Yes, instead of removing attribution and keeping the content, if Stack Overflow doesn't want to be associated with the user they should just delete all of it.

And pray Jon Skeet stays on the straight and narrow.

I have no experience with the writer of this post, but:

> You can't pick and choose.

Yes you can, when your goal is to stir the pot.

The argument isn't over what is possible for the powerful. It's about what is right and just.

Why should the powerful care about what's right and just?

(One reason is part of the title of this post)

Because if enough of the powerless people agree on what is right, then they may act on that collectively. That could threaten the rich's hold on power.

I kind of gave up interacting with StackExchange in a moderation/power user role after the repeated drama episodes where they kept disrespecting the community's input. I don't even remember what the individual drama cases were, I just got tired of feeling slighted. Your point about the willful license violation seems like it's along the same lines.

They're in the same position as Reddit: they have a bunch of cats to herd whose labor they depend on (not enviable) but every once in a while they do something capricious and arbitrary as a company and make everyone angry.

The straw that broke this camel's back was they edited and rewrote an answer I had posted, but left my name/avatar beside what was no longer my words. That was too much for me. I wouldn't mind if they did something like "(MOD EDIT: alternate info)" or removed it if they thought it was incorrect, but I can't be having my face and name next to words I never uttered. I've never experienced that type of mod behaviour anywhere since.

TBF having others edit posts is pretty key to SO. It's how, for instance, the site handles those still learning English - editors try to parse what the person meant and reframe the question or answer accordingly.

I've made drastic edits in the past... but the goal was always to capture the intent of the writer. From your anger it sounds like someone, a mod, went way beyond that?

> TBF having others edit posts is pretty key to SO. It's how, for instance, the site handles those still learning English - editors try to parse what the person meant and reframe the question or answer accordingly.

Right. Editing a message should be for stuff like typos, markup, bugs in example code, etc.

Soon we'll have LLMs rewriting answers en masse for..... reasons?

Can't you still delete it or edit in the explanation that it's not actually your answer anymore?

Depends.

Delete - yes, if it's not the accepted answer or locked. But deleting highly-upvoted answers is generally discouraged.

Edit - Probably not. Editing to correct it might be possible if it's not locked but editing to add such a disclaimer would be problematic.

The best course of action would be to request disassociation, so that it's not attributed to them any more.

If you delete or edit a highly voted answer, the moderator undoes it and bans you. Happened to me.

Completely rewriting it is against the rules, you should have reverted that or taken it to meta. They're supposed to post a new answer instead, if they think it deserved that much of a change.

You make it sound like "they" is stackexchange inc. Don't you just mean another user of the site, just like you can edit other posts? The feature that always shows who last edited a post and what changes (byte for byte diff) were made if you click on it?

If it's against the rules, like a meaning change rather than a correction, you can report it. I don't see how simply leaving your name next to it and leaving the site helps anyone nor lets the person who did it even know they made a mistake (without link, from experience moderating the edit queue I can only assume good faith by default since the overwhelming majority of the edits I reject are made for understandable reasons; one of my reject reasons is conflicting with the author's intent btw, and there's no qualification about the author needing to be correct)

Edit: I'm not sure this needs a disclaimer at all since I'm a normal user but, to be clear, I have no affiliation with Stackexchange. I posted answers mainly on the IT security site and one of them blew up the karma points, giving me access to some of the moderation queues on that specific site. I was always annoyed how slow these things are handled so I started looking at those queues on occasion, and that's basically all moderation I've ever done. No special instructions from, communications with, or particular love for the company that operates the site. I just feel that the parent comment misconstrues how the software works if it wasn't actually the company that made the edit in a hidden way (I only know of that happening for things like switching http to https)

> so I started looking at those queues on occasion, and that's basically all moderation I've ever done. No special instructions from, communications with, or particular love for the company that operates the site.

The idea is supposed to be that you've been on the site long enough to learn what a valid edit is by the time you get access to those queues, and it's tested by having already-handled edits mixed in to your queue. IIRC if you get it wrong it tells you what you should have done.

Yes? Not understanding what you're trying to say with that

The guidance you're saying isn't there does exist, but you're only exposed to it when you screw up.

Can you link to the post in question? An edit is credited to the person doing the edit. You can inspect it. Do you claim it was done differently and there's no evidence to that in the revision history of the post?

It's the implicit tyranny of building or contributing to public commons owned by corporations beholden to ideological individuals, investors, or advertisers, or to government jurisdictions with particular intrusive laws and policies. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to force a company to maintain publication of content it doesn't want to host... it can simply delete users and content whenever it chooses, but typically doesn't for reasons of goodwill and/or reputation. Youtube deletes millions of people's comments and videos daily because an AI algorithm disagreed with them by virtue of sentiment analysis and decided their combination of words was not allowed. At some point though, people around the world will demand a digital "Bill of Rights", even if the content, processing, and/or publication is happening on the systems of for-profit corporations... it's either that, or enough people must leave forums that have a history of one-sided, unfair, and/or unethical (while maybe legal) practices.

>enough people must leave forums that have a history of one-sided, unfair, and/or unethical (while maybe legal) practices

One problem is that it's often invisible and inscrutable.

I've made comments on youtube that have not shown up. I know I've heard Louis Rossmann complaining about this as well.

At the time, it felt like there was a technical problem with the site not accepting my comment. But after reading your comment, in hindsight it absolutely feels like I was being AI-moderated.

Had I known, I would be more inclined to decide whether or not I want to further engage with a site that silently deletes my posts.

The digital bill of rights should definitely include some kind of mandatory feedback on why posts were moderated, ESPECIALLY if it was done using AI.

"Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small"

I know my fame and legendary repute may lead one to believe otherwise, but I hate drama. I probably hate drama more than anyone else on the planet. We should _just_ focus on the facts when I post. And on the facts, I know for certain that we're always on the same page and in agreement, so long as you're right. And you're normally right.

So let's put the drama behind us.

IMHO you are absolutely in the right here but yearly ban might do you good. This level of engagement with a single corporate site is not healthy for anybody. I know it's unjust (all life is), hurtful and evokes all negative emotions but sometimes you need to be hurting a bit to get out of local minimum in your life that sucks your time and resources by just being not terrible enough to leave.

Besides SO viewership drops like a stone since LLMs became a thing. Soon it'll be an open-air museum rather than a staple.

Else-recent-SE https://gist.github.com/hopeseekr/f522e380e35745bd5bdc3269a9... and https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1hwg2px/stacko...

From the attached .csv

    Year Month NumQuestions
    2025 1 2967
    2024 12 25566
    2024 11 26832
    2024 10 30428
    2024 9 32376
    2024 8 36010
    2024 7 42219
    ...
    2017 12 142102
    2017 11 165479
    2017 10 166236
    2017 9 158760
    2017 8 173592
    2017 7 175909
    ...
    2009 12 36729
    2009 11 37204
    2009 10 34009
    2009 9 28969
    2009 8 28104
    2009 7 27731

At this point, do they even need human moderators? Can't they just remove them with AI to save cost?

What cost? Moderators are volunteers, not employees. The closest thing to paid moderators are the Community Management team but they only step in occasionally.

"You can't pick and choose."

Perhaps you can if the licensor is incarcerated and unwilling to enforce the license.