Is the Teachers' Lounge toxic, if so why?

I was a regular of the Teacher's Lounge from a few months after chat started to some time in 2017 when I mostly dropped off chat (not just TL), but still checked the transcript now and then, until the day after Monica was demodded, when I resigned.

Overall I would not describe the atmosphere as toxic. Sometimes people have a bad day and say things that they regret afterwards. Moderators often have to cope with the worst stuff that happen on the sites, so it's not uncommon that they are in a bad mood, and part of the purpose of the room is to vent. Because it's a private room (and it absolutely needs to be private), people tend to take the gloves off. Fortunately, because the public is fellow moderators, they should generally be understanding.

There have been some very strong disagreements, but mostly they've tended to involve only two people. Pile-ups are fairly rare, and the people who are in this room mostly know to disengage.

As the room grew from a potential participant base of <50 to >500, disagreements became a bit more common. With the first 50 people, there was no need for any moderation of the room. With 500, it was time to consider having some moderation. But there was no serious problem.

Except pronouns. Most controversial topics tend to die down quickly. But discussions about pronouns tend to degenerate into extremely heated discussions with a group of people that refuses to listen to anyone else. This has only been the case since around 2016 or so. Before, pronouns didn't come up much, and when they did, it was as friendly as anything else. (One participant famously did not reveal his gender and it became a habit to refer to her by randomly swapping between he and she — he'd expressed a preference against neopronouns and I don't recall either her or other people spontaneously using they. Yes, in those days, you could joke about pronouns.) But in the past few years, there was a group who was extremely vocal about pronouns (note: about pronouns, not about gender) and who did not tolerate the slightest disagreement.

This is the group who assaulted Monica. No matter who Monica may have (inadvertently) hurt with her (non)-usage of pronouns, in this particular discussion, she was clearly the victim.

One Stack Exchange employee was present and joined in the bullying of Monica, and Monica left. Later, another Stack Exchange employee arrived and behaved intelligently and decently. At that point, I thought that the bullies would get a talking to in private, and life would go on.

A few days later, Monica was summarily dismissed. The company put all the blame on the victim. That's when I decided I couldn't be a moderator anymore, not without a fundamental change in governance.

So no, the moderator chatroom isn't toxic, or at least wasn't toxic until the current crisis. But it does occasionally reveal people who don't quite have the qualities that are expected of moderators.

This is a complicated question.

Up until a little while ago, I was an appointed moderator on the network. I... spent a lot of time in the TL; I was among the chattiest users in the room the couple times a CM pulled out stats on it.

Most of the time, the TL was just like any other room - it had its "core members" who would often be around and chatting. There were often ~60 people constantly lurking in the room, and I estimate around ~25 people who would be pretty reliably around in the room - notably, these were often the moderators who spent a lot of time on chat in general. It's worth noting that the vast majority of moderators do not use the chat system at all, or very rarely. There was a large percentage of moderators who would pop in now and then, either to ask a question or just to chat, but didn't have a regular presence in the room.

Unlike most rooms, the TL also serves as a way for moderators to contact a CM or the mods of another site, with an internal bot that helps with this. This would mean that moderators who want to grab a CM would often have to jump into the TL to ask their question... which meant that the people who hang out in the chat room would see the question as well.

Often, that would result in someone poking their head in to ask a CM something, and then unexpectedly getting half a dozen of their peers giving them an un-requested answer instead.

This can probably be chalked up to a genuine desire to help - most of the people answering genuinely wanted to help out - but it would give the impression of being jumped on if you weren't expecting it. If I ask Shog a question, I'm not expecting an answer from seven moderators coming at me all at once. You can feel ganged up on.

This was especially pertinent in cases where perhaps you disagreed with a certain policy or your site handled certain cases in a different way. You suddenly had sometimes up to a dozen people at once questioning you, complete with the loud, annoying chat ping sound, and telling you you're doing it wrong.

That's definitely toxic. Even though it was all good-intentioned, you still feel like you're under attack. That's not why you came into the room - you came to ping a staff member and suddenly you're being attacked by a dozen people you don't know.

At times, in the TL, there were long drawn-out discussions (emphasis on that word) about difficult topics. I distinctly remember having discussions about gun control, homeschooling, and cigarette smoking in the TL, with people who I strongly disagreed with... and it didn't devolve. The discussions remained mutually respectful, with people actually talking and responding to each other's points with real arguments. There were attempts to understand the other's point of view. It was an exemplary case of productive discussion of a charged topic.

These discussions would go on for hours at times, and most of the time the conversation would end well (or just straight-up dissolve into a pun war).

But sometimes... there were the arguments.

These arguments were, at a glance, very similar to the aforementioned discussions. They would involve people discussing a topic for hours... but with crucial differences.

These arguments were sometimes about the very same topics that had previously had productive discussions. Often, they were sparked by somebody coming in who hadn't been around for the discussion, who might've read the transcript or seen something on the starboard, and decided to respond. These arguments weren't so calm. People would get frustrated at each other, and remain entrenched in their positions. Nobody was willing to see the other side.

That's when problems developed.

Since it's the TL and everybody is a moderator, there is no way to force a conversation to end. With a normal user, a moderator or Room Owner can kick them out of a room in an escalating 1 - 5 - 30 minutes, preventing them from talking in that room during that time. A moderator can issue a suspension ranging from an hour to 9999 hours. A room owner can put a room in timeout, or a moderator can freeze the room. There are a lot of methods to stop a problematic conversation that won't end.

But a moderator is exempt from all these things. They can't be kicked or suspended. They can talk, even if the room is in timeout or frozen (or, heck, deleted). There is no way to stop a problematic conversation in the TL.

And that caused problems. Since there was no way to force a conversation to stop, the arguments would continue, sometimes dragging on for days, until people got sick and tired and disgusted and just left. It would slowly poison the room until it was finally over. People would leave with a grudge against some other moderator, that they would nurse and only make worse. And there was no way to stop these.

Luckily, these arguments were infrequent... until recently.

As soon as the messages that started this current debacle were dropped into the TL, the TL exploded. People who hadn't ever really been involved in the TL much suddenly became really active there, and there were more people talking than ever before. And they were all talking about one thing... or, well, several things, but they were all related.

There wasn't a break in the transcript for the length of an hour until several weeks in.

And in those several weeks, the TL I knew changed. The people I had enjoyed productive conversations with, had pun battles with, and considered my friends... most of them I couldn't find in the mess. The TL was filled with different people.... arguing. For weeks on end.

And suddenly, there were no more discussions. It was all arguments. And those arguments that I was dismayed to see in the first place, then came to include anti-queer comments. And anti-Jewish comments. People were tearing each other to pieces, painting targets on people who weren't there, painting targets on people who were there...
Most people weren't interested in listening. They wanted to talk... and they did. They talked and talked and talked, and even when they said something offensive, there was no way to point that out or remove it without getting swallowed alive by the argumentative crowd that now filled the TL.

Everyone was bitter and angry and it turned the TL from a level-headed place into a room boiling over with frustration and grudges. It got nasty.

I was suddenly seeing messages about not wanting to respect people's pronouns accrue a dozen stars in the space of ten minutes. I saw vitriolic messages spouted about my religion. It became an extremely toxic environment.

...this all contributed to my feeling unsafe remaining a moderator, and was a large factor in my decision to resign.

To address the original question, though: Is the TL toxic?

It both is and it isn't, I'd say. It definitely has toxic qualities - for instance, the common piling on that happens to hapless people just asking a question - but the room when it is operating normally isn't toxic.

But it has the capacity to get very toxic very quickly, because there is no way for the moderators to moderate the moderators. Because there is no way to moderate the room, it at times becomes extremely toxic and has a hard time getting out of that once it falls in.

Well, one reason could be that it's hard to moderate a chatroom full of moderators. They can't be kicked or suspended, so if toxicity levels rise, eliminating the problem users isn't an option; it needs to be resolved by talking alone. Sometimes, that's very hard or even close to impossible.

In my humble opinion, I think it's not toxic at all – at least most of the times. (I hope that doesn't mean I'm part of the problem; as far as I can tell, I'm behaving the same way as here on Meta.) But I do understand why other moderators think it is: if you have been hurt by a bad experience in the room, that is going to have a lasting effect on how you feel about the atmosphere in that room.

Most of my experiences in the room have been good. To give you an example, in the aftermath of The Event, I've seen some beautiful collaboration happening in the Teachers' Lounge, leading to Dear Stack Exchange: a statement and a letter from your moderators. And that's hardly the only example, but I have to be careful with what I can share because of the confidentiality agreement.

People who are passionate about the things that they care about tend to be vocal about it and will defend their point of view.

This can sometimes end up with conversations that are both cyclic and passionate, at the expense of any kind of productive outcome.

To the people outside of the conversation, these discussion then appear toxic and unfriendly, especially when people get so entrenched into their own point of view that the become blind to another person's opinion.

Because there's no moderation or mediation in the TL (except for polite requests that quickly become discarded) these heated and passionate conversations continue. When people feel excluded or become disenchanted by the passion, they leave the room and the people who shout loudest remain.

I don't believe that much of the content is "toxic" - it's more a matter of extended periods of "passionate discussion" tends to exclude others.

As others have said, the chat moderation tools that can be used in normal chat rooms don't really work in a room full of moderators. If moderators don't discipline themselves to avoid controversial topics, keep their cool, etc., then feelings may get hurt. Most of the time moderators discipline themselves but not always.

Additionally, the users in most normal chat rooms have generally have more common ground with each other than the moderators from all over the network. A normal chat room will typically be composed of users all interested in the same topic (or sub-topic) for the site that the chat room is tied to; on the other hand the Teacher's Lounge is for moderators from all over the network (who may have very different backgrounds), and the topic is not necessarily so well defined or requires discussion of the most ugly aspects of the network (dealing with misbehaving users).

On a related note, the Teacher's Lounge can also be seen as a place to vent frustrations (i.e. "ugh, I hate it when users plagiarize/fight/etc."), and sometimes this negative attitude goes too far and sours the mood of the room.

In my experience the Teacher's Lounge is generally a good place and a useful resource. It works best when the people in the room stay on topic and help each other solve moderation problems. It becomes a problem when people start talking about religion and/or politics and lack the discipline to disengage when things start to get too heated.

1. We (moderators) are also people.
2. Rules in TL are a little bit different, there people are more expressive.
3. In each community/society would be people, who are offended by that community.
4. Very often peoply call community/group "toxic" just because this group doesn't accept their views.
5. If we are talking about TL, there are some...problems in discussions...indeed, around current situation. Sometimes it could be a little bit unfriendly. But I can't call the whole chat "toxic".

I have hardly ever visited the TL, and perhaps I can give my opinion without being guilty of disclosing what's meant to be confidential.

I think that any social interaction -- including online -- is potentially enjoyable for emotive reasons.

Emotions e.g. "delight" can lead to addiction or addictive behaviour.

In that way I'd describe the atmosphere as "potentially intoxicating" even if not "toxic".

I'd like to think that designated moderators would be wiser than some and less vulnerable (both individually and as a group) to ... to all the kinds of problems that can happen online, e.g. "flame wars" and "trolling" and "wasting time", :sigh:, and miscommunication, taking other people's statements personally ... a possible lack of empathy caused by not being able to see who you're talking with and see how vulnerable they are, AND so on -- the kinds of problems you might be generally aware of once you've been online for a few decades.

There's also a couple of systemic problems, maybe -- they say the TL is itself unmoderated -- and I presume there's little or no bound or boundary to what's talked about, i.e. as long as you find someone who's willing to talk about something with you then you can, including difficult or "personal" subjects which even a moderator might be less objective or less moderate about when they chat.

And maybe they (moderators) ARE less vulnerable, but even so, if there's a systemic problem (e.g. a lack of moderation) perhaps it's only a matter of time before there's some catastrophe and somebody gets hurt.

My understanding too is that one of the recent occasional visitors to the TL was an SE employee who is not a moderator.

And moderators might be experienced, but they're untrained. And they may or may not be homogeneous, socially -- may or may not used to the "diversity" which even includes, each other.

My brief visit(s) to the TL remind me of being at a noisy party -- lots of people talking at once -- and other people overhearing and commenting when you try to have a dialog there with someone -- some people being serious, some people being frivolous -- it's a bit as if people were intoxicated there, and it can feel like some people are talking without thinking ("shooting their mouth off").

How you react to that depends on your experience and temperament -- some people are good with noisy parties, other people less so. Some people might become stressed in that kind of (social) environment. And there's a form of emotional stress that's pretty well my definition of "toxic" -- it might lead to feeling hurt, feeling self-defensive, feeling that some offence is justified (self-righteousness), forgetting to apply fundamental axioms like "assume good faith" -- then dogpiling, and people getting "triggered", and so on.

I assume it's not a fault of any one person there, nor of the TL itself -- just an unsafe situation, like fissile material which can go critical if it's unmoderated and when there's too much of it.

To the extent that I am (metaphorically) a sober alcoholic, I don't much like engaging in conversations where people seem to be intoxicated, so ... I visit chat rooms sometimes, but I don't hang out there (am I allowed to say that?) any more.

SE's Q&A format -- one question, specific topic, separate answers, moderated comments -- acts as built-in moderation. So people -- including moderators -- who are used to coping with the Q&A sites, and all the social norms which go with them, might get "out of their depth" and drown if they're tossed into the deep end of an unmoderated chaotic place like the TL. And there's no life-guard on duty -- even, rumours of shark (to continue the metaphor), I couldn't tell you whether that rumour is from paranoia or reality.

Given that I barely visit the TL though, this my description of it might be just some vacuous fantasy of mine for what that's worth -- it's partly based on what's been published (i.e. hearsay), and on what I infer from my experiences elsewhere, adding two and two together.