First and foremost: thank you to everyone who volunteered to participate in these negotiations. This is a situation that should never have occurred; that y'all were willing to devote (a CONSIDERABLE) amount of your time and energy to resolving it over the past couple months speaks to your dedication and enthusiasm for the folks who make up these sites, to the value of their work and to the camaraderie that has grown up among y'all over these many years.

Other thoughts on this are in a separate answer, but I wish to emphasize this sentiment by letting it stand alone.

Thanks, Yaakov Ellis

Lack of communication was the main reason the strike was necessary. At the start of the strike Yaakov helped us a lot in understanding how the company was thinking and why they were making the decisions they made, while (I hear) explaining to the company why we made the decisions we did.

I'm sure many employees of Stack Exchange did invaluable work to allow a peaceful conclusion, but since bad communication was the root of the issue, I think a special thanks is warranted for one of the first to offer clear communication.

Some thoughts on specific parts of the agreement:

However, three people in private cannot themselves discuss and debate every possible indicator of GPT usage; further development on this policy will happen with a broader group of people.

This (which the next section follows in tone) is a good move, and sets the right tone for the rest of this. Let's face it: nobody is an expert in handling this stuff right now, and those who claim otherwise are kin to those claiming 8 years of professional experience writing prompts for ChatGPT 4. It's going to take a lot of collaboration and... Flexibility... to moderate - immutable rules and closed policies are a hindrance.

Stack Exchange, Inc. has released the private version of the policy restricting moderation on AI-generated content. This policy is no longer in effect.

This is a huge win, IMHO - not to take anything away from the rest, but I feel like this was THE big sticking point: an arbitrary gag put on a subset of community members after so many years of both policy and UI bent in the direction of encouraging communication between elected moderators and "curator" moderators (the folks flagging, editing, reviewing).

Years ago, I found myself on a call with a colleague on a Friday afternoon, discussing some unfortunate trends within the company... After several hours and several more beers, he summed up the problem thusly: "they don't want to have the hard conversations." I think that still applies, perhaps even more than it did then: posting that policy publicly would have been a difficult conversation to be sure, but... It would've resulted in better, more productive policies. Instead, we got two months of acrimony. That's what trying to take the easy way out via unnecessary secrecy gets you.

As much as I hate that this strike was necessary, and lament the pain it has caused so many... I do hold some hope that it has been painful enough to warn folks against taking this sort of "shortcut" next time around.

Testing moderators' capabilities to detect AI-generated content

SPEAKING of things I hope don't get half-assed! This is actually very exciting, and could provide a lot of value not just to the folks using these sites but to the Greater Internet. Fingers crossed...

Stack Exchange, Inc. has posted a public commitment to freely maintaining and providing these services for the benefit of the community.

They reallly need to improve their communication here, as the feedback on that post indicates... But I think we're all happy with the results for now, and - as with the above - hopefully these responses hammer home the need to be proactive and honest in future communication.

Stack Exchange, Inc. staff cannot mandate moderation actions be taken without a public policy supporting those actions

We've all gotta just trust the mods to hold them accountable here; exceptions to the "public policy" bit should be so rare as to be nearly forgettable; if that isn't the case, then the spirit if not the letter of this agreement will have been violated. As anyone can easily verify, we've had numerous conversations about everything from voting fraud to sensitive suspensions over the years - while expecting moderators to be judicious in how they communicate sensitive details is both admirable and expected, any prohibition on communication should be looked at with extreme skepticism. As certain people have repeatedly reminded me over the years, "we're not mushrooms".

Updating the Press Policy surrounding statements on moderation

This remains silly. Every time expectations have been violated here, it's been someone getting in a hurry and doing something stupid - I expect next time will be the same. Realistically, this isn't something we can stop - either the company gets tired of looking stupid in the press and enforces this themselves, or ...

Determining if Stack Exchange, Inc. violated the Moderator Agreement

This is pretty silly too, but the fact that it was negotiated is at least encouraging. IOW, just because it is performative doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy the performance.

Lest the last two comments seem too negative, I wanna reiterate: the network has lost a LOT of time, energy, and the goodwill and participation of good people over the last couple of months. That's not gonna come back. This should've never happened; there's no excuse, no explanation that justifies it. If there's a real guarantee against future occurrences, it's not some voting method... It's that the good folks working for Stack Overflow Intergalactic Mining and Software, LLC have realized just how costly this sort of screw-up is... and will go out of their way to avoid seeing it happen again.

Fingers... And toes... firmly crossed.

One of the other answers asks if the strike is over. While I hate doing this in another answer, let me offer an explanation why that's not a simple "Yes or No" answer

The strike has comprised over 1600 people (and that's just signatories). That's a LOT of people. Like a freight train, it doesn't start easily, and it won't end easily either. The time for easy passed a long time ago. There's a lot of groups in there as well (moderators, SOCVR, Charcoal, etc).

The strike was voluntary. Some people will read the post above and take it as the strike is over. Others will have to discuss within their groups. That process will take time and there is no fixed time for that to happen. I do expect that many of them will start discussing it, as the groups I follow already have.

Please be patient a bit longer. I promise you things should start moving again soon. But the strike isn't over as of this moment.

The negotiations and the strike were mostly about resolving a specific, immediate problem that SE caused by decreeing the new AI policy. I think this issue has been resolved for now with the new policy.

But there are more issues that concern the striking users, and the trust between the community and the company has been seriously damaged. Those can't be easily resolved by negotiations, and it will take time to regain some of that trust. Some of the results of the negotiation (e.g. the communication policy and feedback for major changes) try to address these issues in part, but those are really more like signposts for SE on what they should avoid in the future to keep good relations with the community. The real test of these parts begins now, and how SE acts in the future will determine what the community does.

I hope the company understands that the achieved results here are fragile, and keeps the community in mind in their future actions and plans. Ending the strike now is also a bit of an act of faith in SE in the hope that they will be better in the future. Not everyone will be willing to do that, and we will likely lose community members and moderators that don't feel like SE deserves that trust.

Before I'm to start significantly contributing and curating again, I demand a public apology from someone within the company, one who was responsible for the policy change and/or the metrics that caused it.

I cannot get past being ridiculed to the point that they claimed that at least hundreds if not thousands of flaggers per day were collectively wrong for months on end.

There never was a low point of 10-15 GPT-generated answers per day on Stack Overflow and you know that. Say you're sorry; say you were wrong.

Reference: GPT on the platform: Data, actions, and outcomes

Thank you to everyone involved for all the work put in to this. I know it was hard, and there will still be work ahead to repair some of the relationships that have been strained along the way. I hope we can remember that all interested parties ultimately want to have a successful public Stack Exchange network.

This agreement is sufficient for me to get back to work. Each moderator and community member will make that decision for themselves.

As a reminder directed more towards the casual Meta reader rather than the company: moderators are volunteers, they can leave whenever they want, and the company is very clear about understanding this. Please understand that some moderators may choose not to return, and this is not necessarily a signal to you that something is wrong or that this agreement is unacceptable, unless they explicitly say that. Everyone has a right to walk away when they're done; please let them do so.

^{Let's take a crack at rewriting this answer (now deleted; link requires 10k rep on this site to view) with a different tone, because I think there's a useful point hiding there...}

During the strike, there has been a lot of spam and other problematic content on the Stack Exchange network. While commonplace on many sites with user-generated content, it's historically been exceedingly rare for most people to actually see spam on Stack Exchange, due to how quickly it's eliminated by volunteers in the community.

Hopefully, this strike has underscored the value of the work that the community has put into maintaining the quality of the network free of charge, and made it clear to everyone at the company that the community is critical to the network's success and cannot be taken for granted. The community cares deeply about the network, they have insights that may not be obvious from a different perspective, and the best chance for the network's success is for the company to work together with moderators and the community.

And hopefully, now we can all get back to removing spam, spammers, and other rule-breakers from the network, together.

Improving day-to-day communication between staff and moderators

This is a key point. And I think there is even a deeper level of communications that needs to improve at Stack Exchange itself. There have been more than a few times when I've felt that the 'staff' were just as surprised as us mods and users at policy changes being dropped on their heads from up above.

There's no point in better communications with staff if the only end result is that we're all just stunned at the same time, instead of them having a few hours/minutes to digest things beforehand. I realize that's out of our view, and I suppose even out of our purview. But I do hope that improved internal communications takes place as well.

First of all I wish to say I am deeply thankful for our representatives and others who put up the work in organizing the strike. Also for all the moderators, current and former, former members of SE staff, and all regular users who supported the strike.

I also want to thank the moderators who kept the lights on, out of their dedication to the sites and users that elected them (I know this was a hard choice), as well as members of SE staff who helped during the negotiation process and who haven't forgotten that we share the same goals. We all want to see the sites prosper.

While I am glad that negotiations are completed, I cannot say I am fully satisfied with the results. Partially, because no matter the resolution, the mere fact that we had to strike. For the rest, because there is still a lot of work ahead of us and plenty of room for things to fall apart. We can only hope that our voice will be not only heard but also acted upon in the future, but there is no guarantee.

I am ready to continue my participation (to some extent), but as far as company is concerned, they are on probation period until further notice.

To illustrate my position I will say this:

This morning, I went down the memory lane and 2020 mod elections on Stack Overflow, when we elected two fine mods Makyen and Machavity. The prominent topic in questionnaire was how well prepared are they for company turning their backs to mods and how dedicated will mods be to serving the community if company goes awry.

They passed with flying colors (just like the other mods we elected before, and those elected after them).

I have to say for the last elections held, I didn't think those kind of questions are necessary. Now I think they should become mandatory.

Does this mean that the strike has ended? It would certainly seem so, as the old AI policy has been removed and a new one has been installed.

As a side note, thank you to everyone negotiating, moderators and Stack Exchange staff, for being willing to compromise for each other and the groups they represent for the benefits of all of us.

While the part about reworking the AI generated content detection polices seems good on paper, the rest of the agreement looks quite mild in my eyes (and to be completely honest I could easily see even this first part to fail if the company was to play deaf on what they propose after the fire calmed down).

The data dumps, the Stack Exchange Data Explorer, and the Stack Exchange API

I already have mentioned in my answer on that post that the promise feels empty and written by a lawyer. I am very suspicious of the incessant repetition of a specific concept: making the dump available for free (only) to "Community Member" so that everyone else has to "pay". I already said that IMHO this clearly betrays some ongoing plan to add some "DRM like" trash somewhere that has so far been postpone probably only because no one can find a legal enough way that would work. Thanks to the Creative Common license for existing, I guess... and thanks to Joel and Jeff for foreseeing that someday someone could try to monetize the content.

Changes to the Moderator Agreement: A mandatory review period for binding policies

Nice, but will only work if there is an actual will to listen to feedback.

Stack Exchange, Inc. staff cannot mandate moderation actions be taken without a public policy supporting those actions AND Non-public enforcement guidelines in cases where making those public would be detrimental to moderation

Wonderful words, until you realize that something like "the only allowed way to detect generated content is unsolicited self admission" was indeed considered an implementation detail that "making those public would be detrimental to moderation". So, basically, this premise allows for the same situation that caused this mess in the first place.
Mind you, it is not like you could write this any better, it is just that again, it is empty if the company want to force a "this is the part you oppose but since it is an implementation detail you can't mention it" scenario.

Updating the Press Policy surrounding statements on moderation

... nice, so now the ritual also requires the sacrifice of a CM soul. Personally I am not that sure that they will be free to refuse if they don't feel at ease with doing that... not when there is a backstory of firing people (in some case without any warning - see the community starting fundraising campaigns to help a fired CM...).

Determining if Stack Exchange, Inc. violated the Moderator Agreement

So basically you vote and if mods win the company has to:

• Retract and nullify any actions taken or comments made during the course of the violation; and
• Issue a public apology to Meta Stack Exchange detailing the violation made.

Can't see the company to agree on the fact that the votes have the final word on deciding if they can do something if they can avoid that in a tribunal. So IF they really want to do something, I see this as the perfect application of that Arbitration thing.

Committing to transparency (and everything else, aka "From now on we will talk and listen more")

This is fine, but it kinda looks like this is the episode moral that gets said during the final hug scene at the end of each episode of this ongoing show, so I will wait to see how that goes on this time.

On one hand, I welcome the good news, and I acknowledge and appreciate the cognitive effort that the representatives of the community invested for the sake of the future safety of fruitful human collaboration on this platform.

On the other hand I cannot not notice —when it comes to earning someone's trust— that an immense opportunity seems to have been missed, when instead of a representative of SE, a community member published this post.

I seem to have gathered some experience in SE's communication preferences, and now feel a strong déjà vu involving the communication that took place in 2021, when SE was sold to Prosus.

Back then, I commented on the official company answer:

"My answer was approved by both SO and Prosus leadership"

— as it is a very convenient statement to publish.

"One of our community advocates offers his personal account where he was told something to the effect of 'Absolutely not' 7.) by someone (!) and it convinced him."

That's the statement.

Who is bound by this? 8.) Compare this to, say Teresa Dietrich herself stating here: a) "no we won't do this" b) "we will do that, but we offer this as a mitigation" [...].

I believe that's the adequate format for this issue.

I feel, a similar sentiment is applicable here too:

I have noticed that SE likes to communicate in such a way as if there was a lawyer standing right next to them at all times, supervising that they never ever say anything that could enter them into too significant obligations and/or accountability.

This gesture today, where it was not a representative of SE, but a community member who posted this, seems to be in an all too convenient accord with this striving. And by now, I am not surprised by the slightest by it.

On a relevant note, the post from 2021 delivers a different inspiration: The answer by the representative of the company has an official seal (with the additional function of locking the post from edits by the community).

I wonder if SE had a method available to equip Mithical's post by some kind of permanent official seal.

With all that said, I reiterate: this could have been several times more effective in regaining our trust, had it been communicated through a representative of SE.

Keywords: "being bound by a statement", "my word", trust, gesture, "demonstrating alignment and integrity"

Clarifying EDIT:

This answer had been posted way before the highly regarded answer from Philippe got posted.

In fact, I believe that this post, combined with ColeenV's quick thinking and successful mediation, had invited Philippe's answer into existence.

2023-08-02 19:14:05Z
Mithical publishes the original post.

2023-08-03 01:06:03Z
I post my initial comment on the original post (now deleted), which is a seed idea for this answer.

2023-08-03 01:48:41Z
I post this answer.

2023-08-03 04:48:41Z
Philippe responds in a comment to my (now deleted) comment on the original post.
At that point, it's the only statement in this regard.

2023-08-03 12:32:23Z
ColleenV gains inspiration for the idea of an official answer by the company.

2023-08-03 12:38:46Z
ColleenV approaches Philippe in a (now deleted) comment on the original post, suggesting posting an official answer.

2023-08-03 14:11:42Z
Philippe confirms and agrees to ColleenV's suggestion.

2023-08-04 07:11:38Z
Stephen G Tuggy offers feedback regarding the initial statement posted as comment.

2023-08-06 06:51:24Z
Philippe posts his answer describing his and the company's relation to the original post.
Considering a scale representing SE's communication preferences, that answer appears to be lightyears ahead —in terms of credibly expressing accountability— than the earlier statement posted as comment.
That answer is treated as the official company answer (even though it did not receive the "Official post" banner that other company communication usually carries).

2023-08-07 19:28:12Z
I comment on the answer, mentioning that the "Official post" banner is missing.

2023-08-07 22:11:47Z
Philippe equips his answer with the "Official post" banner.

A remark regarding the timeline:

I stand by my awareness

• that Philippe is under pressure to post only such things that does not promise us more than SE, the company, would want to promise us.
• that coordinating the approval of communication regarding binding agreements —involving superiors at the company, perhaps also lawyers and representatives of shareholders— needs time, even when it's about communication regarding an already approved agreement.

With all that acknowledged, I believe, we will have to arrive to our own individual interpretations whether what we see in the above timeline

• is due to foot-dragging on the part of the company, in hopes that they can get away with making as few tangible promises as they can (as precedented by earlier occurrences), or
• it is mere logistical delay imposed by having to improvise in response to our hereby relayed expectations that they did not sufficiently anticipate.

To put my personal expectation here, I believe that trustworthy partners strive to preempt the above discussed logistical challenges, and earn the basic, elementary trust of their partners by sufficiently anticipating the conditions for constructive collaboration, and by providing the expected reassurances in advance.

I acknowledge that the company is learning flexibility, which is demonstrated by the very agreement described in the original post. I however seem to also observe that the company will further need to contemplate and practice integrity, to meet fundamental expectations.

Edit: (Before they confiscate my keyboard as an unregistered dangerous weapon.) Everything in here is may understanding from trying to read the announcement(s), and is off-target in a few places. Errors and misunderstandings are kept, and the actual results are best taken first hand from reading the announcement itself, as well as the clarifications and corrections in comments below.

In another answer someone new to MSE asked about the timelines for these implementations. A valid question for someone just arriving on the scene in this place. I had a few of the same questions. Without considering that the negotiated changes to the Moderator Agreement required the 7-day review period, I was even expecting the posting of the new version of the AI content policy. For their benefit, and to clarify my own understanding I decided to make an answer to that question - and it's much too large for a comment (as originally planned.)

• Public disclosure of the old "secret" policy was already done.
• Cancelling the enforcement of the old, secret and public versions of the AI moderation policy was already done.
• Restoration of the data dumps was already done. The policy for changes to the Moderator Agreement is done and in force.
• The final version of the AI content policy: As a change to the moderator agreement it requires a minimum of 7 business days - as per the negotiations on the subject of such changes.
• Development of heuristics for detection of AI content: never-ending, more methods will be found, technologies of AI will change, detection technologies might develop that actually work, etc.
• Public release of the heuristics: never - the actual heuristics are not part of the policy, only that they exist; it's the same as the methods for detecting voting fraud are not part of the policy on voting fraud.
• Testing moderators' ability to sniff out AI-generated content: not something the rest of us will know about (nor should we) any more than we know how audit reviews are determined - which everyone doing reviews will eventually encounter.
• Elimination of the concept of a public-secret policy duality is "in force" now.
• The piece about determining if SE violates the Moderator Agreement seems to need some tooling built, and perhaps some final adjustments to numbers. Non-moderators will never see this, of course.
• The company's press policy still has to be rewritten. I don't think users will ever see that policy. I've not looked real hard, but I don't think we ever had access to the press policy, only its effects.

Everything else is on-going. There's no time for them to be completed as they are day-to-day processes. Communication, in theory, never stops and hopefully gets better over time, not worse. It is my hope that the on-going things stay positive, and that will prevent the need for any of the other, more "legalese" things to ever be remembered, let alone needed.

Great strides have been made in reaching a consensus, and that finally everyone's on the same-ish page. This in itself is a milestone - the communication pipes were clogged and have thus been opened, which is great for the network. One thing I would certainly like to know is the timeline for these implementations. Yes, I know it wouldn't be easy to define one, but it would help carry the positive momentum ahead.

Moderation should follow the standard escalation for suspensions, beginning with a warning and then escalating suspensions if infractions continue.

Stack Exchange, Inc. will implement a warning that will show to users pasting in content to the answer box, notifying the user about the prohibition on AI-generated content and hopefully decreasing the number of users who are unaware of the policy.

Genuine question- for sites that enable this warning feature, does it really make sense for moderators to still (have to) give users a warning upon first violations (instead of suspending right away)? Like- presumably, they'd have been warned already (unless they manually re-type the content instead of copy-pasting, which I have a hard time imagining). I'm fine if mods still have to warn first, but it... just wouldn't really make sense to me.

Okay, ColleenV has pointed out in the comments that there could be browser support issues, but what if another user has already pointed out to the AI-poster that AI-content is banned (in accordance to site policy, linking to the associated meta post) and the AI-poster continues?

Can someone please explain about the Heuristics Working Group Team? Who are members of this team? Can members be elected to this team or is this a staff team or a moderators team?

Or are we talking about this: https://stackoverflow.co/teams/ (P.S. I've never used SO Teams).

I appreciate the tone of this and the immense amount of work that went into it from all parties; thank you.

It is possible that there are moderators who lack trust that this agreement is binding. Policies are made and unmade by corporations all the time. Stack Exchange is almost unique due to its conventional corporate ownership and use of volunteers to deliver its product.

It would be reassuring to see recognition of Stack Exchange's unique structure and that policies that are the result of a lot of hard work by staff and volunteers are recognized at the corporate level as being essential to its success.

The data dumps, the Stack Exchange Data Explorer, and the Stack Exchange API. A long-term commitment to freely maintaining and providing these services.

Will the license of the future data dumps change?