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In this answer an SE employee has told us that

Under guidance from our legal team, we are not able to respond to anything regarding Monica's situation. We will not be answering any questions or comments about that going forward.

This was on a question that did not have a clear scope. The title was focused on links (not sure where) and community ads while the message body also included profiles but seemed to narrow the scope to Monica's situation.

Some questions that I am not clear on is if SE considers the following to be part of Monica's situation:

  • Questions about the new CoC

  • Questions about the new moderator removal and reinstatement procedures

  • Questions about the new policy regarding SE making public statements about moderators and users

  • Questions about the change in reputation for question upvotes

  • Questions about what content can go into a user profile

  • Questions about what types of community ads are appropriate

I hope that SE's interpretation is not that they will not respond to questions about the new policies that have seemingly resulted from what they are calling Monica's situation (which should probably be more accurately described as SE's incompetence).

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  • 1
    Perhaps this would have been better as a comment under that SE employee post, asking them to clarify it. Rather than having a separate question?
    – Raedwald
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 16:38
  • 32
    @Raedwald why, so it could be ignored?
    – user316129
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 16:39
  • @Raedwald that question was about why they were removing the content, the answer of which is the lawyers made them do it. My question is what are the lawyers making them do.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 16:39
  • If Monica is gooing legal, then I can understand they can't talk the issue with Monica now, as they lawyered up.
    – yagmoth555
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 16:55
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    @yagmoth555 they weren't talking before they lawyered up either, which makes it an excuse
    – user316129
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 17:07
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    Seems like we could start an Area 51 site about all of the goings on. It would become a top site in no time!
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 17:09
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    @yagmoth555, Monica has stated many times that she'd much rather not lawyer up, and indeed is willing to drop the case, and donate the legal fund to charity, if SE will retract the libel against her, but SE persists in giving her the silent treatment, so lawyering up was her last resort.
    – Nate S.
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 17:30
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    @RichardsaysReinstateMonica Yes, a lack of SE leadership totally.
    – yagmoth555
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 17:34
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    SE has obviously decided to go for the "Hunker down and ride it out" approach, which often works, but, with the repeated censorship, deletion of posts and comments, outrage is only building.
    – user316129
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 17:56
  • 1
    I assume this question is related to Monica and will not get an answer :(
    – Erik A
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 19:00

3 Answers 3

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On the one hand

We will not be answering any questions

is pretty clear, but I wish they would explicitly say whether this means their promised replies to e.g. the Dear Stack Exchange letter, are not going to happen.

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    Oh, I left out all of those things ... so many things that the "lawyers" might be making them ignore.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 16:40
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    Your quoted section has now become the official mantra for SE it would seem. As far as their reply to the letter (or to anything else related to this stuff), I don't think it'll happen. It's too tied in with the Monica debacle.
    – Script47
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 16:45
  • It probably doesn't; given my vague recollections of the CMs' reactions to that letter, I expect they put something in motion before that legal thing happened. (Might stop them talking about it or whether they can talk about it, though I don't see why it would stop action – which, as we know, is the only thing that means anything right now. I bet action is coming.)
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 22:18
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    There's now a question for this: Is Stack Exchange still planning to respond to the community's open letters?
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 22:26
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At this point, there is little that is NOT directly or indirectly tied to their treatment of Monica, and cannot be separated from that.

ANYTHING they post at this point can be answered by essentially replying with "What about the way you treated Monica?"

Questions about the new CoC

Will we face getting dragged in the press the way Monica was?

Question about the new moderator removal and reinstatement procedures

Why haven't you reinstated Monica yet?

Questions about the new policy regarding SE making public statements about moderators and users

Why should we believe you, when you haven't corrected your statements about Monica?

Questions about the change in reputation for question upvotes change in reputation

Maybe this one....

Questions about what content can go into a user profile

Can the fund raising campaign for Monica go in my profile?

Questions about what types of community ads are appropriate

Could we post a community ad for fund raising for monica?

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    "At this point, there is little that is NOT directly or indirectly tied to their treatment of Monica" and deservedly so!
    – DK Bose
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 17:53
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    They gave us all some cookies (aka rep) in the hope it would quiet us down. Do you think they would have rolled that feature out if they weren't in the middle of a self created maelstrom?
    – StrongBad
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 18:52
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    @StrongBad it's not a gift, it's more of their "inclusiveness", apparently, someone realized that women ask more questions, and men provide more answers.
    – user316129
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 19:18
  • Questions about why SE had an outage today? Questions about design/UI bugs?
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 22:00
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    Hmm... Not sure this kind of hyperbole is helpful. Posts about GitHub authentication, CSS fixes, badges, code formatting... There was an equally hyperbolic comment by a member of staff yesterday, pretending that they can't post anything without being mobbed with Monica-related comments, which is just demonstrably not true. Let's not fuel the latest set of excuses for closing rank and disengaging.
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 22:32
  • @user56reinstatemonica8 With or without excuses, they're going to close ranks
    – user316129
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 22:57
  • @RichardsaysReinstateMonica "realized" is one way of describing it. "Concluded based on poor and likely biased measurement" would be another way. And I mean biased in both senses.
    – De Novo
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 23:05
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Questions about the new CoC

It fits with the Monica situation pretty well and was made just after she lost her moderator tools.

Questions about the new moderator removal and reinstatement procedures

That's a result of Monica's situation.

Questions about the new policy regarding SE making public statements about moderators and users

Yep, that's the main reason of Monica's retiring.

Questions about the change in reputation for question upvotes change in reputation

For this it is obvious they're trying to make us forget about Monica and admire our new privileges and reputation points.

Questions about what content can go into a user profile

They don't want us to donate Monica on GoFundMe for the litigation with SE.

Questions about what types of community ads are appropriate

Maybe they don't want to let us run a community promotion ad to the GoFundMe. *(StrongBad)

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    It sounds like they will not let us run a community promotion ad to the GoFundMe.
    – StrongBad
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 22:36
  • @StrongBad You might be right here
    – Ver Nick
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 22:36
  • @StrongBad James Jenkins (among others) had done exactly that on a number of sites, and they all got deleted today.
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 23:03
  • @ReinstateMonica do you know who deleted them (i.e., have 10k+ on a site with the ad) because the claim is they are not doing mass editing, but I find it hard to believe CMs look at community ads as part of their normal usage?
    – StrongBad
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 23:10
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    @StrongBad not doing mass edits & edit history are for posts/questions as we encounter them - we do have to remove community ads. For one because we have to, also because Jnat literally gets pinged for each ad posted so he has to be aware of it (and thus delete it).
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Nov 14, 2019 at 23:18

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