Good. In the past year they have become very preachy about exact which political opinions the tech community is allowed to have, and how they are to express them.
My limit was the "Time to take a stand incident" when Joel effectively dictated that the developer community of StackOverflow must agree with the statement.
> Carving up the world into ... nations ... is both morally repugnant and frankly stupid
The follow up of mods keeping the post open, backing it up and enforcing that idea on other questions really hammered home the idea that StackOverflow belongs to them, regardless of whatever they might say.
There was no room for nuance, just an American-centric political orthodoxy you must follow or aren't welcome.
Whatever your political views, the ellipses in the quote are deeply misleading, and in fact make his quote seem to say something Joel emphatically did not say.
Here is the full quote:
>It’s impossible not to see the parallel: the only way to build a successful world today is to allow the contributions of everyone. Carving up the world into us vs. them, building walls, and demonizing religions, nations, and refugees is both morally repugnant and counterproductive, and it goes so much against the spirit of Stack Overflow that as a community we must speak out.
That doesn't make it better in my opinion. The politics of nations, strong border controls and vetting for refugees are nuanced there are pros and cons to all angles in that debate.
Whereas, Joel dictated that if you supported "carving up the world" you were against the sprit of Stack Overflow, no matter how that might impact you as a non-American.
I'm happy that I was too busy at the time doing an handover to see that. Seeing the CEO get a pass on all the "Be-Nice" rules and use his site as a political platform...
The problem is more how, after creating a website, saying it's open and run by user, profiting (financially) from the work of the community, then saying "I'm above all the rules you users have to follow".
My limit was the "Time to take a stand incident" when Joel effectively dictated that the developer community of StackOverflow must agree with the statement.
> Carving up the world into ... nations ... is both morally repugnant and frankly stupid
The follow up of mods keeping the post open, backing it up and enforcing that idea on other questions really hammered home the idea that StackOverflow belongs to them, regardless of whatever they might say.
There was no room for nuance, just an American-centric political orthodoxy you must follow or aren't welcome.
[1]https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-take...