Moderation strike - Academia Meta Stack Exchange

Moderation strike

2023-06-05T12:01:13Z

There is currently a moderation strike on this site: Academia.SE Moderation Strike

Which is part of a moderation strike network-wide: Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers

Normally this type of key information about AC.SE would be posted in meta and featured on the main site. The community deserves to know when big changes are happening.

But since SE employees are taking it upon themselves to circumvent the community standards, and removing the featured tag, I thought it would be appropriate to post that information here.

Note: this was originally posted to the main site since the company's leadership was suppressing meta posts about the strike. The strike has since finished successfully, and so we have decided to move the post to meta so as to keep it around long-term without introducing confusion on the main site.

Answer by Cathartic Encephalopathy for Moderation strike

2023-06-05T13:55:28Z

Writing an answer in hopes that it helps the algorithm to make this question network famous

Success!

6/7/23 (after close and reopen of this question):

Still available on 6/8/23, the puzzling stackexchange post is no longer on front page tho.

6/9/23: No longer on HNQ :c

Answer by user137975 for Moderation strike

2023-06-05T21:14:11Z

As a brief point in support: This strike isn't just for mods. There tends to be a lot of focus on the moderators, especially for StackOverflow. The strike organizers are occasionally a bit self-important about that, though I don't think our mods for Academia.SE are.

I think this point has been made, but is particularly true here. Upvoting and downvoting are, absent other policies, the primary way the entire SE platform is designed to deal with whether an answer is semantically correct or incorrect. Upvotes are easier to cast than downvotes, however. There are good reasons why the privileges have been set up this way.

As the current status quo without additional AI related policies sits, we are not supposed to close syntactically reasonable questions that are nevertheless semantically incorrect unless they fulfill fairly strict semantic criteria (advertisement, plagiarism, or offensive/harmful content as per the code of conduct).

We experience some negative side effects of these policies here with some frequency, especially with the Hot Network Questions queue. We're a small, relatively slow Stack. Syntactically reasonable but semantically incorrect answers are simply very hard for us to collectively bury with downvotes. Furthermore, that kind of aggressive policy strikes me as at least if not more unwelcoming than an extremely rare and appeal-able suspension justified by our current (by company fiat, unenforceable) AI content policy.

I think these conditions are worth emphasizing alongside the original question's, and make the strike particularly worthwhile for Academia.SE. We are a small Stack doing our level best to cultivate a usable Q&A framework for largely non-technical questions. A local policy is a particularly obvious solution for us, and particularly low impact for the rest of network.

Answer by Daniel R. Collins for Moderation strike

2023-06-05T21:38:52Z

I'm posting to point out at this writing that @StrongBad's question is the top network hot post. Plus, thanks to @StrongBad's return, they immediately became the #1 top network asker. So, well done crafting this.

(And it's only secondarily that I accidentally bumped this question from the top of SE Academia and wish to make penance.)

Answer by gomennathan for Moderation strike

2023-06-06T02:19:12Z

IMO this is an excellent idea and I think this development has potential to greatly improve the site.

Is there a chance the strike could spread to other sites on the network as well, so that they could benefit from its positive consequences?

Also, I think an even more efficient way to provoke action from SX management would be to popularize competing, alternative sites. It's not 2008 anymore when StackOverflow was the only game in town. Lots of other people have copied the model, even improving the software, their only disadvantage is being dwarfed by SO/SX's pre-existing reputation. I'm sure word of mouth would naturally drive users away from here to better managed sites, but this strike is a great opportunity to accelerate that.

Kind off topic answer, but I'm expecting no downvotes since there is a moderation strike :)

Answer by Sursula for Moderation strike

2023-06-06T05:28:55Z

Thanks @StrongBad for bringing this to the main page by these means, an excellent idea! I am very sad that a few people on top are making such bad decisions that are so disruptive for a great community and Ressource that I have been very happy and grateful to have joined and discovered.

Let's hope that this strike has a positive outcome! And as others gave said, non-moderators, join in on the striking!

Answer by semmyk-research for Moderation strike

2023-06-06T06:23:31Z

OrangeDog wrote, Here we go again. I can't help but get a feeling, even if remote, that perhaps the approach to the new AI policy was a smokescreen for 'another' #purge

Inbtw, I'm not a mod but I participate actively as much as I could. In the process, I get bewildered on some of my answers that are struck down and I couldn't get valid or very good reasons for.

By and large, we all need and want quality contents on SO/SX. May the (AI) strike works well (#fruitful) and may the mods also reflect on some of their acts!

PS: there's a mod strike, hence no downvote on this!!!

Regarding AI generated content, one danger is truth value and provenance. AI ain't infallible. Indeed, we've seen how they can be: Even more so with research. IMHO, ChatGPT is almost a disaster with academic references. Perplexity AI fare better but still untrustworthy.
[Out-of-scope] My view on generative AI/LLM is summarised in my LinkedIn post: Digital Pedagogy: Towards a Policy for ChatGPT

Answer by Shern Ren Tee for Moderation strike

2023-06-06T08:56:11Z

There once was a site StackExchange
Which did well-writ answers arrange
A corps of free mods
Would even the odds
Against porn and spam and 'net rage

One day to the website did ride
The Large Language Models blank-eyed
While they did perchance
Write like (noob) humans
They oft bullshitted far and wide

At first StackExchange said, "No way!
No AI answer can display
The hard-earned merit
And empathic wit
Of a real human's repartee."

But then the mods heard from on high:
"We now take answers from AI!"
No reason was given
For this fall from 'net heaven
Just orders to change and comply

Receiving such stone-faced rebuff
The mods can but show themselves tough:
Until management
Should cleanly repent
The mods' great lights shall stay snuffed!

Answer by Starship for Moderation strike

2023-06-23T14:47:35Z

Something that I would like to clarify is while the AI policy was the final and quite large straw, it is not the sole perpetrator of this strike. It is also about the general refusal to listen to our feedback. Then, of course, there’s the vote arrows, the AI integrated into the site, the prompt design site, and the removal (and eventual reinstatement) of the data dump.