What are implication for Academia SE users of recent licence changes and moderators disatisfaction and revolt?

Question

One moderator suspended activity

'm a mod on Academia.SE. After reading the official SE response, I'm going to temporarily suspend my mod activities as well. The disrespect being shown to a well-respected volunteer simply trying to understand what is going on, combined with the terrible handling of the actual firing, combined with the non-apology apology, are a bit over the top.

I encourage The Powers That Be™ to reconsider all their actions here, and think deeply about the types of behavior they want to encourage in their community.

Another one wrote A request for SE employees and CMs User Apparente was suspended That user was very nice and insightful, wonder what happened.

Everything I read it seems like moderators knew from the start of this year that something is going wrong, however they proceed with election for new moderators. When I asked one user why she didn't apply for a position, she told me that big troubles are coming, now I understand on what she implied, however, if you all knew that why moderators kept us in dark? We as ordinary users how should react to these new changes on SE, are we somehow affected? are our identities and location sold to third parties now? Also moderators that suspend their activities commented or implied that they will come back, so what is the issue than?

We as the users are confused and would like to know more about the situation.

Answer 1

The recent troublesome events have been extensively discussed on the main Meta, and I don't think there's anything significant we can add here.

Everything I read it seems like moderators knew from the start of this year that something is going wrong, however they proceed with election for new moderators.

There was nothing wrong at the start of this year and the troublesome events took place when elections had already started. As a candidate, I was well aware of the ongoing discussion on the main Meta.

if you all knew that why moderators kept us in dark?

I don't think anyone was "kept in the dark". During the election things were evolving and probably no one had a clear understanding of the ongoing events. Note also that people here participate with different levels of involvement. For many, events that are not specifically connected to asking and answering questions on this site are totally irrelevant. In other words, those who are interested in the meta-life of Stack Exchange may be a negligible minority.

We as ordinary users how should react to these new changes on SE, are we somehow affected?

It's up to you: How do you consider your participation to Stack Exchange? How do you use it? How do you react to troublesome events in your life?

are our identities and location sold to third parties now?

There's no reason whatsoever to think this.

Also moderators that suspend their activities commented or implied that they will come back, so what is the issue than?

I don't understand this point. Suspending the moderation activity is a form of protest against certain actions from Stack Exchange, the company. Protestants may withdraw their action if the issues that led to the protest are resolved.

Answer 2

There seems to be a lot in your question. I will try my best to answer what I see, if I miss something, let me know ...

What are implication for Academia SE users of recent licence changes and moderators disatisfaction and revolt?

The license was changed from CC 3.0 to CC 4.0. There are some immediate effects of that as the terms of the licenses are different. There is also the issue that SE has now set a precedent of retroactively re-licensing our content. This has raised the question of what prevents them in the future of attempting to re-licensing our content under a more restrictive license. The effect on Academia.SE users of the moderator dissatisfaction and revolt is pretty limited. We are still handling flags and user issues in a timely manner.

Another one wrote A request for SE employees and CMs User Apparente was suspended That user was very nice and insightful, wonder what happened.

I requested something in that question for CMs. I doubt anything will come out of it. The linked user was not suspended on Academia.SE so there really is nothing anyone, but that user, can say.

Everything I read it seems like moderators knew from the start of this year that something is going wrong, however they proceed with election for new moderators.

There are lots of things wrong, but I am confident that if we could go back to the beginning of the year, or even prior to the election scheduling, that few moderators would have predicted things going as poorly as they have. No one was trying to mislead anyone.

When I asked one user why she didn't apply for a position, she told me that big troubles are coming, now I understand on what she implied, however, if you all knew that why moderators kept us in dark?

I have no idea what this user told you, but apart from things we are not allowed to tell you, we don't keep you in the dark. In general, the things we are not allowed to tell you are "relatively small" (like what an individual said or PII) or scheduled for a widespread announcement.

We as ordinary users how should react to these new changes on SE, are we somehow affected?

I think each user needs to decide how they feel about the changed in the ToS regarding the right to sue, the ads and the fingerprinting associated with them, the re-licensing, and the public slandering of an SE user/moderator.

are our identities and location sold to third parties now?

I am not aware of any public change to the policies regarding the use of our identities and location, but this is not something I have been following.

Also moderators that suspend their activities commented or implied that they will come back, so what is the issue than?

I don't understand this question at all.