<p>I'm primarily participating in the strike because SE has</p>
<ol>
<li>Used the private, moderator-and-staff-only Teams platform to state a new policy for moderating AI-generated content. Mods are instructed not to share things posted to the private Teams platform, so I won't go into detail. The justification for this change in policy makes allusion to an analysis that SE conducted internally, but was not shared with the moderators at the time the policy was announced. (Some elements have been shared since then, but I haven't had time to review it.)</li>
<li>Stack Exchange, Inc. seems poised to unilaterally change <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/legal/moderator-agreement">the moderator agreement</a>, without soliciting our input.</li>
</ol>
<p>Both announcements make factual claims about how AI content is moderated that I have trouble believing.</p>
<p>My objections are</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The two statements are not entirely consistent with each other. <strong>I can't follow a policy that is inconsistent.</strong> Moreover, SE staff have also stated different versions of the policy in mod-only chatrooms, so <em>even among SE staff</em>, there is not a coherent understanding of the policy.</p>
</li>
<li><p>It strikes me as deeply troubling to have a secret policy (the one posted to the private Teams) that governs how users interact with the site.  I think the site can only work and be fairly moderated of the site is transparent about that process.</p>
</li>
<li><p>Diamond moderators and site curators want to be a part of the solution to moderating AI content. We want to find bad content and remove it. Stack Exchange has the stated purpose of creating a high-quality repository of question-and-answer content and this is a goal that we believe in; it's why we joined the site and volunteered our time. Catching us by surprise with a <em>binding change</em> to how we moderate content is not the way to improve how we do that task.</p>
</li>
<li><p>Moderators have been asking <em>for years</em> to have better tools to help us detect low-quality content. Stack Exchange Inc. hasn't built them. But now that the network is facing a massive influx of AI-generated content, Stack Exchange has additionally announced that we are forbidden from using GPT detectors as a heuristic to aid in detection of low-quality content. Ok, fine, great, we can accept the loss of a tool that's prone to error, but if Stack Exchange not going to build any tools that <em>do</em> work, how are we supposed to do this job?</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>All of this is avoidable. Stack Exchange, Inc. has policies and processes for changing how the site works. There are also innumerable ways that they could solicit moderator input and feedback on how to achieve their goals. The sites themselves are home to hundreds, if not thousands, of experts in a variety of fields. Moreover, these people are all actively involved in using and moderating the sites. Surely there is some value to be found in tapping their expertise in curating content.</p>
<p>I recognize that my objections are primarily based in procedural issues, not the policy itself. It might be hard to understand why I feel so strongly about procedure, but imagine that you had volunteered to a particular role and then were subjected to arbitrary revisions to what that role is and the expectations for your performance. Moreover, you do not have the tools you need to do the job efficiently, so you improvise with some (relatively poor) tools... then they take away those tools. I think most people would object to that.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of the problems come down to poor communication. I am consistently baffled by how Stack Exchange staff interact with the volunteers (diamond moderators or otherwise) who do the grunt work of keeping garbage off the sites.</p>
<p>The coordinated action of a group of moderators working together to influence Stack Exchange, Inc. seems like the best way to effect change. This is why I decided to join the strike.</p>
<hr />
<p>Whuber writes</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My sense is we had developed a consensus that we should continue moderating posts on their intrinsic merits -- not on whether a chatbot (or for that matter, a computer algebra system or even a calculator) was employed to create them. (Personally--this might not be part of the consensus--I see potential advantages in the judicious use of chatbots to perform research and improve writing style, provided the poster takes responsibility for the accuracy of their work.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a philosophy of moderation, I agree: the reason to remove low-quality content is that it is low-quality content. If a responsive, factually correct and well-reasoned answer is submitted, we are all better off, regardless of the tools that produced it.</p>
<p>The problem is that the numbers are against us. AI is an automatic bullshit machine, so automation or persistence among bad actors might flood the site with useless content. The past few decades are replete with examples of cases where humans were overwhelmed with computer-generated bullshit. There was a period not too long ago when spam nearly made email unusable. To this day, various kinds of computer security issues persist due to bad actors using automated tooling to create malware and malicious websites.</p>
<p>This is especially close to home for me because I work in the computer security field. I've seen how this might end: without dramatic improvements to the tooling and automation around how content is curated, Stack Exchange will not be a useful resource because it will be overwhelmed with garbage, AI-generated answers.</p>
<p>So far, Cross Validated has been fortunate that we have not seen the same flood of poor answers that the high-traffic network sites have. But I don't know how long that will last.</p>
<hr />
<p>Regardless of other site moderators participating or not participating in the strike, I hold them in the highest esteem.</p>
