Monica Cellio has called for Stack Overflow to address what they did to her: Stack Overflow is doing me ongoing harm; it's time to fix it!
A number of users have changed their username to "Reinstate Monica" or some variation thereof and changed their avatar as follows:
At CV, it appears that gung and myself have done so.
Is anyone else interested in joining us?
Changing your username and avatar are not the only options. People can also change the text in the 'about me' section of their user page. Note that if your reputation is >1k, you can have an expandable usercard that will show some of the text from your about me section when someone mouses over your username on a post.
Some suggested text was first proffered here:
The recent actions of Stack Exchange have been reprehensible. The lack of professional conduct, the tone deaf way they've been dealing with the community, and the unfair and unjustified way they've dealt with Monica Cellio.
Monica is an exemplar of the community, it's incredible how she's managed to keep a level head during this time when emotions have been very high.
Update: the gofundme campaign has been closed.
A newer option has been proffered here. What has changed is that Monica has started a gofundme campaign to offset the costs of legal action. As a result, people might change their username to append "go fund Monica", instead of "reinstate Monica". The suggested about me text is then:
Consider supporting Monica Cellio's gofundme here >>>
A popular and well-respected volunteer network moderator, Monica Cellio, was terminated without warning and portrayed to the press as misgendering trans people by Stack Overflow, Inc. All signs suggest this was an erroneous, if not malicious, decision not founded on fact, which the company is completely failing to take any responsibility for. This has caused an enormous and ongoing uproar in the community.
Monica and the community have been quite literally begging for some kind of response from the company either opening up a path to reinstatement, or justifying their decision to terminate her, for more than a month now. She's made many good-faith offers to talk, and others have offered to mediate (and made dozens of constructive suggestions on how to resolve the situation). Members of the Lavender community have spoken up on her behalf (1, 2).
So far, Stack Overflow, Inc. has met all of this with thunderous silence. As a long-time contributor and someone always willing to see the good in the company's and its employees' actions and assume good faith, I'm still struggling to come to terms with the corporate callousness of this behaviour which we have to assume now is the new normal.
Having exhausted all other means of communication, Monica is now raising funds for potential legal action to clear her name. This is in her own interest, but arguably also in the interest of the SO community at large. While only the libel is likely to be legally actionable, it might establish at least some boundaries to what the company can do to its volunteers, as well as be a symbolic slap in the face of a business that appears to have lost all respect for the community that keeps it alive.
I have complete trust the funds will be used well and anything left over (say because they decide to do the right thing after all and legal action becomes unnecessary) will go toward good causes.
Not just because of Monica, but I've decided to stop contributing to StackOverflow and quit.
Other reasons include that there was 0 progress towards improving the platform. For example, we still see tons of duplicates across the sites, but we still cannot mark a question as duplicate on stats.SE if there is a perfect answer on SO, or the other way round. I hate the overlap between SO, stats.SE, DS.SE etc. but this seems to not matter at all for the company - on the contrary, they get more views. And there is zero progress in assisting new users to not post duplicates. When a user posts a duplicate, the system should ask him to migrate the question instead, for example. Also, when posting a new user should likely be guided through some relevant similar questions, to reduce the duplicates. Instead, the company wastes money on doomed projects such as SO Documentation and SO for teams.
In my opinion, they have stopped listening to their users.
Monica and Stack Overflow have come to an agreement. Monica has posted the identical notice at her GoFundMe page.
I find the agreement utterly unsatisfactory; in particular the first paragraph drips with condescension. SO exhibit the classical signs of narcissism, in particular a complete inability to empathize and apologize sincerely. Narcissists do not change, no matter how much one would hope they do.
Nevertheless, this seems to be the end of it. Monica was not reinstated, but was offered the opportunity to reapply as moderator at the six sites she originally moderated, following the new process.
Ms. Cellio expressed concerns about the new process and has not applied.
As such, I will revert to my old avatar and username in the near future. There is no point in keeping the "Reinstate Monica" one. This is not the outcome I had hoped for, but see above.
I will, therefore, keep my updated understanding of SO, Inc.
Update: Monica is leaving the network.
First of all, all the moderators are on volunteer basis. So the site has the right to determine who gets to be moderator and who doesnt "at will". Moderators have not signed any contracts with the company,
