggest that if your working life doesn't involve managing entities with some similarity to this, the problems might not seem as glaring. When you've seen the same red flags a dozen times, you don't need to see them wave around that much to know what they signify. THere's been a lot of effort spent to get things on a healthier track than they've been maybe ever; let's honor and welcome and embrace that goodwill-based effort. Users are people who care and who have invested their time and in many cases hard-earned money into this enterprise. We can treat them that way, all the time.
posted by Miko at 8:14 AM on December 27 [48 favorites]

Metatalk: Wading into this because why not.
posted by tofu_crouton at 8:22 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

I'm waiting on the interim board to let me know about how they want to proceed but I really encourage people in this thread to MeMail me if you want to help out with moderation stuff going forward. (There will be a more formal ask coming.)

Or to vent, although see below for a better place to vent that may be coming along.

In other words, if you're angry or annoyed, it is totally okay to be angry or annoyed. But if you would like to use that to fuel doing the work of making it better, the door is open.

I support doing things quickly but calmly and right, and so I'm waiting on the board but FYI I have proposed, besides the committee to deal with Issues Going On Right Now, a qualitative research project where we ask for people to share their moderation pain points. The idea would be to code that information user-research style, and then deliver a report back on trends for the purpose of making things better. We can't relitigate the last 3 years, but we can understand them better and also centre those experiences more.

I know that MetaTalk contains a lot of that information, and that will be included. But there are way, way more people who have had contact with the moderators and who haven't communicated that in MetaTalk - some of whom may not even be on the site any more of course, but my plan would be to post that link in the subsites and Reddit as well and invite everyone to share with anyone they are still in contact with. I so wish we had a mechanism by which to email people.

My hope is that we can help this board and future boards, as well as the mods present and future (whatever that looks like), to get a picture around moderation. Yes, there are big pieces of that puzzle here right now. But it's not complete, and what's more -- it's not turned into recommendations and actions.

If we did fire all the mods today, would we know what to tell the next set, or set of volunteers? I recommend taking a bit of time to get the picture, and to share that picture with - well, everyone.

For those who are kind of frustrated about time - I'm not talking about months and months. Depending on the number of answers we get (I'm thinking in about a 2-3 week timeframe), hopefully we can code them up pretty quickly. That does take time, especially not as someone's full-time job. I don't think it would take super long, but I have to see the answers first.

But I just completed some of this style of research for a higher ed environment and man, when you can see those trends and put them against recommendations from someone who understands the work, man, it's a powerful thing. It depends on people participating though.

Two+ years ago when we did the user survey, people who had moderation issues were a minority, although not an insignificant one - but we didn't really delve too deeply into it, plus, as we can see from the queue drift, moderation has drifted since then. I think it's worth taking the time. I think the reason people are so into the BIPOC minutes is that because that committee also is a place that user experience (with an equity lens) is being addressed. I am hopeful that we can build some much better experience, but we do need time and patience and help.

I know it's a lot to ask but I hope people will give it a chance. Right now, we're all operating out of our own viewpoint -- which is fine! And normal! -- but what we haven't had is either a group or a mechanism by which to start to get above each individual thing and come up with good processes and practices to address them. While the elections are moving ahead, we can get that information together.

And again, the board has to prioritize and I'm here to help with whatever they determine those priorities are (although I have a bias towards user experience.) As Miko said above, there's a lot to do.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:16 AM on December 27 [23 favorites]

This place is going to way less fun to haunt when the only people left are the ones who like to tell people to fuck off (while using ‘nice’ words). If you think this post is about you it might be.
posted by B_Ghost_User at 9:25 AM on December 27 [17 favorites]

Also to back up a bit, I think the board needs a picture of:

- what is the moderator time spent doing and how are they doing it? This is not as a 'gotcha' - it's that you can't make decisions without understanding that. This has been a topic a lot and it's unclear.
- what are the baseline engagement stats for the site? What are the trends? Where are people going? Right now we tend to gauge that by post or comment count, but comments are not by any means the whole story.
- what are the user experience pain points with moderation?
- a good UX look at the site - I think due to decisions made to refactor the site, this will have to wait for the new site, although to me that's a huge opportunity that was missed. But since it will be easier to change things, it's still good.

I know to each individual person, the way forward seems obvious. And it is cool that it's a subset of users in MetaTalk that have been sharing their experience - it's one of the site's strengths. But you can't make good decisions based on one slice of information, you need to get a fuller picture. You can't wait for perfection either. But I mean I care about the site and I still was fuzzy that there was a FanFare Talk and I've never logged into chat.

And yeah, I hear everyone on the cranky comments, but I hope we can extend grace for each other over the long term.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:38 AM on December 27 [16 favorites]

1adam12 said, "That said, the line between "I'm angry and I want people to know about it because this needs to get fixed" and "I'm angry so let's make others angry too, including people who are trying to help" is neither thin nor subtle."

The mods regularly mix these up, especially in discussions about race or trans stuff. This month was deleting nouvelle-personne's comments (Brandon Blatcher confirms an apology was sent). Last month was deleting snofoam's comment from the rice cooker thread (loup's apology).
posted by ftrtts at 9:41 AM on December 27 [21 favorites]

It's literally an instruction for everyone with any ability at self-reflection to take it personally. You probably don't want to run off the people with abilities to self-reflect.

Yeah this is exactly what sucks about this - KnobKnosher seems like someone who has been pretty constructive. People who are actually monomaniacally focused on their particular grievance or just hanging around to snipe are not the people who are likely to be chased off.
posted by atoxyl at 11:12 AM on December 27 [10 favorites]

I do have a fair amount of baseline sympathy for the “I don’t see you volunteering” position, though, and while I’ve defended people’s intentions in the thread where 1adam12 was soliciting input on forms (and in fact the pointed questions got a very important clarification from Jessamyn) I also understand finding that thread a pain to wade through.

But then again, that’s an inherent problem with MeTa being the only venue for feedback, you can’t blame it all on the people using it as such.
posted by atoxyl at 11:22 AM on December 27 [4 favorites]

Okay triple comment. I don’t disagree that “we need to fire everyone” is not the premise to start from, and that some people are a little too locked in on that idea. The site has had similar problems even as staff have rotated over the years, and finding that perfect admin/director who has their shit together and also wants to put up with the site is probably not easy. But I think one underlying issue that a lot of people have is that it just feels like there’s no real accountability for anything. I can see that being acknowledged in the talk about having

someone who is empowered to actually do something about it

but leading with “we don’t need to go that far” is not sending the message a lot of people want, I think. If somebody isn’t doing well in a given staff role, it should be possible to say that and to initiate an effort to get somebody else in that role.
posted by atoxyl at 11:54 AM on December 27 [8 favorites]

I was assuming it was about any number of apparently simple requests from the userbase which we were told would be implemented, only for them to fail to appear.

I'll include adding the release year to the rebuild.

Toggling movie posters on or off is part of the rebuild, as mentioned in the first comment on the post you linked to.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 12:09 PM on December 27 [4 favorites]

I do have a fair amount of baseline sympathy for the “I don’t see you volunteering” position, though, and while I’ve defended people’s intentions in the thread where 1adam12 was soliciting input on forms (and in fact the pointed questions got a very important clarification from Jessamyn) I also understand finding that thread a pain to wade through.

But then again, that’s an inherent problem with MeTa being the only venue for feedback, you can’t blame it all on the people using it as such.

I agree; but also would note that many people have offered their time (and often, their professional expertise) over the last number of years and been rebuffed or not followed up on. Many of those people have since buttoned.

And yeah, MeTa as currently structured is emphatically not the best way to do this. I hope we can work on better structures for making community decisions and providing feedback than threads on the Grey which more often than not just become rolling shitshows.

Relatedly, the comments above from warriorqueen and Miko are characteristically wise and we would do well to listen to them.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:44 PM on December 27 [14 favorites]

If somebody isn’t doing well in a given staff role, it should be possible to say that and to initiate an effort to get somebody else in that role.

Stating the unstated premise - this currently does not feel possible.
posted by atoxyl at 2:34 PM on December 27 [6 favorites]

I heartily second Miko’s comment regarding having a badge for board members: Kindly, no you're not "just another member." The allergy toward responsibility is a cultural issue of MeFi's management group that needs to go away. You, and other members of the board, have accepted a unique role with unique powers and responsibilities. Yes, the readers of this site should know who you are and be able to place you in that context when you interact here.

I don’t care that you weren’t elected, 1adam12, I care that you as a board member have knowledge and insight that those of us who are “just members” don’t have and any comment you make on MeTa, you are making as a board member.

It has been a huge issue of the community at large knowing who is who and what their roles mean at any given point, from staff to mods to board members. This request was a small step in the right direction and you shutting it down really concerns me. A badge is clearer and more failsafe than you prefacing every comment with “as a board member”. Part of joining the board does mean that you are apart from regular members, and I hope you come to terms with that decision. There will be elections eventually but I think I speak for many people that one of the major frustrations over the years is people who do have the power to make minor changes keep declining to make those changes because they’re afraid to take responsibility for any action.

It is a badge under your name that accurately states your role. Being opposed to that is absurd and really encapsulates a lot of the frustrations over the years.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 2:43 PM on December 27 [27 favorites]

Yes, there are big pieces of that puzzle here right now. But it's not complete, and what's more -- it's not turned into recommendations and actions.

While I hear your point about gathering data from more users, the second part of this isn't true. We already have qualitative data on moderation pain points and user recommendations on actions that could make things better. I coded it and highlighted three specific actionable steps per theme in my report in the feedback document.

I'm not opposed to the idea of a user survey, but I am concerned that it is being developed without awareness of the previous qualitative research that has occurred. I also know that people get... really excited about community surveys, rightly so because they're awesome tools, but they're a lot harder to do well than people think. Do you or others on the board have training in survey methodology, specifically? Your experience with the higher ed project sounds great, but it's not clear to me if that included formal education on survey design, sampling methods, etc. Obviously this isn't intended to be a Capital R Research Study, but I've seen these sorts of efforts go really poorly and be used to further disenfranchise community members (ask me about the DEI climate survey my department conducted and then concluded a mean of 3.2 on a 5 point scale in a sample of largely white, straight, cisgender students meant they were doing great on DEI issues...), so I'm approaching it with some caution.

I had previously discussed with staff coding more Metatalk threads, but am waiting to hear back on next steps after the holidays. (Also not sure where that stands if the LLC isn't in charge anymore?) If you do go forward with this project, I could potentially shift gears to the survey project instead, particularly for the design phase.
posted by brook horse at 5:01 PM on December 27 [25 favorites]

"I don't want it to say 'Board' at the bottom of my comment, I want to write 'As a board member' at the top of my comment. This is a very important difference."

"No, 'board' should be written at the bottom of your comment, not at the top of your comment. This is a very important difference."

...Y'all are doing a bit, right?
posted by Bugbread at 6:19 PM on December 27 [2 favorites]

I think there is a difference, so no, not a bit. First, one of them doesn’t require someone to remember to preface their comments with it. One of them is in a different color in a different text size in a colored box that has been the way we denote comments from members who are Not Just Members for as long as I can remember. I mean, doing both seems good to me since of course by design we see usernames last, but people skim these comments or come to them from time away from the site and the badge is a simple and established precedent for “hey this person has some official capacity here”.

It is a small thing and not even a hill I want to die on necessarily but it’s that it’s such a small thing that was immediately dismissed (because it’s too official, I think?) that I think matters! See again Miko’s comment that I think elucidated perfectly why it’s part of a broader culture shift that is needed.

I am sure it won’t be the last time some overly sincere comment of mine is assumed to be a bit. If it makes you feel better, bugbread, I am considering whether I am taking this too seriously and why I care.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 6:43 PM on December 27 [14 favorites]

This thread reminds me of my two coworkers who would have loud arguments about various things … and both of them would be determined to have the last word. It was impressive, actually.
posted by Melismata at 6:45 PM on December 27

For once, can you address your drop in insults to someone so we all know who you think is participating in the wrong way, melismata?
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 6:49 PM on December 27 [39 favorites]

It's certainly not an earth-shaking issue but it's one that makes sense and should not be particularly difficult to implement, I think?

We want people who have specific authority in this community to be clearly identified, right? "So-and-so is on the Board" or "is staff" or whatever the case may be, and they can then clarify in their comment whether they're speaking from their role or just as another MeFite.

This is not rocket science.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:51 PM on December 27 [8 favorites]

For once, can you address your drop in insults to someone so we all know who you think is participating in the wrong way, melismata?

I hope it's me 🤩
posted by phunniemee at 6:54 PM on December 27 [22 favorites]

I mean, I live in a small enough city that I routinely run into patients (I'm a social worker in an HIV clinic) outside of work. When I'm interacting with them at work I have a different role to how I would interact with them as a random community member who ran into someone they know at Costco, or to a fellow member of my parish whom I know fairly well, and so on.

This is how the professional world works, and it's fine. That's the kind of differentiation that having a mod/staff badge plus a clear explanation of which hat they're wearing at the moment helps everyone with.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:55 PM on December 27 [9 favorites]

II live in a small enough city
first, yeah, I envisage lasvegas.
first off and important, thanks for what you do and I agree on your stance but your not wearing a badge at the store, your not invisible to the people you help.
the badge doesn't identify your role
your compassion and professionalism does.

first off, I cannot speak for notlost, but I'm rather sorry I brought up the thing about the badges as it seems to ancillary to other matters. thing is
1adam12 has chosen a method whether temporary or not and it's being dissected.
posted by clavdivs at 7:22 PM on December 27 [2 favorites]

Hi brook horse,

Happy to discuss but you summarized points from MetaTalk which I did see, and will include. That's great, but it's not the same as asking everyone across the subsites and on Reddit to provide examples of moderation issues (not the same as administrative asks.)

It won't be a survey - we did that as a Transition Team. It'll be asking people to share their moderation pain points/stories, just through a form rather than interviews. Again, not the same as the summarizing you did and not a survey. You're welcome to help out, just give me a shout.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:29 PM on December 27 [4 favorites]

I should add too, this will be a volunteer activity under the non-profit.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:31 PM on December 27 [3 favorites]

I should add though, yes those were great recommendations, and it's really good work in my opinion, and yes those were actionable at the LLC level, so my apologies for not including it.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:39 PM on December 27 [3 favorites]

Yeah I absolutely understand wanting to gather more representative data—just pointing out that there have been many recommendations and actions suggested. Sounds like it was a slip of the brain (understandable!) rather than the board not getting that info so that’s good to know.

What you’re describing would typically be called a qualitative survey. The only fundamental difference between a survey and an interview is the format. If you put the interview questions, or even just a single framing statement about what kind of information to share, onto a paper or electronic form and hand it to someone to fill out, it’s a survey.

This only matters in that it would be useful to have that language in searching for resources. You don’t have to call it a survey, but survey methodology issues still apply. Though my example above was a quantitative survey, the same thing could happen: if you get a ton of people who aren’t BIPOC, trans, etc. replying, they may say everything is fine when it comes to moderation of BIPOC and trans issues, or simply not mention them at all. Meanwhile, trans and BIPOC users who have had painful experiences with moderation may need more time to compose their stories, or require more rapport-building to successfully recruit to share their stories, or any number of things that could reduce your ability to capture their perspectives.

That’s just one example of the sort of thing that’s important to take into consideration. I’m happy to chat more about principles to consider. I’ll poke around and see if I have any resources that aren’t in textbooks buried in my basement.
posted by brook horse at 8:06 PM on December 27 [7 favorites]

And to clarify, not trying to be argumentative or nitpicky. Qualitative online surveys are my bread and butter, and I’ve done a few like you’ve described—just asking people to share their experiences and coming at it with no pre-formed hypotheses, just letting the experiences speak for themselves. I think “survey” is maybe a bit of a sore word for MeFi because it makes people think of something different than what you’re describing. So I understand wanting to differentiate that from the transition survey for sure—it’s just the technical term for what you’re doing in a lot of fields so that’s where many of the resources for this kind of qualitative research will be.
posted by brook horse at 8:11 PM on December 27 [7 favorites]

While 1adam12 might be prefacing his comments with "Board member here", it doesn't mean that his fellow board members are also doing so, or that he'll always remember to do so. (And with board members are making statements about the foundation's plans and goals without such a preface, does that mean that these statements are somehow "not as a board member"?)

Does it matter if the identifying thing is at the top of the comment or the bottom? Nope. But it does make a difference if it's manually and inconsistently applied or automated so it doesn't get forgotten. And, while I'm sure that the board members and the staff are very familiar with who has what role, it could be nice to have these official roles show up in a more official way for those who aren't as involved in the day-to-day and behind-the-scenes work of running the site.

(Who's on the board isn't listed in the FAQ or the About page, and the footer links to an out-of-date page about the defunct Steering Committee rather than anything about the Board. If a member wanted to look up who was on the board, they'd have to go back to a post from August to see who that was, or to a staff comment down at the bottom of a 1000+ page thread about something else to confirm that the membership is still the same.)
posted by JiBB at 8:25 PM on December 27 [16 favorites]

I like the idea of some sort of title or badge both at the top and bottom of a post for people who have any type of official capacity, including volunteers. +1

It'll be asking people to share their moderation pain points/stories, just through a form rather than interviews.

I really like this idea as well!
posted by ashbury at 8:59 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]

I agree with getting a list of board members in an easily visible spot. Also maybe good to list all members of committees the same.
posted by NotLost at 9:02 PM on December 27 [7 favorites]

Sure, happy to look at whatever you would like. And yes, you nailed my reasoning on not calling it a survey. I don't have your depth of survey research background for sure, although I did a few courses on it and have gotten to work with a strong research lead.

I don't know that we're going to get to the level that you're talking about; I would love to and if you can help, I'm all ears. I'm not going to leap levels of expertise in a couple of weeks, and I'm not going to solve the equity and diversity issues (although I'd be very happy to have your thoughts on ways to mitigate or spotlight that where possible), and so people may have to accept that this is *one* thing in a sea of things and either participate or not.

I'm mostly concerned that -- to put this undiplomatically -- the lack of escalation procedures or indeed anyone to escalate to at all for the last several years with the exception of the BIPOC committee, and the culture around moderation that has developed over that time, has resulted in almost no visibility for what the moderation (as opposed to communication, although they are often the same) pain points actually are or even what the standard practices are and what's actually happened/happening, with the exception of the very few moderation decisions that escalate to MetaTalk.

I hope that as an ombuds-type committee at least starts to hear things in closer to real-time and we gather stories, we can hear what's going on to some degree and go from there to some clarity. I don't think that will be a set of final answers, more a start here set of answers.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:25 PM on December 27 [13 favorites]

If the goal is to identity moderation pain points, I’m not sure a survey methodology is really needed. I can imagine a simple open Google doc with categories in which people can make bullet point notes. As a starting point, I’d suggest headers including: forms of implicit/unintended bias (racism, gender policing); tone of private communications to users; lack of timely follow-through; inconsistency; unclear guidelines: misapplied or unevenly applied guidelines. There are really only a handful of pain point typologies - I’m sure more than those, but it’s a starting point.

Analysis paralysis is a real risk. i do evaluation as part of my work and am passionate about data in general. But in this case the methodology of a sitewide survey is not well matched to the goal of identifying pain points to guide future moderation policy.
posted by Miko at 10:55 AM on December 28 [7 favorites]

Glad to hear you've taken some courses warriorqueen--when I say formal education I don't necessarily mean as part of a degree or anything, just something that explains the theory and practice of some of the foundational skills. I've worked with some amazing, passionate people on community research projects, and there's a real difference between having that foundation and just working on the project without having any sort of instruction in the how/why. I wasn't sure if anyone had completed coursework in this, but it sounds like you have, which is great.

I definitely don't expect it to reach academic standards, and in fact you may not change anything about your approach based on survey methodology principles--I just think it's important to be aware of them so you know the limitations of the data you're collecting. Approaching it as a "start here" set of answers is exactly how I would describe it too.

Miko, when I refer to survey methodology I mean things like the decisions you make in how you recruit people to respond to this projects, how you phrase your questions or description of the form (avoiding leading or ambiguity), and awareness of the fact that there will be recency bias, social desirability, etc. at play. Those would all be methodological problems in the alternative data collection method you describe as well, because collecting data via a standardized form (whether that's a traditional survey format, a Google sheet, or something else) is survey research even if your specific form wouldn't be what people picture when using the word "survey" colloquially.

Again, we don't necessarily need to make changes to address all of these issues whatever data collection method is used, but it will be important to be aware of them when creating the form (or Google Sheet and instructions for adding to it) and interpreting the responses. It's easy to get a lot of bad data that sends you in the wrong direction. So I'm just trying to gauge how much support the board might need in making sure they get good data that they can interpret effectively, is all.
posted by brook horse at 11:22 AM on December 28 [6 favorites]

I’d suggest headers including: forms of implicit/unintended bias (racism, gender policing); tone of private communications to users; lack of timely follow-through; inconsistency; unclear guidelines: misapplied or unevenly applied guidelines.

I would add to Miko's list some headers pertaining to inadequate moderation and inadequate stances against threadshitting, thread-hijacking and trolling. I'm also not the only one who has long thought there's been a problem with inconsistent or unpredictable moderation based on mod preferences or personal politics. All of this disrupts conversation, and that's what most of us are on here for — to have good conversations — not to "win the thread."
posted by Violet Blue at 11:41 AM on December 28 [2 favorites]

Ok, a FAQ about the transition has been made and is linked in the site banner.

Thank you, Brandon. I have only one question, which I am sure will be no trouble to answer: how does one pronounce MeFiCoFo?
posted by aws17576 at 11:45 AM on December 28

> how does one pronounce MeFiCoFo?

"fish division"
posted by glonous keming at 11:48 AM on December 28 [3 favorites]

moofcoof
posted by lucidium at 12:09 PM on December 28 [3 favorites]

I have only one question, which I am sure will be no trouble to answer: how does one pronounce MeFiCoFo?

Like this.
posted by phunniemee at 12:19 PM on December 28 [3 favorites]

This idea is good and I hope a data point is the moderator’s reasoning for the choices they made.

So that's a great question.

The thing is, in user experience research, you sometimes do conduct stakeholder research to find out what the people doing the work, invested in the outcomes of the work, etc., need/want/pain points etc.

But when you are focused on user experience, that's your focus - on the user. You not only don't take that into consideration necessarily (it depends, sometimes you're asking the user to complete a task that the organization wants them to do like 'can you show me how you would find a product you want to buy' or 'if you wanted to know what the guidelines for posting are, where would you like?") but you don't want to.

Because users are not using the site to get to know the moderators' intent. The moderators' intent does not matter if the impact on users is negative (in a way that the organization doesn't intend.)

Of course there are times organizational priorities trump user experience - for example, supporting BIPOC and trans members. But overall, when you do user research, you are not taking into account what the staff intent is or the intent of the website design or why you made past choices. You're just understanding what the experience is of the people using the site (or the thing.)

I think this is one of the fundamental disconnects right now between moderators and site needs - which is usually where management comes in.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:48 PM on December 28 [11 favorites]

Before I get onto other things, I’d like to clarify one thing. Has a labor lawyer been consulted on the “moderation pain points” plan?

I’m not American, so the finer points of US employment law is not my strong suit, but this doesn’t seem right to me. The way it looks, as presented, is that we, the employers of the mods, will be asking them to sit and listen while people berate them.

Aside from any legal aspects, that’s just not how anyone should be treated, whether members of our community, or our employees.

To move onto what I actually meant to talk about… when I went back into this thread found myself staring at exactly the kind of group behavior I’ve been talking about. 1adam12 makes an aside that is critical of other members of the community. It is no more pointed than a lot of other comments that have been made in this thread and have gone largely unremarked.

One of the most common features of workplace bullying is that certain people are allowed to be critical of others, while any critical remark made by anyone else is treated as being out of bounds, and an excuse for the bullying behavior.

I know I keep going on about this point, but people need to think about bullying from the point of view of the bullied, and not the bullies. Because, as a rule, there are no bullies as such. This is a group dynamic that is only visible when considered from the point of the view of the bullied.

We are taking over the running of MetaFilter and we have to be serious about that, and one of our primary responsibilities is to create an environment which is neither hostile to work in, nor one where absolutely no criticism is allowed.

I take it from Miko’s quotes around the word “bullying” that this is a concept that is hard to get your mind around, but as the people running MetaFilter, we as a community need to be really thoughtful about how to make both volunteering and working here a desirable pursuit, and that just won’t be the case if we forbid people who work for us or volunteer from making critical remarks. We need people for the various board and staff positions that are necessary to keep this site running.

Everyone in this thread cares about MetaFilter and wants what’s best for MetaFilter, and we need to remember that. I was critical above of the plan around “moderation pain points”, as I think its based on an understanding of events that seems factually wrong to me, but I understand that it comes from a place of genuine concern. I’m conscious of the fact that I could be completely wrong about this, and it’s important that I keep that in mind.

I recognize that when people are in front of a gray screen, it’s easy to feel that your own voice isn’t very loud, I feel that myself. But we have to remember that everyone else here is also sitting in front of a gray screen, feeling not very loud. It’s important, when we disagree, to remember that that we’re all on, in phunniemee’s apt phrase that has been running around in my head since I read it, “a site full of cat people with anxiety”.

I’ve mentioned above how much the Blue has improved in recent years, and I really think that the Gray can too. Yes, we are all cat people with anxiety, but we’ve demonstrated over and over again through the years that we can be thoughtful and considerate.
posted by Kattullus at 1:31 PM on December 28 [7 favorites]

(Just popping in to say that 'pain points' is a business/marketing phrase that people may receive differently outside of that context.)
posted by box at 1:37 PM on December 28 [5 favorites]

No Kattullus, that's not how user research works. And honestly it's not how work works. Sorry if I sound curt here but I think this is such a fundamental disconnect here.

(Thanks for the definition box, I think I've been in marketing too long. :))

Metafilter exists for people to enjoy using the site. Sometimes, moderating people is essential. But sometimes, moderating people makes them frustrated and upset. A business or an organization that is healthy and focused on serving the needs of the people that use it VERY COMMONLY looks at complaint and concerns. It's not bullying for people to have complaints and concerns!!

The whole idea that looking at complaints and concerns is bullying is just way, way, way off, I'm sorry.

User research has the researcher collect the stories. Then they present the findings in aggregate to the team. The document that brook horse provided is a fantastic example.

(However, sometimes you do have the people who are at least making decisions sit in on focus groups and things. But we won't do that here.)

You can think of it like having people try the strawberry and the raspberry and the boysenberry PopTarts. Sure, the recipe makers have worked really hard on boysenberry. But if everyone hates boysenberry, then there is NO POINT in making boysenberry PopTarts. It is not bullying to tell the recipe developers that no one liked their PopTarts.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:40 PM on December 28 [39 favorites]

And I'll add that as someone who's been on the receiving end...when you get user research that tells you what you are doing wrong, it can sting a bit - but it's actually amazing. Soooo many design decisions become much simpler. It's not "does the executive like this here" but "can people find this here."

A real professional will treat that like gold, because then you can change what you're doing to get to the goals. It's also a really great way to get a team on the same page.

John and Jane may not agree on whether you moderate derails the same way. But if John and Jane have information that "having my comment deleted as a derail made me post less often" was a common thread in user research, then they can weigh their disagreement not against "was this a derail" but "was this a derail worth potentially losing people over." So that becomes a bit of a north star rather than "we've always done it this way" or "Gerry said do it this way" or "this way makes my life easier." (ETA: or three years ago there was a cutting comment about doing it that way.)

I'm a big fan of research obviously.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:45 PM on December 28 [15 favorites]

In America it’s common practice for employers to solicit feedback, including complaints and concerns, about their employees. There’s nothing that a labor lawyer would need to review about collecting that data. There are different schools of thought about how to present that feedback to employees (they absolutely should not be seeing the raw responses, for user confidentiality as well as employee morale), but the board collecting that data presents zero issue from a labor law standpoint.
posted by brook horse at 1:58 PM on December 28 [13 favorites]

I assume Kattullus might be thinking of a hostile work environment, something that even in the US where it applies is widely misunderstood: hostile workplace: it’s not what you think

Worth reading the short entry at that link but in short, “Hostile workplace” law isn’t at all what it sounds like: It’s not about your boss or your coworkers creating a hostile environment for you by being jerks.

To be illegal, jerky conduct must be based on race, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability, or genetic information.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 2:08 PM on December 28 [6 favorites]

Hmmm. In my head I imagined that someone (a volunteer or member working temporarily on a project basis?) would collect user data, then someone (the board? the moderation committee?) would use eyelid specula to hold the mods' eyes open while forcing them to look at all the feedback, Clockwork Orange-style. As far as I know, this is not a legal problem as long as you provide eyedrops (but it has been a while since I saw the movie). If it seems like there could be issues with that, maybe we could come up with some kind of workaround.

If the idea is that it is impossibly cruel to expose paid moderators to feedback from the community they are moderating, then probably it is too cruel to have moderators.

Also, we are not the employers of the mods, because the mods are not employees.
posted by snofoam at 2:16 PM on December 28 [5 favorites]

I disagree with Kattullus about whether anything that's been said in MeTa rises to that level, but workplace mobbing is a real phenomenon, studied by sociologists, and Katullus is not wrong in describing its effects and its impact on the targets. When a workplace gets to the point where people are being mobbed, it's very, very dangerous on a lot of levels.
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:23 PM on December 28 [8 favorites]

I take it from Miko’s quotes around the word “bullying” that this is a concept that is hard to get your mind around

Miko's still trying to get their mind around the fact that it is impossible for Metafilter to become a non-profit.

But thanks for modeling the kind of thoughtful and considerate dialog you are advocating for!
posted by snofoam at 2:25 PM on December 28 [6 favorites]

I feel like I see Katullus' point--the moderators have already been on the receiving end of an enormous amount of complaints and concerns, ranging from polite requests to much more pointed and somewhat organized anger from exasperated users who have given up hope of positive change, and it's a lot. I could understand it feeling like a pile-on, perhaps even like it's hostile. (I nonetheless have expressed my own frustrations here, because, like, where else are you supposed to go with them?)

And so it raises a question: Is the research warriorqueen is describing here supposed to replace these endless metatalk threads? Is the idea that all this research is leading to, I don't know, a complaints desk where the voicing of the criticisms aren't being moderated by the same folks being criticized? What's going to be different about how we voice our concerns, in the future?
posted by mittens at 2:29 PM on December 28 [7 favorites]

Also, we are not the employers of the mods, because the mods are not employees.

No. If they are all independent contractors, the user base that pays them is their client.
posted by Violet Blue at 2:29 PM on December 28 [2 favorites]

And so it raises a question: Is the research warriorqueen is describing here supposed to replace these endless metatalk threads? Is the idea that all this research is leading to, I don't know, a complaints desk where the voicing of the criticisms aren't being moderated by the same folks being criticized? What's going to be different about how we voice our concerns, in the future?

If we go ahead with it - honestly I'm wondering if I should just throw the towel in on spending my time doing it; if people don't want it, let's not do it! - the idea is to help create better experiences for everyone, with a focus on members first.

First and foremost I would see it as helping the volunteer mod committee to understand what's been happening and which decisions have bothered people and which are common. It might be that there would be one or two quick wins that would make things better fast that are low effort and low drama.

But also - if the moderation is better received because you understand how it has been received, in general, there should just naturally be fewer MetaTalk threads.

But let's assume that's not the case (and it won't ever be zero for a lot of reasons, including that sometimes you moderate comments or posts for good reasons their writers still disagree with.)

Right now, if people are upset they have three options:

1. Fill out the contact form. This form goes to the same people who moderate, so that's a bit icky on both ends in some ways. But also...well, we don't know without research. But I suspect the common experience of that form is that a moderator explains to you why the moderator is right. That's not an escalation process.

2. Post in MetaTalk. What percentage of upset people do you think take this step? My guess would be something like 1 in 20 or 1 in 30. Most people who get comments deleted with or without notes, or have posts taken down or even get called out, are not going to rush in to start a MetaTalk. Over time, they leave. We can see them leaving in the stats (active members going down; fewer people making posts; AskMes way down.) We can see new people aren't joining.

I'm more concerned with the people not posting and leaving than the people posting and leaving (sort of; I care about both but there's a lot of info about the second)...but we also know that the posts in MetaTalk make quitting more probable. So double ugh.

3. Go to Reddit and post there.

That's it. Also none of these things are actually very intuitive from the site. When you get a comment deleted, if there's no note -- and again I would like to know if the stats on deletions are JUST the ones with notes, because I know for sure, with my own eyes that comments have been deleted without notes over the last year -- there's also NO automatic MeMail, no courtesy MeMail that I'm aware of - nothing. People sometimes think they just didn't hit post.

If you're a newish or not-often user, your words just disappear and you may have no idea where or why. Of course, this doesn't come up much because we have no new users. But we need to get them, and they need to come into a good environment.

And that's just deletions...there are a lot of other moderator actions.

If we can understand what people's actual experience -- not just MetaTalk worthy experience is -- we can build a SITE that supports that. Maybe it's auto messaging. Maybe it's an easy to find link. Maybe it's hiding comments instead of deleting them (this was suggested and turned down.) Maybe it's a big "have a concern?" in the footer. But we don't know...we don't know what's going on.

Anyway, I'm posting a lot because man, it does not have to be exactly this way. It's always going to be a little this way. But it would really help if we could approach things as issues to resolve and not questions of Who's The Bully Now?
posted by warriorqueen at 2:49 PM on December 28 [25 favorites]

Actually I neglected the fourth option: Post/comment less. Read less. Leave.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:22 PM on December 28 [10 favorites]

MetaFilter's unique value proposition for users is 1. a heterogenous and curated stream of interesting links, and 2. insightful or entertaining community discussion around said links.

Moderation is (theoretically) one enabler for that value proposition but is not the value itself. If MetaFilter were in a healthier state, moderation should consume like 5% of our attention and discussion.

Historically, paid moderation has been seen as the best approach for producing good outcomes in terms of the community discussion part of the value proposition - I think it's fair to say that in its current form it's not fit for purpose.

But I'll go further and suggest that it's never really been fit for purpose. The only reason we haven't acknowledged that is 1. deliberate obfuscation of what moderators do, and 2. no measurement or defined success criteria for monitoring effective outcomes. Ultimately without genuine insight into process or outcomes, we have an "invisible hand" mythos - dogmatic faith in the necessity, benevolence, and effectiveness of the current style of moderation.

Even lots of those folks who think that moderation is currently broken think it can fixed, by tinkering around with longwinded policies and bolted on committees - and I think it would be really productive to challenge that assumption at this point.

Ask yourself, why would people join MetaFilter and what do they enjoy (especially folks who read more than post or comment)? The answer is interesting links, and good discussion. That core value proposition can be facilitated without paid moderation (potentially without moderation at all if ignore / hide / etc. were available), because it is almost everywhere else that has a similar content and community model.

I really promised myself not to log in again because this is all so incredibly frustrating, but here we are again, another opportunity for transformation is in the process of being squandered, and I feel compelled to say something, because all the energy is being consumed by the same old discussion about moderation (this time with some bonus nonsense about "bullying" and a member of the new board shooting themselves in the foot from the off) - rather than doing what is truly needed to make MetaFilter a more outwardly facing, forward looking organisation.

Am I saying fire the staff? Actually no, I've consistently argued that paid staff could provide a lot of value - focusing on new user acquisition, helping new users create posts and feel comfortable in the space, encouraging discussion in different directions. My success metrics would be acquisition, activation, engagement, and satisfaction. I just think that whatever they're currently doing is worse than useless, and any variation on that is likely also to be harmless at best.

For warriorqueen - I think you are doing incredible, fantastic work in this critical moment, but I hope that you can be braver in your thinking. Rather than asking what can be fixed or improved (surveying pain points), and incrementing from current state, I think the secret is to ask what an ideal world innovative / transformative north star looks like, and work back from future state - then with a critical eye ask whether any of what's currently in place actually supports that north star or not.
posted by iivix at 3:43 PM on December 28 [20 favorites]

Maybe it's hiding comments instead of deleting them (this was suggested and turned down.)

It was at first, but based on the concerns about workflow, I whipped up a script to automate the hiding (and even add logging) that loup and BB both tried and liked. I'm actually writing a message to frimble right now on the feasibility of incorporating this into the backend (plus some additional goodies for the front end that I think a lot of folks will enjoy). They're still recovering from a broken arm, but I'm hoping we'll be able to tackle this as soon as they're back.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:49 PM on December 28 [11 favorites]

Right now, if people are upset they have three options:
3. Go to Reddit and post there.

Well, not everywhere on reddit.
posted by phunniemee at 4:00 PM on December 28 [7 favorites]

Kattullus: "I take it from Miko’s quotes around the word “bullying” that this is a concept that is hard to get your mind around"

What a strange way to take that use of quotes. Doesn't it seem to you a lot more likely that she put it in quotes because some people are calling it bullying but she disagrees?
posted by Bugbread at 5:02 PM on December 28 [12 favorites]

I just want to say that I support warriorqueen and what she is working on.

What iivix is suggesting might have merit, but I think that would be a different and bigger project.

The survey that warriorqueen has in mind could get to improvement sooner.
posted by NotLost at 5:03 PM on December 28 [1 favorite]

I just want to know who shot themselves in the foot and if they're okay.
posted by clavdivs at 5:30 PM on December 28 [5 favorites]

speaking as a user

they're probably pretty mad about it
posted by glonous keming at 5:36 PM on December 28 [2 favorites]

Ok, a FAQ about the transition has been made and is linked in the site banner.

Thank you for that. Can it be linked from the footer also?
posted by NotLost at 6:34 PM on December 28 [1 favorite]

No. If they are all independent contractors, the user base that pays them is their client.

I don't know. Donating to NPR sure doesn't get you a client-contractor relationship with the staff.

But whether or not you donate, or pay any local taxes, anyone who comes to the library is a client of the library -- but there's a different shade to the term. (I'm just not into where the "don't forget I pay your salary" part leads. Of course a librarian's job is to figure out how best to help the patrons, but its the kind of patronage that stems from showing up to make use of the place, not the kind that stems from paying for it. It's funny that both "client" and "patron" can describe both sorts.) (And apologies if you already meant the former type.)
posted by nobody at 6:56 PM on December 28 [5 favorites]

finally, all the base belongs to us.
posted by clavdivs at 7:21 PM on December 28 [4 favorites]

Under the nonprofit, the legal relationship is that staff are contractors (right now) and the board is the client. Members will have only as much direct power over contractors performance and guidelines as the bylaws allow. I think we’ve been assuming that the goal of being community-driven means that members can and should weigh in on matters of policy and operations, come up with ideas, and volunteer for tasks - but they are not directly in an employer-employee or contractual relationship. The board typically represents members through their formal role. In a member-supported organization, members’ points of view matter substantially, but they aren’t usually directly structurally empowered to hire, fire, or manage. That’s not going to happen here either, assuming appropriate handling.

Nothing about being a contractor or employee in any business prevents people from having their work critiqued, sometimes loudly and publicly, as any of us who have worked in any public-facing role can attest. I’m not saying that’s the atmosphere we want, but continuous improvement in a community-driven enterprise means we’re going to need to talk about how things are going. It’s normal, it’s common, and as long as that speech is not breaking laws or bylaws, it’s okay.
posted by Miko at 10:03 PM on December 28 [13 favorites]

The new site will be much editable for stuff like this.

(not to shit in the sandbox because I do think any forward progress is good but the reason why the FAQ is a Google Doc link in a banner instead of hosted somewhere on this site isn't a great one.)
posted by Diskeater at 10:17 PM on December 28 [3 favorites]

“If the goal is to identity moderation pain points, I’m not sure a survey methodology is really needed.” — Miko

I agree with this…with a caveat. What IS the goal of this research? Meaning, what is the user research question that we want answered here? Let's start with that, then figure the best-fit method for gathering enough robust answers. (And after the methodology is chosen, reformulating the research question into an answerable user question — these aren't always the same; what we want to know and what we actually ask people often differ because both humans and questions are often complicated.)

What we end up with may or may not be a survey! (Or form, or spreadsheet, or even an interview.)

I've not been following very closely, but it does seem like the overarching research question here is something like: what are the most pressing issues the community has with moderation currently?

If that is indeed the question, then we probably have more than enough existing data to work with here and likely don't need to collect more to be able to move forward with some meaningful actions.

I'd also add the following two questions (I would ask these no matter what research I'm doing):

1. Why do we want to know this? e.g., why is this the research question we want answering first and foremost, right now?
2. What are we going to do with the data?

Maybe this is already being thought through in some way — warriorqueen, brook horse and others are incredibly experienced and capable here and I'm cheering every time I see a new comment. Especially the discussion it prompts, including disagreement (which often surfaces new insights and learning, thank you!!).

At this point, these people are the reasons I'm drawn back into reading MetaFilter at all. I think that what they're doing, the perspectives they're lending, etc. is so sorely needed right now. I don't know what it will amount to (I'm not that hopeful about the future of the site), but it's worth doing, saying, and sharing regardless.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:20 AM on December 29 [8 favorites]

Warriorqueen, you have been one of the most reasonable voices in MeTa in recent memory. The amount of effort and emotional labor you put in to your suggestions is better than most paid managers I’ve worked with. I truly hope, for the sake of the site’s future, you continue contributing.

I generally stay out of the comments in MeTa, but I’ve been closely following the events of the past several months. I know I’m not a member of the in crowd; most of my activity is on the green, which folks tend to look down their noses at. But I’ve still been a member for 15 years, so I suppose that gives me some cred. I lay out these bona fides in the hopes that what I say next isn’t dismissed as uninformed, or drive-by mod kicking, or whatever.

So here it is: this “bullying” stuff is bullshit. This is a job; the mods are paid to be here. If the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, they can quit. While they are here, they are paid to support the discussions happening on the site, as warriorqueen discussed previously. They should be able to receive user feedback on their performance, digest the feedback, and use that input to improve. This is a requirement of any job. It is not bullying to provide feedback.

I do think there have been times when feedback has become aggressive and potentially overwhelming. But it got to that place due to increasing desperation on the part of the user base, and it’s easy to understand. Warriorqueen’s survey is an actual solution to this situation. Instead of acrimonious MeTas, users (including those who have already left) can provide feedback in a NON-PUBLIC way!! No pileons required!! And it can be collected and sanitized into actionable feedback for the mods, without the mods being directly on the receiving end of the firehose.

It should also be used to set priorities for changes to moderation policy, so that the concerns of the community are centered (as opposed to the reckons of the current, unelected board members). Without understanding the reasons users are frustrated and leaving, we will continue to lose members.
posted by bluloo at 1:45 AM on December 29 [29 favorites]

The transition FAQ page says, “Once the full entity has been up and running for a year or so, we will be in a position to apply for formal 501(c)(3) non-profit status”.

Is there really a requirement for a year-long waiting period?
posted by NotLost at 6:18 AM on December 29

Not in Wisconsin (one of the nonprofits I’m part of got 501c3 status with significantly less running time than that), but I don’t know Delaware law. Though 501c3 is federal tax law so I wouldn’t think it would matter, unless there’s something weird about articles of incorporation which happen at the state level?
posted by brook horse at 6:25 AM on December 29

Is there really a requirement for a year-long waiting period?

My impression is that it is not a required waiting period, but it may make more sense to do this paperwork once the entity is more established, has elected board, has modified operations to what they will be going forward, etc. Maybe it would also give the new org a chance to resolve any issues that might need resolving regarding employment or whatever. Apparently this doesn't need to be filed right away and can be retroactive.
posted by snofoam at 6:57 AM on December 29 [3 favorites]

Yes, we are aware that some people have been calling for us to simply fire everyone, and this is not going to happen

How soon can we elect a board that will do what is needed?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:11 AM on December 29 [2 favorites]

I presume the above comment will sound like mean-spirited bullying to many in this thread, but reducing the cost of paid staff seems like such an obvious necessity that it would be great to hear from folks working hard toward keeping Metafilter alive in the future any sort of response to the repeated claim from critics of the current site owners and mods that a quarter-million-dollar budget for paid staff for a site as tiny as Metafilter is way out of line with costs for paid staff at many other, much larger, sites.

I may have just missed that, of course, so would be happy to be pointed to any previous direct reply to that claim from jessamyn, any of the current paid staff, or any of the volunteers now admirably devoting themselves to saving the site. Absent that, a statement like:

we are aware that some people have been calling for us to simply fire everyone, and this is not going to happen.

seems quite premature. Unhelpfully and disappointingly so.
posted by catspajamas at 11:09 AM on December 29 [7 favorites]

Vote #1 box kid, because there's a lot of space between reducing the cost of paid staff and immediately firing everyone.
posted by box at 11:41 AM on December 29 [8 favorites]

"Immediately" wasn't in my comment anywhere.

But to be fair, I do understand there's nothing "simple" about reducing the size of the paid staff. Like I said, perhaps I've missed the part where the staff or now-former owner have responded to the claim that the site's staffing costs are way out of line with the size and activity of the site compared to other discussion sites. Feel free to point me to anything like that.

Jobs being lost in this process seems like a given to everyone else here, too, right?
posted by catspajamas at 11:55 AM on December 29 [5 favorites]

I feel like the board will need to hire an ED or equivalent to run the foundation. This person will have to figure out what makes sense regarding moderation costs and many other things. I would hope that whatever board is elected is open to doing what the ED believes is best for the survival of the site.
posted by snofoam at 11:56 AM on December 29 [5 favorites]

[speaking as a user]

> the claim that the site's staffing costs are way out of line with the size and activity of the site compared to other discussion sites

AFAIK, no, this has never been acknowledged by anyone connected to current or previous-gen management, administration, or ownership.
posted by glonous keming at 12:20 PM on December 29 [5 favorites]

I feel like the board will need to hire an ED or equivalent to run the foundation. This person will have to figure out what makes sense regarding moderation costs and many other things.

Hm. I think you've got those two things reversed. This recent comment from Miko seems relevant, especially the part I've bolded:

>Miko and Warrior Queen, how long would it take to search for, hire and onboard an ED?

I can’t give a good answer to this because time is different at MetaFilter Inc. In a functional organization where you’re hiring for a pre-existing role, then three months. In this organization? There’s no way to predict. It’s a project to manage and confidence is zero that anyone can manage it. Because what has to happen? The board and LLC need to collaborate on a job description, which is going to require some other decision making about nonprofit operation. Then, there needs to be a financial plan that can guarantee the ED will be paid. Then some hiring criteria need to be developed, some sort of screening and interview process defined, and actual interviews and candidate communications...
posted by catspajamas at 12:48 PM on December 29 [2 favorites]

More briefly: How does Metafilter hire an ED without having already made some difficult decisions about reducing other paid staff?
posted by catspajamas at 12:56 PM on December 29 [5 favorites]

bluloo: Warriorqueen, you have been one of the most reasonable voices in MeTa in recent memory. The amount of effort and emotional labor you put in to your suggestions is better than most paid managers I’ve worked with. I truly hope, for the sake of the site’s future, you continue contributing.

I generally stay out of the comments in MeTa, but I’ve been closely following the events of the past several months. I know I’m not a member of the in crowd; most of my activity is on the green, which folks tend to look down their noses at. But I’ve still been a member for 15 years, so I suppose that gives me some cred. I lay out these bona fides in the hopes that what I say next isn’t dismissed as uninformed, or drive-by mod kicking, or whatever.

So here it is: this “bullying” stuff is bullshit. This is a job; the mods are paid to be here. If the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, they can quit. While they are here, they are paid to support the discussions happening on the site, as warriorqueen discussed previously. They should be able to receive user feedback on their performance, digest the feedback, and use that input to improve. This is a requirement of any job. It is not bullying to provide feedback.

I agree with basically all of this. I realize that people seem to have gotten the idea that I’ve been saying that no one should be allowed to criticize others, but I’m trying to advocate for the opposite, that everyone should be free to criticize.

Also, I agree that the Green is a really great part of MetaFilter, when I’m trying to sell friends and acquaintances on checking out MetaFilter, I tell just as many stories about AskMe as the Blue. I don’t participate as much on the Green because I get a bit overwhelmed, and if a question lacks an answer, I find myself thinking about it for months, even years (there’s a question from over a decade ago about a science fiction short story I read, but couldn’t recall the name of, that I periodically go flipping through old anthologies hoping to find).

The MeFites who spend time answering other people’s queries are doing meaningful and important work. To be honest, I feel a bit embarrassed about not spending more time there.

And as I hope I’ve made clear, I think warriorqueen is a thoughtful and considerate MeFite, who is a boon to our community. I don’t think she, nor anyone else here has set out to bully anyone. This isn’t a matter of individual actions, but group dynamics.

I don’t think there is a clearer example of this dynamic in action than the response to 1adam12’s comment above (who I note is a volunteer and not a paid member of staff). He makes a remark critical of others in his comment. To my eyes, it’s not outside the bounds of critical discourse that have been established in this thread. But his remark is treated as being far beyond acceptable by several commenters. To the point that he is essentially called incompetent and told that he isn’t allowed to be critical of others.

That is the group dynamic which I think of as bullying: Some people are allowed to be critical, while certain others aren’t allowed to be critical.

I don’t particularly mind what term is used for this dynamic, but I don’t think it’s beneficial. We need everyone’s critical perspective, so that we can thrive as a community.
posted by Kattullus at 1:27 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]

catspajamas,

Metafilter might start by reviewing the status of the mod who repeatedly failed to meet their responsibilities until an outcry finally led to them being put on an accountability plan.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:27 PM on December 29 [2 favorites]

Does the ED need to be a member of metafilter? I would I think the cost of hiring an ED from within is better, less expensive approach.

as to bullying, if I'm under the impression that it is members who perhaps are bullying moderators I do not think it is quite bullying. for the simple fact that you really are not in a position of power to bully someone who can delete your account at any point.
it may feel that way, it may look that way it may sound that way but I think the power angle is the key here. I have to re-examine this because before moderation aspect
people would openly say f*** off Matt but the thing is is they wouldn't be around for very long but that was the day of pirate ships and longboats I think we've finally matured enough to settle into the pontoon.
and jet skis.
How does Metafilter hire an ED without having already made
I realize this is hypothetical conjecture but it is a good point. I would think that an ed would step into a moderator's roll for a few shifts to make up any loss if mefi requires to reduce moderation staff.

my boss helps me out when I'm behind in the kitchen. I must say it is quite strange to give your boss orders.

I think going forward with moderation for the new model or the new site would be to seriously consider a mediator. this is been discussed before with a differentiation that there is between a moderator and a mediator. I would think mediation woudl be a rare occurrence but at least one would have a mechanism to havea fair hearing from secondary and partial source as impartial as they can be. I would think that a lead moderator would not or should not be a member of metafilter. metafilter would be in a better position to have perhaps three person panel because of employment constraints would be lifted though I do think if we do employ a part-time moderator who's a professional, they should be paid their professional wage ( roughly1500$ for day. 125$ an hour) I have attended many mediations and participated in one in a financial forensic role, in short it was a couple that wanted every penny that they spent recorded in separate charts. I wasn't allowed to speak unless spoken to directly by one of the clients and one of the clients did directly address me to wonder how much it would cost to continue this forensic analysis. suffice it to say they were paying 1000 times the amount to have their finances examined than any discrepancy.
I think it is very difficult to assignate any sort of malice towards comments that are negative towards the moderation staff perhaps each has its own meaning under various circumstances that sometimes other members do not know about.

do I think some members are asking tedious questions to wear down moderation staff, yes I do, but the thing about innocuous questions is that they are questions.
I get that.
I remember when Matt was starting to wrap up his ownership of the site and what was it, it was photoshopped Republicans with dildos in place of guns. that was it, he was in metatalk sharing some and I thought they're hilarious and people gave him crap for it like he doesn't have better things to do and in my mind, I'm thinking....no this is the perfect thing. so I helped out, I don't know if I give him pictures of dildos or presidents but it really doesn't matter because it was fun.



1adam12’s comment above (w

I picked up on that, I think it's quite Fair within the margins of social discourse if a comment seems overly critical of a commenters position or statement to respond in kind.
another words, if I'm a jackass to 1Adam 12, it shouldn't be a surprise if the response would be something similar in kind or nothing a'tall.
posted by clavdivs at 2:25 PM on December 29 [5 favorites]

you had me at dildos and presidents
posted by ginger.beef at 2:42 PM on December 29 [7 favorites]

That is the group dynamic which I think of as bullying: Some people are allowed to be critical, while certain others aren’t allowed to be critical.

1adam12 is a board member. Obviously someone in a position of power criticizing the users is different than the users criticizing someone in a position of power. They're not equally valid forms of criticism. People in power throwing snide, passive aggressive remarks at the users they hold power over just comes across as petty and defensive.

There's different standards for what staff and users can say, and there's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't matter if they're a volunteer or paid.

Kattullus, I'm really confused about what you're trying to accomplish with this bullying thing. I don't see how it helps to frame frustrated users as "bullies." It's just creating a false equivalence between users and staff and painting staff as the "victims," giving them yet another excuse to avoid any kind of accountability for their actions.
posted by april of time at 2:54 PM on December 29 [22 favorites]

1adam12 is a board member. Obviously someone in a position of power criticizing the users is different than the users criticizing someone in a position of power. They're not equally valid forms of criticism. People in power throwing snide, passive aggressive remarks at the users they hold power over just comes across as petty and defensive.

This, exactly. I understand the point Kattullus is making about some people being allowed to criticize but not others. But 1adam12’s comment is not an example of that. They explicitly said they were speaking as a member of the board in that moment. In my opinion, that sort of sentiment is inappropriate in official board communication. It deserves criticism, not because it is on the wrong side of the supposed bullying in-group, but because it is alienating to users. It directly led to a user buttoning, and is exactly the type of behavior users have been criticizing the mods for. Speaking for myself, I lost a lot of faith in the future of the non-profit initiative with that one post.
posted by bluloo at 3:10 PM on December 29 [17 favorites]

Agreed with bluloo. I had been very excited with the progress happening over the last few days, but honestly I have very little faith in 1adam12 to help solve the problems, anymore. I nearly buttoned over that remark.
posted by bowbeacon at 3:24 PM on December 29 [9 favorites]

I would I think the cost of hiring an ED from within is better, less expensive approach.

The funniest possible outcome would be for one of the mods to be ED.
posted by mittens at 3:33 PM on December 29 [2 favorites]

Hmmm
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:38 PM on December 29 [7 favorites]

Hmmm

Clarify?
posted by NotLost at 3:40 PM on December 29

Well, a suggestion was made…
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:45 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]

Oh, I see. :)
posted by NotLost at 3:53 PM on December 29

Right?! It might work!

I doubt they’re interested (been there, done that) but has anyone asked restless_nomad?! She did a great job managing MeTa when she came back for a bit.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:55 PM on December 29 [2 favorites]

Based on my experiences of past moderation from restless_nomad that led to me closing my last account, I would really struggle with the idea of a BND for Metafilter if they were nominated.

I thought you were joking with your first comment, Brandon, because of how absurd the idea of any past moderator who is going to have the kind of baggage that I think basically all you past and present mods come with as ED, I think would just not work :( I feel comfortable saying that to you because I think you are the mod that I think has garnered maybe the most goodwill at this point!
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 4:28 PM on December 29 [5 favorites]

Putting aside the specifics of any individuals, I do think that although any executive director might fill in for mods, the criteria and skills for an ED are different from those for a mod.

I think part of the problem has been mods have been tasked with non-mod work.
posted by NotLost at 4:31 PM on December 29 [9 favorites]

you had me at

he wasn't f****** around.



I would nominate Rhaomi. Be great to have adrianhon' retake on upper end matters.

maybe you folks know this but every owner of metafilter Matt, Cortex, Jessamyn have all written fine pieces on running a website, the internet, and interpersonal relations within a community.

but remember, always
vote 1#, quidnunc kid.
posted by clavdivs at 4:37 PM on December 29 [2 favorites]

I thought you were joking with your first comment…

Oh i was, then started to wonder, apologies for the derail!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:50 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]

Brandon, that wasn't a derail. No apology needed.
posted by NotLost at 4:52 PM on December 29

I thought you were volunteering yourself there for a minute Brandon! (Also assumed you were making a joke)
posted by tinkletown at 4:56 PM on December 29 [2 favorites]

Thanks for clarifying Brandon!

I also realize that my comment was about moderation style but that’s irrelevant to an ED, who I trust is going to hired (if we can afford to pay one) because they have the skills to manage, fundraise, and think long term, something that even a great moderator could lack and vice versa. But having those skills plus having a ton of baggage and past burnout in the community would make it hard. Just wanted to clarify that I understand that! (I have experience working for a nonprofit at the director level and it was led by an ED who burned bridges with the community we served.)
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 5:01 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]

Adrianhon left :(
posted by warriorqueen at 5:59 PM on December 29 [9 favorites]

As to where the money would be found to hire an ED: the board should be making a budget for the coming fiscal year. It would include on the revenue side anticipated income from fundraising and other revenue streams. On the expense side, it would include the payments to all contacted staff and other expenses. Some thoughtful consideration is given during budget development to reasonable fundraising expectations, and plans for staffing are made in accordance with that. It’s possible to plan based on funds not yet realized or in excess of the past budget, but a concrete plan for the needed additional fundraising must be made. The compilation and circulation of monthly statements are used to determine how on track (or how in the red) the annual budget is running.

If this is not done well, some organizations end up in deficit. This can be a short-term deficit which can be covered by a business line of credit or some strategic accounting (such as delaying bill payments until the last possible moment). If it’s a recurring deficit or there is a standing deficit at the end of the fiscal yeat, some combination of additional board and/or member giving is used to make up the deficit.

In short, a budget is a first order of business, if it does not exist already.
posted by Miko at 6:11 PM on December 29 [8 favorites]

would the ED be compensated for the work on an hourly basis like billing or a full-time position that draws a salary.
determining that could help draw a ballpark figure and how much the ED should be compensated for in determining a fiscal budget. I personally would like to see a full-time ED.
posted by clavdivs at 7:00 PM on December 29

1adam12's full comment for context.

Board member here.

I don't want a badge - I'm just another member of the community and no one even elected me. But I am fine opening comments or posts where I'm speaking as a board member with "board member here."

Okay. That's fine. I disagree, but we will get to that.

Yes, we are aware that some people have been calling for us to simply fire everyone, and this is not going to happen.

Oh. We got to it already? A person who was not even elected is stating hard and fast truths? (For the record, I am not wanting all the staff to be fired. Not at all.)

Unless you have a specific complaint against a specific mod that would qualify as a fireable offense in your workplace then the answer is "no."

This is not where I turned off my contribution, but...

"a fireable offense in your workplace" is irrelevant. All workplaces are different. There are things that, as donors to the site (which make up the majority of the revenue for Metafilter) have said we have issues with.

"We" are essentially paying the staff and "we" should be heard about how our money is spent. My mind boggles at the idea that one cannot see there has been some money that could have been spent better.

I cannot believe I even need to go here.

Was it all the way back in 2019? Whenever it was, there was a "OMG, we're 6 weeks from shutting down!" and volunteers. VOLUNTEERS! raised so much money that it righted the train for several years.

Now, Metafilter is still bleeding money.

And, yet. The community is not doing enough?

Or worse, to stay but spend their time kicking staff, mods, and other members for fun on MeTa. If you think that comment might be about you, it is.

That's where I stopped giving money to Metafilter.

I am surprised that someone on the board would be so antagonistic towards the community they purport to serve. I am actually a bit surprised that it would be an attorney. I thought persuasive talk was something an attorney does to plead their case? If you think I am talking about you 1adam12, I am.

Some definitely speak with vitriol in the MeTas, but I believe that is because they are not feeling heard after YEARS of saying the same thing over and over and just being ignored or getting a "yes, dear" and NOTHING ever comes of it. What you see as "kicking [staff] for fun", other see as "PLEASE LISTEN TO US, ALREADY!"

this is probably our most important task, since it feeds directly into the sore feelings that compel people to leave.

Your comment has had two people button (busted_crayons and knobknosher) and has now made me stop contributing financially at all. Who knows who else buttoned or stopped donating.

It's still unbelievable that a non-elected person (per their words) is in a new position of leadership and comes out straight up being so antagonistic to the community.

i'll be away from keyboard for a couple of days. hope you all have a happy new year.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:33 PM on December 29 [32 favorites]

From Brandon's FAQ

There's only one group, the board of the Metafilter Community Foundation. There are three members, 1adam12, Rhaomi and Gorgik. It's not really an interim board, it's the first board of the Foundation. Our goals are to get the organization/legal/structural things set up for the full board to take over. There are no committees yet.

From Adam12's Comment Above

Yes, we are aware that some people have been calling for us to simply fire everyone, and this is not going to happen. Unless you have a specific complaint against a specific mod that would qualify as a fireable offense in your workplace then the answer is "no." We are rearranging things so that the board, for now, is guiding moderation policy, with the view to standing up a committee of volunteers to deal with moderation complaints and mistakes as they arise. The board will have the final say-so in the event that a volunteer can't resolve the issue.

...Calls for volunteers for at least three committees will be coming soon - moderation, elections, and member outreach. The moderation part is already in process.

My Two Cents

I think it's great that 1adam12, Rhaomi and Gorgik volunteered to get the organization/legal/structural things set up for the full board to take over. We should be grateful to them for it.

But their rearrangement of the committee's responsibilities giving them the ability to guide moderation policy and have final say once a full committee convenes in the event that a volunteer group can't resolve an issue may be well-intentioned, and even within the confines of the traditional starter board, but it also feels deeply unrepresentative and therefore a very poor start to the community-led process. A three-person final decision-making committee is just too small to be representative of the array of opinions here, especially when it comes to issues that impact the majority of Metafilter's staff and the financial health of the site, which are some of the most important issues the site faces. I would respectfully call on them to stand down on this, and let warriorqueen's research findings inform our next steps.
posted by Violet Blue at 8:08 PM on December 29 [4 favorites]

Yes, we are aware that some people have been calling for us to simply fire everyone, and this is not going to happen.

Oh. We got to it already? A person who was not even elected is stating hard and fast truths?

You are misunderstanding. They're just saying that they, the founding board, aren't going to be clearing house. It would be just as inappropriate for them to do so as it would be for them to unilaterally sign 5 year contracts with all the current staff, backed by a guarantee of hefty termination fees should a future board renege.

I would respectfully call on them to stand down on this, and let warriorqueen's research findings inform our next steps.

I mean, if you want them to put off implementing any user-led oversight over mod decisions, that's certainly an option, but...wouldn't people like to at least see something ad hoc'd together right quick? (If there had been something like they're proposing in place a couple weeks ago, I don't think n_p would have had to button.)
posted by nobody at 8:30 PM on December 29 [8 favorites]

On another topic, I see no link from our main menu about how to join MeFi.

In the new site, this should be very prominent. A person on any page of the site should be able to see a link to the page about joining.

In the meantime, could that be made a permanent part of the banner?
posted by NotLost at 9:35 PM on December 29 [4 favorites]

And on another other topic: If we are wanting more posts, should we reconsider the restrictions on posting frequency?
posted by NotLost at 9:44 PM on December 29

Didn’t warriorqueen say she hoped to have the whole survey cycle done in 2-3 weeks? It is in no way too soon to be recruiting for a committee whose work is meant to begin in mid January.
posted by eirias at 10:04 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]

m-e-d-i-a-tor. (a go between, diplomat, warlord)

should we reconsider the restrictions on posting frequency?

what is "posting frequently". if you mean go from 12 hours to say six, hmm.
posted by clavdivs at 10:47 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]

Your comment has had two people button (busted_crayons and knobknosher) and has now made me stop contributing financially at all. Who knows who else buttoned or stopped donating.

:waves:

Just waiting on frimble to process my account wipe request.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:53 PM on December 29 [8 favorites]

It's shocking to me that management never reached out to people who left the site to see if they could do anything to change hearts and minds — and to get a better understanding of what made them go. In lieu of an owner, this is something a mod could take on. It's basic customer service, not to mention kind to show that individual users are important to the site and that their contributions mattered.

Sorry to see you go, Lazaruslong.
posted by Violet Blue at 12:05 AM on December 30 [8 favorites]

p.s. I believe Lazaruslong is another former Steering Committee member, about half of whom have since departed.
posted by Violet Blue at 12:13 AM on December 30 [7 favorites]

Violet Blue, I agree with you that we should get some information from people when they leave about why they left. I would especially want to hear from people who buttoned after holding leadership roles previously, eg on the Steering Committee. I don’t know if there is room for this in warriorqueen’s effort — the issues they saw may well be different, so the questions may need to be different. But it would be a good thing to do, especially if there are people who are still invested here and still connected to some of those folks.

I do not think this could have been done effectively by someone not in a management role.
posted by eirias at 12:34 AM on December 30 [6 favorites]

Just waiting on frimble to process my account wipe request.

I don't mean to disparage you, but this seems terribly...shortsighted. A founding board member made an impolitic comment, and now you're so convinced nothing will ever change that you're leaving for good? (And so mad about the whole thing that you're punching a hole in the wall on the way out, and making sure you can never unbutton?) If you and people who agree with you make a persuasive enough case, you could end up being the board, and things could be run...exactly however you want them to be.
posted by nobody at 5:10 AM on December 30 [7 favorites]

lazaruslong was on the Steering Committee that saved the site from going bankrupt. I think they are more than entitled to do whatever they want with their account and comment history. Snarky commentary is unlikely to convince someone to stay. A more appropriate comment would be to thank them for what they did for the site.
posted by snofoam at 5:27 AM on December 30 [16 favorites]

I mean that with zero snark, entirely (even embarrassingly) earnest.
posted by nobody at 5:48 AM on December 30 [4 favorites]

(though I guess maybe I was making unfair assumptions with "so mad about" and "punching a hole in the wall")
posted by nobody at 5:53 AM on December 30 [4 favorites]

don't mean to disparage you, but this seems terribly...shortsighted. A founding board member made an impolitic comment, and now you're so convinced nothing will ever change that you're leaving for good?

I don't see it as shortsighted at all. I don't believe "an impolitic comment" is why lazaruslong is wiping his account. It's definitely not why I eliminated the rest of my (relatively substantial) monthly contribution. It's the straw that broke the camel's back. This one comment could be overlooked or read as "that could have been said better."

But, there are years of this now. One doesn't have to look very hard to see any number of issues that members have brought up to see why there is such a level of dissatisfaction with how this place is being run that "an impolitic comment" (from a self-professed non-elected person in a position of apparent authority) would be a tipping point.

To be fair: lazaruslong was replying to a comment I made where it could be seen as it's just the one comment that's pushing people away. But, seriously, anyone who has been reading these MeTas for the last couple of years should understand it is more than one comment.

I'll miss you lazaruslong (and busted_crayons and knobknosher and....)
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:23 AM on December 30 [17 favorites]

(I'll also say that lazaruslong has been a member for over 20 years, knobknosher I think it was 16 years and busted_crayons I believe was also in that range. We don't need to be losing people who have invested so much in this site [be it time, money, content, etc.]. We don't need to be losing anyone. )
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:28 AM on December 30 [11 favorites]

For my part, I can understand why lazaruslong buttoned/wiped over that. As a non mouse stated, it seems more of a straw that broke the camel's back, not just that comment in isolation. I know I've been tempted to button often over the last couple of years; I can relate.


From the most recent Mod Ridealong post, about 1-3 people a month (!) are requesting account wipes. If I was on the board running this site, that would be on my list of KPIs (along with new users, average monthly donations, and a handful of others).

I'd like to point out, again, that the users are the site. We create all of the content here. Content and community is all that Metafilter is, and all that it has to offer. When users do a wipe, their contributions are a significant loss that should be taken seriously.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 6:34 AM on December 30 [9 favorites]

One of the things lazaruslong warned us about, after his time on the Steering Committee, was his shock at learning that for years there was almost nothing being done to document the site's finances - no records, no financial administration, just complete negligence at the top of even the most basic business accounting, just letting the money donated by thousands of users whoosh around while asking users for even more. He was stunned, and expressed that, as well as expressing in strong terms, after dealing with them directly, that loup should no longer be anywhere near site management (which, of course, loup deleted).

As snofoam mentions, the Steering Committee lazaruslong was a member of saved the site from financial ruin with an amazingly well-coordinated fundraising campaign; that is beyond dispute. That Metafilter's owner and paid staff have bungled fundraising since then in increasingly embarrassing ways, and continued to have to be badgered into producing basic reports on the site's financial health, with the mod team again and again failing to deliver on basic promises to both users and the BIPOC committee, and jessamyn seemingly doing nothing to hold them accountable, is also beyond dispute. Pick a random BIPOC meeting minutes report if you feel like disputing; maybe start with, oh, sections vi and vii from May 2023.

No one should be attacking any former Steering Committee member for wiping their account, ever, let alone after 1adam12's absurdly snide comment* was added to bushels and bushels of other straws.

*which even he must surely realize by now was an unforced error that hurt the site and warrants an apology
posted by catspajamas at 6:34 AM on December 30 [31 favorites]

I am surprised that someone on the board would be so antagonistic towards the community they purport to serve

Why would this surprise ya? The 'interim' board was picked for a reason.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:44 AM on December 30

Ah, the sections vi and vii from the May 2023 minutes I mean start on page 7; it's 1.J.vi-vii.
posted by catspajamas at 6:46 AM on December 30

One of the things lazaruslong warned us about, after his time on the Steering Committee, was his shock at learning that for years there was almost nothing being done to document the site's finances - no records, no financial administration, just complete negligence at the top of even the most basic business accounting, …

Sounds like my church. Have you guys really never worked with volunteer organizations before?
posted by Melismata at 7:08 AM on December 30

MetaFilter wasn’t a volunteer organization at that time, it was a for-profit company.
posted by april of time at 7:19 AM on December 30 [19 favorites]

Melismata, do you have experience with any functional people in your life? I suspect your lived experience may be coloring your expectations and is why your bar is on the floor. You could please consider your own position before continually coming into these threads and treating those asking for accountability as if we're making unreasonable demands.
posted by phunniemee at 7:26 AM on December 30 [57 favorites]

Counterpoint -- that is not like my church at all. Our treasurer creates a balanced budget based on pledge amounts annually. This budget is shared with and voted on by the congregation every year. Additionally, it is readily available to any congregant by request.

The budget is then monitored monthly by the Board of Trustees. We have a Finance Team and a Finance Secretary that is in charge of managing our income, outgoing payments, and bank accounts. This is all managed closely to the dollar, and any discrepancies are looked into and figured out.

My church is small, with 5 part-time staff members. The rest is volunteer labor. Our budget is a decent chunk less than what Metafilter's is, and is being managed much more closely.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 7:29 AM on December 30 [30 favorites]

Why would this surprise ya? The 'interim' board was picked for a reason.

Maybe this is the confusion underlying a bunch of the reactions here?

There was no "picking." The transition team was literally every single person who volunteered to start working on it fourteen months ago (in, I believe, this thread). There was then some turnover over the following year, and the three people on the board right now are the volunteers who were still around to shepherd the end of the process (or, more specifically, those still around who were also willing to take on the legal risk -- and de-anonymizing -- required to sit on a board).

I'm not saying you shouldn't be frustrated about a whole slew of things, but...these are not the people who did those things, nor were they selected by the people who did those things, and there are going to be elections soon anyway.

So I'm just trying to say it's a weird time to take anything as the last straw, that's all.
posted by nobody at 7:29 AM on December 30 [7 favorites]

and there are going to be elections soon anyway.

I guess it all depends on what 'soon' means.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:35 AM on December 30 [2 favorites]

Why would this surprise ya? The 'interim' board was picked for a reason.

The only team that was 'picked' was the original Transition Team, which I was on and which was assembled by cortex. We did feel uncomfortable about how that selection went down, which is the reason we focused on elections.

The elections resulted in the highly capable Steering Committee. They ended their work over the no-volunteer advice from jessamyn's lawyer. There was a layer of staff involvement in vetting -- I don't remember if any candidates were veto'd or no, but I think I would remember it if so? Not sure, I was having post-Covid heart problems at the time and my memories are fuzzy.

The next group, the Interim Board (and associated finance committee), were people that put their hands up - there was talk of an election but there were not enough volunteers to require one, so they all went on the board. The Interim Board is currently moving towards elections.

Yes it's too many committees and confusing. I hope people will stick out to where we get proper governance. I greatly appreciate the work that people are doing and remind everyone that one way to improve things is to get involved where you feel you have time and desire. 1adam12 has asked for help with elections (that's where I MeMailed him, but after a chat I shifted to moderation) so that's a great way to help move things.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:38 AM on December 30 [23 favorites]

I have volunteered to help with elections, bylaws or governance overall.

I welcome anyone who wants to work with me on any of that.
posted by NotLost at 7:53 AM on December 30 [7 favorites]

I’m formally barred by my partner from joining any more boards or committees, but NotLost, hit me up—I just did a bunch of bylaws/governance stuff for two nonprofits that started up in the last year. I recently met with a free nonprofit legal clinic so I have a lot of templates I could share.
posted by brook horse at 8:20 AM on December 30 [4 favorites]

Thanks so much, brook horse! I appreciate your expertise.

I am waiting to hear more from the board, and I'll let you know when I learn more!

I understand your being barred by your partner from joining more boards or committees. This year, I am trying to cut back my involvement in various things to spend more time with my spouse.
posted by NotLost at 8:30 AM on December 30

That makes three of us on spouse requests :)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:39 AM on December 30 [4 favorites]

That's enough for us to make a club! And then, you know, having an executive board could really help us-- [I am yanked off stage by a cane]
posted by brook horse at 8:41 AM on December 30 [11 favorites]

Hahaha.
posted by NotLost at 9:15 AM on December 30

Have you guys really never worked with volunteer organizations before?

This is a stunningly awful thing to say to a bunch of people who have listed their extensive experience with non-profits and have been offering their expertise for YEARS at this point.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:02 AM on December 30 [25 favorites]

Just want to highlight this paragraph from catspajamas, above (emphasis my own):

One of the things lazaruslong warned us about, after his time on the Steering Committee, was his shock at learning that for years there was almost nothing being done to document the site's finances - no records, no financial administration, just complete negligence at the top of even the most basic business accounting, just letting the money donated by thousands of users whoosh around while asking users for even more. He was stunned, and expressed that, as well as expressing in strong terms, after dealing with them directly, that loup should no longer be anywhere near site management (which, of course, loup deleted).

So restate, Loup was apparently called out for financial malfeasance over a year ago, and to the best of the SC's knowledge, the only response was that Loup deleted the public record of it. Was there a private response?
posted by knucklebones at 12:09 PM on December 30 [22 favorites]

Ducking in to say that I hope that site leadership will bear in mind the importance of publicly, respectfully acknowledging the work of volunteers here over the years. That does include the people who have donated time to read and respond thoughtfully & critically to site changes and management decisions.

I'm sorry to see the departures. lazaruslong, knobknosher, and busted_crayons all contributed significantly here over the years. I can understand why they buttoned.

I wonder how much the combination of end-of-year/onrushing-U.S.-political-disaster/general-fed-up-ness is contributing to these losses. Ditto the hard times that many of us are having (see the recent free thread for a catalog of deaths, illnesses, injuries, job losses, etc.) I think there are a lot of straws lying around with the potential to break the camel's back, per a non mouse, a cow herd's comment.

This is on my mind because thivaia buttoned in an intermittently intense thread the other day, maybe not least because of a comment I made. I don't know for sure, but... note to self. Maybe during this six-month transition period, it's a good idea to walk a little more lightly. (If you think that comment is pointed at you, it is not, unless, uh, you're me and/or think you need to hear it.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:22 PM on December 30 [6 favorites]

Loup was apparently called out for financial malfeasance over a year ago

The financial malfeasance was the site's in general, and the callout of the particular mod that was deleted was, as I recall, more due to that mod's general unreliability of communication and follow-through on promised actions.
posted by catspajamas at 12:55 PM on December 30 [4 favorites]

This comment was not deleted; was there a more strident callout of loup that was deleted?
posted by secretseasons at 1:12 PM on December 30 [1 favorite]

I hope the board will be able to provide an informal Balance Sheet for the non-profit in the near future. Just cash and equivalent assets and liabilities, accounts receivable and payable. It would help the membership understand the financial situation as much or more than the monthly cash-basis P&Ls, which due to expense timing can be read any which way, and often are, for a given month. (Like, one month says expenses exceeded revenue by $x,000, but on a cash basis that tells you essentially nothing, but people may not know that.)

Also, were the revenue accounts able to be transferred from the LLC to the non-profit, so people don't have to set up payments again? I assume so, given the lack of information otherwise and the importance of revenue. I don't have a personal interest in these questions but am asking on behalf of members.
posted by sylvanshine at 1:33 PM on December 30 [4 favorites]

was there a more strident callout of loup that was deleted?

Yeah, from a few months before.
posted by catspajamas at 1:34 PM on December 30 [13 favorites]

april of time: Kattullus, I'm really confused about what you're trying to accomplish with this bullying thing.

Well, it's fairly simple. I think that MetaTalk suffers from toxic discussion patterns. I went skimming through old threads and to me the pattern of behavior that I've been talking about seemed really evident. A member of staff or a volunteer is heavily criticized, and told that any criticism they offer in return is invalid because of their position.

That pattern then repeated itself in this thread with 1adam12's comment. He has taken on work on the community's behalf, as a volunteer. He is entirely without power, formal or otherwise, over anyone in the community. And yet he is treated as some kind of figure of authority who is not allowed to criticize anyone. This is ostracism. I'm comfortable with describing it as bullying, but if people want to use other terminology, that's not really a major concern of mine.

I think that if we're going to function properly as a community-run site, we'll need to make sure that it's desirable to volunteer or work here. I've set up a few organizations through the years that functioned wholly or partly through volunteer labor. I've also I donated my time and effort to many organizations. From my experience, the ones that function best make sure that people who do so feel good about volunteering.
posted by Kattullus at 2:16 PM on December 30 [5 favorites]

He is entirely without power, formal or otherwise, over anyone in the community.

Sorry, Kattallus, what is your understanding of what the board of a nonprofit does? Traditionally they control the entire thing. This may be where a lot of the confusion is coming in. Maybe it’s different elsewhere but in America the board has more power than anyone else. They are legally in control of the organization.
posted by brook horse at 3:25 PM on December 30 [18 favorites]

Volunteers and board members are very different, though board members are usually unpaid. They are however afforded significant control over the organization and its operations, which volunteers are not. If you’re trying to apply your experience with volunteers in organizations to board members, that may be where some of the disconnect lies.
posted by brook horse at 3:32 PM on December 30 [6 favorites]

I think part of the problem has been mods have been tasked with non-mod work.

I could be wrong about this, I’ve never completely understood how staff responsibilities are divided, but the way it feels is that out of quite a few paid staff hours, only a fairly small proportion are allocated on non-mod work (like basic business administration) at all. And on top of that, as you say, while I can believe the people handling that work over the years have had other skill sets, they really haven’t had that one!

Which is just out of whack to me. Setting aside the conversation about fairness and quality of moderation, it just feels like moderation is the only thing the site even knows how to try to do. Which is how we get things like “oops emergency fundraiser.”
posted by atoxyl at 3:51 PM on December 30 [4 favorites]

And to head off future accusations: If the Board is creating and appointing committees, those committees and their members also have official power in the organization. They generally need to operate within what the Board has tasked them with, but they are officially in charge of whatever those things are. The bylaws generally outline that.

I think people are thinking "community run" means some sort of direct democracy where everything is done by majority vote of the entire userbase, and that's not how things are being set up here at all. (Which is good, because direct democracy here would be a disaster.) There are people in charge. Right now, they're unelected people in charge, but they're still in charge. In the future, my understanding is that the plan for community governance is for the users to vote on the people in charge, but those people would still be in charge.
posted by lapis at 3:54 PM on December 30 [10 favorites]

I think people are thinking "community run" means some sort of direct democracy where everything is done by majority vote of the entire userbase, and that's not how things are being set up here at all. (Which is good, because direct democracy here would be a disaster.)

Democracy generally comes in two forms:

1. Direct democracy, which means voters cast a vote on every issue every time; and
2. Representative democracy, which means voters cast a vote for a representative who once in power enacts policy on their behalf.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:08 PM on December 30

who's actually in charge.
posted by clavdivs at 5:26 PM on December 30 [1 favorite]

I thought you were.
posted by Violet Blue at 5:27 PM on December 30 [1 favorite]

First base.
posted by bowbeacon at 5:36 PM on December 30 [3 favorites]

Paphnuty!
posted by clavdivs at 6:03 PM on December 30 [2 favorites]

"the man of God"
posted by Violet Blue at 6:41 PM on December 30

Yeah, so there are nonprofits run by a board of directors with non-voting members, and nonprofits run by a board of directors with voting members. But “voting members” just means they vote for the board of directors, rather than the board being self-perpetuating (board members select their own replacements). Sometimes voting members vote on more than this but that’s very rare and it’s certainly not on all decisions.

All board members are considered representatives of the voting or non-voting members, and are generally expected to conduct themselves in ways similar to any representative—even if they were not elected, they still represent everyone in the organization. Of course, people don’t know right off the bat how to do this, that’s totally understandable! But acknowledging the position of representative and the unique power dynamics at play would be helpful, I think. Being uncomfortable holding a role of authority is entirely normative and takes some work to process, come to terms with, and figure out how to approach ethically and effectively. I do want to give 1adam12 space to do that, as someone who understands the struggle of stepping into that role for the first or even second, third, etc. time. But I think the reactions people are having are to that genuine power dynamic, and if we want to figure out a better way forward we can’t pretend it isn’t there.
posted by brook horse at 6:56 PM on December 30 [13 favorites]

Which is how we get things like “oops emergency fundraiser.”

Exactly. And when we get professional management, that should make a major difference, especially overseeing finances, accountability, and a number of other aspects.
posted by NotLost at 7:18 PM on December 30 [2 favorites]

He is entirely without power, formal or otherwise, over anyone in the community.

Well if Jessamyn isn't the owner and the current board has no power. Who is in control and making decisions?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:30 PM on December 30 [7 favorites]

Actually, I think we're moving out of the anarchy phase.
posted by NotLost at 7:39 PM on December 30 [3 favorites]

The Board choosing not to exercise power is not the same thing as the Board not having power.
posted by lapis at 9:20 PM on December 30 [9 favorites]

This is just structural, not a matter of opinion. The board has both the power and responsibility right now to see that site and funds are properly managed. The buck stops there. De facto, the staff does report to them (even if there have been no formal conversations). The board is the contracting entity and also the managers of staff, until such time as they designate a manager or ED to serve in that role.
posted by Miko at 9:33 PM on December 30 [22 favorites]

“He is entirely without power, formal or otherwise, over anyone in the community”

This’ll teach me, for the sake of clarity, not to put clauses between commas in the middle of sentences.

I meant that he doesn’t have power over individual users. Unless I fundamentally misunderstand the present powers of board members, 1adam12 can’t ban anyone or delete comments. He is everyone else’s equal in MetaTalk discussions, except that he has formal responsibilities the rest of us don’t have (with the exception of the other board members).

Now, I recognize that he does have social status as a board member, but social status and having a formal position aren’t the same thing. Especially in small communities like our own, with many members who’ve been here for decades.

There are MeFites whose words carry added weight, because we’ve been reading their comments for a long time, and respect them and their opinions. Social status in a community flows from the community, and isn’t bestowed through formal positions.
posted by Kattullus at 12:21 AM on December 31 [1 favorite]

Unless I fundamentally misunderstand the present powers of board members, 1adam12 can’t ban anyone or delete comments. He is everyone else’s equal in MetaTalk discussions, except that he has formal responsibilities the rest of us don’t have

The first part of this and the second completely disagree. Having formal responsibilities related to running the site absolutely makes him not just another Joe.
posted by Dysk at 3:09 AM on December 31 [11 favorites]

There absolutely are things a board member should not say in discussions in a community. A lot of things! I’m not sure I agree that 1adam12 has trespassed there, but it’s just not the case that he or other board members are equal in this space. I am a board member of another org and I have to be super careful how I speak in conversation with other community members.

Regarding specifics — to me it feels in keeping for a board member of any organization to say, in essence, we need your criticism but we ask that you remain professional in how you handle it. I was really surprised that that was the final straw for some members. Or perhaps it was frustration at statements that the board would not immediately be letting all staff go? Either way, I’m scratching my head, I’m not sure I understand what happened here, but I feel I ought to say I support the board and think they deserve that six month grace period to figure out how to right the org’s finances.
posted by eirias at 3:20 AM on December 31 [9 favorites]

I meant that he doesn’t have power over individual users. Unless I fundamentally misunderstand the present powers of board members, 1adam12 can’t ban anyone or delete comments.

I mean, 1adam12’s account may not literally have access to the mod tools, but the board can hire and fire the moderators who do. Or they can just order a developer to give their accounts mod powers. This is a really bizarre “technically correct” kind of distinction to be making. It’s not a good definition of power.

Now, I recognize that he does have social status as a board member, but social status and having a formal position aren’t the same thing.

No, social status doesn’t accurately describe the power dynamics at play here. The board legally owns the whole dang website. They’re running the show. Any policies they enact is how the site will operate.
posted by april of time at 3:22 AM on December 31 [18 favorites]

Well either way, we're all confused as to what's going to happen in the near future.
I'm sure 3-6 more months of silence from the board will be okay.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:11 AM on December 31 [1 favorite]

The board hasn't really been silent. I might disagree with what they say or how they say it but they are saying something and they should be given a chance.

But yeah board members definitely aren't "regular" users because humans gonna human.
posted by Diskeater at 6:40 AM on December 31 [2 favorites]

Now, I recognize that he does have social status as a board member, but social status and having a formal position aren’t the same thing.

A board member is a formal position. His name is on the legal paperwork, if the transfer was done correctly. The board now has complete control over everything that happens on the site. They may not directly have the ability to delete comments or ban users, but they absolutely indirectly do through their ownership of the site and staff, and they could easily demand direct access to that and be legally entitled to get it.

That is power, not social status. Board members are not equals with other users in Metatalk discussions, which is exactly why people were asking for some sort of badge to indicate when they’re talking with someone who controls the site.
posted by brook horse at 6:45 AM on December 31 [24 favorites]

to me it feels in keeping for a board member of any organization to say, in essence, we need your criticism but we ask that you remain professional in how you handle it. I was really surprised that that was the final straw for some members

That is an extraordinarily generous paraphrase of the comment in question.
posted by The Gooch at 8:41 AM on December 31 [17 favorites]

Yes, my understanding was that the implication that “some users kick the mods for fun” is the issue. I don’t think anyone in Metatalk is being harsh for fun. They may be lashing out because they’re feeling hurt, and that lashing out may be inappropriate, but I can totally see why it would be the last straw to have your expression of that hurt being characterized as “kicking the mods for fun.” That’s assigning a specific bad faith intention that dismisses the criticism as insincere, which is a lot different from asking for more polite expression of criticism.
posted by brook horse at 8:50 AM on December 31 [16 favorites]

A board member could also have access to the site's admin interface which contains the confidential mod notes section in our member profiles.
posted by qi at 9:37 AM on December 31 [6 favorites]

> I meant that he doesn’t have power over individual users. Unless I fundamentally misunderstand the present powers of board members, 1adam12 can’t ban anyone or delete comments.

So, hypothetically, if Elon Musk doesn't use the admin interface for X fka twitter, then he doesn't have any power there? That seems... ridiculous
posted by secretseasons at 10:09 AM on December 31 [5 favorites]

What happened to the BIPOC board minutes that were supposed to be posted within a week or so of December 21?
posted by CtrlAltD at 11:06 AM on December 31 [12 favorites]

Speaking of BIPOC board minutes, possibly part of the problem is that they are so detailed, which might make them more difficult for everyone to agree on. Many boards publish just the essentials, such as:

The staff reported on doohickeys for the month and answered questions from board members. The board voted to order four more doohickeys, 3-2. Members voting aye were A, B and C. Members voting no were D and E.
posted by NotLost at 11:23 AM on December 31 [6 favorites]

Veering off into the BIPOC board and any other current or potential boards or committees, I think it's best that staff members do not serve as voting members of any such committees. I think it's generally best to differentiate roles.
posted by NotLost at 11:26 AM on December 31 [12 favorites]

The BIPOC minutes were unusually detailed, but in this case it was a rare chance to have some transparency into the workings of the site admin, so I think it has been beneficial and eye opening.
posted by snofoam at 11:44 AM on December 31 [14 favorites]

Popping in to answer to the question of BIPOC board minutes - we adopted a new format which will prioritize essentials like action items/decisions. The old format made it very hard to churn them out and get them approved smoothly.

At our last meeting, we went through and made big edits to get things lined up with our new minute-taking approach. I've edited them all and am just waiting to get the OK from the relevant members. I can promise they will be sent out to be published as soon as they are approved.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 11:45 AM on December 31 [14 favorites]

Thanks travelingthyme, the update is appreciated.
posted by brook horse at 12:46 PM on December 31 [1 favorite]

That is an extraordinarily generous paraphrase of the comment in question.

Sure. Not for nothing, though; I think charity is a pretty good default for MeTa. A common strategy is to get progressively less charitable the more times you get let down. Perhaps counterintuitively, the board are not the moderators and administrators that caused the myriad frustrations that make charitable reading difficult- those are different people. The board ultimately could get mods and admins to nuke or edit any and all of our comments, and they are also a bunch of volunteers that stepped up to do work that may turn out to have been necessary to save the site.

From my perspective, the initial set of goals for the board was "establish a nonprofit and get the site transferred to that". That set of goals has been met, and for that I am grateful. New goals are coming into view and they will require different skills. While careful MeTa commenting is not a skill related to "establish a nonprofit and get the site transferred to it", that will be a necessary part of the board's skillset in the suddenly-very-near future.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 4:40 PM on December 31 [11 favorites]

that is the clarification I sought, thanks Miko.
posted by clavdivs at 3:54 PM on January 1

I'm sorry to see the departures. lazaruslong, knobknosher, and busted_crayons all contributed significantly here over the years. I can understand why they buttoned.

I spoke with knobknosher, who is one of my best friends in the world and unquestionably the most important person I met during my time on this site. They told me that they didn't leave in anger and they wish the very best of luck to the new team. So although I do feel some bitterness about them leaving, I intend this comment in the spirit of a tribute.

knobknosher has been one of the most visible and valuable members of the site off and on for almost 20 years. They brought the community together in countless ways, especially through their tireless organizing of meetups -- weekly meetups, for years! And also through a very public act of heroism that I hope many of you will remember. (I don't want to describe it directly because it is connected with knobknosher's other aliases and real name. Instead, please indulge me as I talk around it a little.)

More than ten years ago they, with the help of a few friends from the site, electrified the community and much of the Internet with a daring act of altruism. They risked their own safety by opening up their home to vulnerable strangers -- at a time when they themselves had little in the way of resources. I and many others here were very impressed. When, a little later, I actually met knobknosher, I was star-struck. When we became friends, I was over the moon.

knobknosher was and is a model for living to me in many ways. And I know many of the people I've known through Metafilter have also found their connections to knobknosher to be enriching and even magical. At the many meetups they organized which I attended, they always tried to make everyone feel welcome, to make them part of the fun, to let them in on the jokes. How those meetups sparkled! People came to be with knobknosher, people came to meet knobknosher, and they stayed, and formed a community. Some of them are still my friends, too, although I'm not sure which of them are still here.

So, I hope others will join me in remembering knobknosher for their years of contributions, no matter what sides we all may have found ourselves on in the site's many contretemps.

Here's to one of the cleverest, funniest, most principled, bravest, and biggest-hearted people I have met, one of the best posters ever on this site, someone who poured their heart into building this community both online and in-person, and my friend forever. Love you.
posted by grobstein at 9:55 PM on January 1 [41 favorites]

I still have trouble not intuiting these as "wrong" reactions -- in that I can only make sense of them in a context that assumes some incorrect things about the phase we're in -- but I also had no idea knobknosher was ______ (and, previously, ______ ), who I have a terrible amount of respect for.

It does seem clear that for the benefit of the site, board members should be more careful about how they express their frustrations, and especially more careful not to glibly target those frustrations at just anyone who might think it could apply to them. Lesson learned, one hopes, for this board and for future boards.

(And hopefully _____ will come back with another new username some day.)
posted by nobody at 7:07 AM on January 2 [9 favorites]

Re: BIPOC minutes - not for nothing, but AI notetaking tools are very impressive. THey still need a human revision after drafting, but so do traditional minutes. Huge timesaver. Maybe you've already considered this and rejected it, but just throwing it out there, since compiling minutes seems to be a time challenge.
posted by Miko at 8:33 AM on January 3 [4 favorites]

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