Please unlock “Fram's ban on Wikipedia…What can Stack Exchange learn from it?”

Discussions about ways to constructively resolve some of the issues SE has experienced should be on topic here. While there are many things that make SE unique, we are not so different from other repositories of community created content that reflecting on the experience of other communities couldn't be helpful. Some users may use answering as an opportunity to express their disappointment or frustration. If that is actually a problem, the answers should be moderated as such rather than the question.

Re: the close reason, the post in question doesn't seem to be any more opinion based than other on topic discussions of SE policy.

Edit: the question has been unlocked. I do agree that it would be a better question if edited to focus on how we can learn from the Wikipedia experience, but I've still voted to re-open as is.

Could Stack Exchange have learned from Wikipedia's event which occurred in June, 2019. Did both companies commit serious errors? Were either one professional and transparent?

I think there's one way to find out. That is to unlock the question, to have people read it, vote on it, comment on it, reflect on it and answer it. Then, to have people read that answer, vote on it, comment on it, reflect on it.

Notice how important concepts of this community come to light when reading your question, voting on it, commenting on it, reflection on it, and now, answering it. I hope you and others will go on to read my answer, vote on it, perhaps even comment on it (but not too much, we don't want to upset anyone now), but certainly reflect on it.

I call this, the cycle because it's something many people here do a lot. I am not going to repeat the cycle again because it's getting repetitive now, and that reminds me of simplicial complexes and how they have no boundary.

I think locking the post is a sensible option. There is clearly a difference of opinion within the community about whether the question should be open or not. When a question gets closed and reopened several times in a short period of time I think it is a pretty standard moderator action to lock it until the community can reach a consensus.

As for whether the question should actually be open or closed, I was part if the most recent team of closers. I voted to close it as off-topic because it did not seem to be primarily about Stack Exchange. The main thrust of the question seemed to be whether and why the Wikipedia incident was similar to the Stack Exchange incident. I don’t think that asking if or why something is similar to something in Stack Exchange is on-topic. For example, if I would ask “Why does my kitchen have the same background colors as Stack Exchange beta sites?” I would expect it to be closed. I’m not sure that tacking on “What can we learn from this?” is enough to save it.

I will note, though, that I do not agree with the question’s current close reason. I don’t think the question is particularly more opinion-based than many of the other questions here. Unfortunately, the system only displays the majority close reason, so it misrepresents my (and perhaps others?) position. If the post hadn’t been locked I’d have half a mind to vote to reopen just for that.

In short, I don’t think the issue is that the question is too controversial. It’s simply not clear that it meets the criteria to belong on this site.

Let's be objective, then.

Looking at the history of the post, I count no fewer than three reviews in which the question should be "left closed". Contrast that to the two "leave open" reviews done. The community is divided on what to do with this question, so IMO leaving it locked for a couple of days is probably fine until everyone cools off a bit.

Additionally, I'm just wondering what the actual objective of the post is. For those of us who neither know nor care about Wikipedia, why is that being used to bring up a discussion that has been thoroughly covered by now? Why does Wikipedia's politics apply to anything we do here? There's similarities but I don't think one correlates to the other in any way, and it feels like that's what's being posed.

Why does Fram's ban on Wikipedia seem so similar to recent events here and what can we learn from these two events?

My gut reaction (and thus subjective take) is that people want to still be upset, and that's well within their rights. But...I don't think that another discussion point on this in this context is what would bring value to Meta.

Unfortunately - the only real way I could have made my comment more visible was editing the original post (boo) or deleting all the comments (and in this case it didn't feel like the right thing yet). I was working under the expectation that this meta question would have turned up eventually.

Hardly controversial isn't true. Mod closures aside (and frankly - we were kinda uncomfortable with the post, and there was pretty much a consensus here). Mod actions aside, the post has been closed twice. That's not counting the times it's been in the review queue. I think that counts as disputed content.

In a week - if folks still feel there's value, they can vote to reopen it. They can also think about any improvements that can be made.

Meta can be a soapbox, but I'd like folks to consider the broader implications of what they do, and try to work through context, and winning over folks, rather than having an ever increasing series of escalations no matter which side you are on.

I doubt anyone will forget this in a week. I do hope in that time, the passions have simmered down a bit however and folks can work out what they hope to achieve. We have a meta post to discuss this.

It's public record that I voted to reopen that question once, but I don't see any pressing need for it to be opened again in its current state. I've since learned (from the answers!) that it is missing information about how the case was ultimately resolved, which seems very relevant to SE, and it always overemphasized the neopronoun aspect. I think the question has largely served its purpose.

I think we should be careful about the precedents that are implicitly asked to be put in place here.

The job of moderators is to support the community by doing that moderation work. They are the ones who have to make the tough decisions, always balancing whether their actions will further escalate crazily spinning discussions, or help people to calm down.

Now: that locked question, is disputed. I found that question to be excellent food for thought, therefore I wrote an answer there; and therefore I voted to re-open when it was closed at some point.

But a number of community members takes a different stance!

That doesn't mean that one of the two sides is "wrong". But it is obvious that there isn't a clear consensus whether "should be open" or "should be closed". This "forth and back" between open, closed, re-opened, re-closed, ... that is not beneficial at this point in time. Every time the "other team" scores a "win", that creates frustration. It fosters an "us versus them" mentality, right within the community.

Therefore: when the team of moderators makes that tough call of locking the question, why not trust them, at least for now?

I agree that asking for a more precise explanation, and the resulting to "it is locked temporarily, to allow people to calm down" is helpful.

But, coming back to my first statement: consider the consequences of the request to unlock. Some 60 upvotes, some 20 down on this question, right now, when I put down this answer.

What if a moderator decides "ok, that is enough consensus to unlock quickly". But then, later this weekend, that picture turns around? Should they then lock again?

Long story short: I think the community should be very careful about twisting the arms of our moderators by pulling up "polls" to assess the quality of their decisions. To politely force them to reverse their decisions.