Top all-time · #4418
Monica
Personal blog · cellio.dreamwidth.orgcareerprogramming
Monica is a personal blog at cellio.dreamwidth.org about career and programming. Since 2019, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “Stack Overflow Inc. Fiasco: Timeline”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Monica Cellio's blog gives a firsthand timeline of her 2019 removal as a Stack Overflow moderator over a pronoun policy. HN threads on the dispute link it as the main account.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /2064709.html7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-10-07
- Stack Overflow Inc. Fiasco: Timeline7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-10-06
What Hacker News says?
You're plainly wrong. According to the "fired" mod herself , the issue is centered on SO's (soon to be introduced) policy of using preferred pronouns. See https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html > the company is changing the CoC to require use of preferred pronouns In other words, it's a policy whereby an individual may request to be addressed a certain way, and that request must be honoured. Nothing more. Nothin…
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.”Submitted Glassdoor updated my profile to add my real name and location as a story · 864 points
HN discussionBased on Monica Cellio's blogpost ( https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html ), I think what happened is that, last year, she posted saying that she prefers, when possible, to refer to people in ways that don't require using pronouns at all. Later, this was misinterpreted to mean that she refused to use people's requested pronouns, and she was fired from her position. That might have been reasonable if she had act…
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.”Submitted Stack Overflow Inc. Fiasco: Timeline as a story · 516 points
HN discussionwhy? its literally the points right here https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.”Per Monica, a senior SO employee --Sara Chipps -- is publicly lying about Monica. Monica's claim is multiple messages went unanswered, and then... > Sara Chipps, Director of Public Q&A, left responses on various moderators' resignation posts maligning my character. You can see an example on my Mi Yodeya post. The cut-and-pasted message included, specifically referring to me: "When a moderator violates [inclusion and…
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.”I think you should invest the time to read what happened, the moderator the letter was written to support has her detailed write-up here [0]. [0] https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias...
Comment linking /2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html
on “Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.”As asked: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.”I suspect that the average user of SE will not care one bit about this whole drama. I do find it frustrating, puzzling, and sad how SE appears to have treated Monica Cellio. She provides an excellent summary (from her perspective) here: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.”It seems pretty clear that Sara Chipps is effectively lying. Even if she's convinced herself that "we've been as clear as we can and your values are out of alignment".[0] At least, if "An employee with a 'director' title" is in fact Sara Chipps. If it wasn't her, there's the possibility that the two SE employees miscommunicated, or could pretend so. 0) See https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias…
Comment linking /2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html
on “An apology to our community, and next steps”Read this related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176712 ...and in particular the link in the top comment, copied here for convenience: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “An apology to our community, and next steps”There are legal-related concerns, but not precisely due-process ones. Monica goes into it more on her blog, particularly in the comments of this post [1] where she discusses the possibility of taking legal action against the company. She feels that StackExchange libelled her by making public accusations of specific & evidently inaccurate bad conduct to the press [2] while making themselves unavailable for any sort o…
Comment linking /2019/10/15/stack-overflow-delays.html
on “I'm Resigning as a Stack Overflow Community Elected Moderator”Before even opening the link I knew it was something having to do with the use of pronouns. Sometimes I think we are concentrating on (and fighting over) the wrong problems. Anyway, there's a timeline of the drama directly from Monica: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias... > "A queer moderator resigned in anger, with complaints about community managers, other moderators, and the "entrenched…
Comment linking /2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html
on “I'm Resigning as a Stack Overflow Community Elected Moderator”>Why do you think she's telling the truth? Because she at least offered a very detailed breakdown of events that can be fact-checked, critiqued, etc. StackOverflow has offered basically nothing more than vague PR BS. https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias...
Comment linking /2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html
on “We’re Rewarding the Question Askers”More context: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html
Comment linking /2064709.html
on “I'm Resigning as a Stack Overflow Community Elected Moderator”Non-exhaustive reminders of the story so far: - Full timeline from Monica Cellio herself: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias... - Her account: https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-... - Discussion on HN back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153224
Comment linking /2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html
on “StackExchange offers 'possible reinstatement' to moderator removed over pronouns”>All I know is it has something to do with Monica questioning some new CoC changes (pronoun-related) and then being fired for "violating" the CoC before it was even ratified. Pretty close. Monica blogged a timeline if you want even more reading. https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias... And then these might be better entrypoints to what followed https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/a…
Comment linking /2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html
on “What did Monica do to violate the CoC?”Some context, although really this is the culmination of a five year breakdown in community trust and there's way too much background to sum up briefly. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-... https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334575/dear-stack-e... https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias...
Comment linking /2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html
on “Stack Overflow is doing me ongoing harm; it's time to fix it”Julia Evans - https://jvns.ca/ Rachel By the Bay - https://rachelbythebay.com/ Monica Cellio - https://cellio.dreamwidth.org Mark Dominus - https://blog.plover.com/ Morlock Publishing - https://twitter.com/MorlockP Admiral Cloudberg - https://old.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who are some of your favorite bloggers / internet people?”
