I am wholeheartedly yet heavy-heartedly supporting your GoFundMe appeal for legal funds.
Wholeheartedly, as I commented there with my initial donation toward your first goal (copyedited, formatted, and hyperlinked here):
I have known Monica since Mi Yodeya launched into the Stack Exchange network, and she started contributing her knowledge and curiosity to the community. When we held our first mod elections, I endorsed her as an "example of how to behave courteously, respectfully, and productively in an online community," and she has continued to set such an example over many years as a moderator on Mi Yodeya and elsewhere across the Stack Exchange network.
I trust Monica with my money, and so has Stack Exchange. When we needed money to publish "Days of Awe - Mi Yodeya?", Monica set up a fundraising page much like this one to handle donations from the community, which earned us matching funds from Stack Exchange. At every step of the project, Monica displayed due care and more for acquitting the trust that all of us had put in her to handle our money honestly and transparently.
Heavy-heartedly, because it is so stupid, wasteful, and destructive that we're at this stage of conflict. We're all here on Stack Exchange because we like to use words to help other people. Here, though, Stack Exchange has used words to hurt you, you've pleaded with them to use more words to help reverse the damage, and they have responded with
silence.
Stack Exchange isn't refusing to help. They are not dignifying your plea with any response at all, not even an honest "No." Their silence on this issue is so all-consuming that I think it's even preventing them from seriously considering your plea. More than once, I have seen Stack Exchange staff respond to discussion of this post and specifically to calls for them to fix the damage to your name, by essentially changing the subject.
This silent treatment by Stack Exchange toward a long-standing community member and volunteer whom they've harmed strikes me as a classic form of abusive behavior. Whatever confidential corporate risk-management concerns are behind this behavior may explain it, but they cannot excuse it.
I know that Stack Exchange staff is made up of many exceptionally good, caring people. I know that these good people are tremendously frustrated by this whole situation, as we all are.
When good people are stuck in a conflict, especially good, caring people who are expert communicators, the obvious thing to do is to talk to each other. That's what you've been asking for for weeks. But again, some sort of corporate risk-management strategy is dictating that no such human interaction with you is permitted.
So here you are, raising money for legal fees. Here's Stack Exchange, muzzling their best communicators, piling hurt upon hurt to you and the community, and doubtless stocking up their own legal arsenal. And here's hundreds of the rest of us, sad and angry on a daily basis as we watch a company we've loved hurt you and bury its own heart.
So, my heart is heavy as I contribute to your fund, because it is stupid, wasteful, and destructive that this is what has to happen for Stack Exchange to do the basic decent thing and address the harm they've done to you.
Maybe with the intermediation of lawyers, maybe by some miracle without, may Stack Exchange talk to you again, and may you find a way to work together to repair what can be repaired. May we all return together to the noble business of helping people around the world share helpful words.
