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Following from Stack Overflow, and as other sites will soon have to (if they don't already have them, I have decided, with some approval, to announce the upcoming June 5 strike on this child meta. It has no scheduled ending, only when the goals are resolved. As the title suggests, there are 5 main questions about this that I would like to answer. So, let's start.

Who

You can see in this strike letter, although, it doesn't include everyone who is striking. It does have (as of 21:16 UTC June 27, 2023) 125 current moderators, 20 former moderators or staff, and 1500 total users onboard at this time.

What

As is detailed in both the strike letter, discord, and the github, we will be suspending certain activities. Moderators will (in addition to what the normal users do):

  1. Stop handling flags

Normal users will:

  1. Stop flagging
  2. Stop reviewing
  3. Stop running charcoal
  4. Metasmoke still has old spam for review but is no longer auto flagging
  5. It is disputed over whether they should stop posting on main sites
  6. Stop voting

DO NOT Upvote Spam:No voting of any kind. Also, don’t be destructive.

DO NOT ACTIVELY RUIN THE SITE: This is a strike of inaction, not spamming. The goals are the following:

  1. To show SE that it needs its curators and moderators and contributors.

  2. To reverse the unbanning of AI generated content.

  3. It is disputed if reversing the vote arrows is a goal

  4. It is disputed if stopping the whole AI stack wants is a goal

  5. To get SE to listen to community feedback

  6. Clarity on policy

  7. To get the data dumps reinstated (Update:This has been done;thank god. Hopefully the first goal down of many)

14.It is disputed if the removal of the prompt design site and the community stakeholders group is a goal

When

The strike begins on June 5 and will end when our demands are met.

Why

The Stack Overflow Meta post explains the why pretty well, but I'll summarize here. Stack Exchange has decided to make the following unpopular changes:

  1. Refusing to listen to community feedback
  2. Making an AI with the seeming goal of replacing us human contributors
  3. Wasting time on unpopular vote arrows
  4. Unbanning AI generated content
  5. Firing more of the workforce
  6. Vagueness on policy 7.bypassing established methods to force an unpopular change 8.removal of the data dump

A note on AI generated content:It was banned because it had a habit of making seemingly correct, but wrong, posts that were plagarized and took a lot of moderation effort with limit poster effort.

How to participate

You can join by signing onto the strike and agreeing to not do the listed moderation and curation activities.

Final notes

This is not meant to do any of the following:

  1. Pressure moderators or other users into joining if they don't want to

This is meant to do the following:

  1. Increase the visibility and inform users of the strike.
  2. Explain to SE what and why we are doing this.
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    $\begingroup$ Charcoal is an independent project, and it's not specifically the community of moderators who have decided for Charcoal to join the strike (though some of our admins are also moderators, and participating in the strike in that capacity as well). The plan is to leave metasmoke running, though we probably won't spend extra effort on keeping it up if it turns out to be challenging for whatever reason. $\endgroup$
    – tripleee
    Jun 5 at 3:53
  • $\begingroup$ (I am unable to suggest edits here, but there are also various minor grammatical and formatting problems that I'd like to address if you are interested in a more detailed review.) $\endgroup$
    – tripleee
    Jun 5 at 3:56
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    $\begingroup$ Ill make it CW @tripleee $\endgroup$ Jun 5 at 10:09
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    $\begingroup$ @Starship-OnStrike thank you for posting this - I found the letter & added my name to the now 600+ list of signatures, in including many familiar current and past moderators. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Jun 5 at 22:54

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