Post History

That answer (and this meta question) prompted a lot of discussion.  This discussion is a good outcome.  We are *by the community, for the community*, which means if the community questions what we're doing, we need to discuss that.  We don't need to keep engaging if someone is clearly out to be disruptive (i.e. don't feed the trolls), but that's not what happened here.  I think we have a group of people who care deeply about Codidact and its communities (good!) who don't always agree (expected!) and who vary in how they express themselves (also expected).

The answer, especially in the broader context of the question (from the same author) and other activity, came across as disrespectful bordering on personal attack.  *Criticism* of decisions is fine, and encouraged -- if you see something that concerns you, bring it up!  But criticism still needs to be constructive, and "you should all step down and give me complete power" doesn't sound very constructive.  What productive responses could we expect from that?

When faced with a moderation issue we strive to take the smallest action that fixes the problem.  A single rude comment?  Delete it.  An otherwise-ok post with some problematic content?  Edit it.  A user skirting the boundaries of acceptable behavior?  Send a warning.  Somebody suddenly going wild with inappropriate behavior (drunk, compromised account, whatever)?  Suspend to stop the damage and then discuss.  And so on.

This answer attracted flags and struck several team members as being on the wrong side of the line.  Deleting it seemed the best response in the moment.  But the issue can be fixed with an edit, allowing the post to be undeleted, so we have done that.  The edit removed one problematic paragraph and also changed some talk-about-yourself-in-the-third-person language that was obfuscating this self-answer.

Codidact is a volunteer-run project.  The team members care deeply about Codidact.  We are not instantly available when there is a problem.  That would be true even if we were employees, because people sleep and have families and stuff like that.  I'd like to point out that I and several others took an hour out of our work days to respond to this situation instead of deferring it.  We are here to work together with the community as we all work through growth, policies, and features.  Let's all try to keep it constructive; it's entirely possible to express strong contrary opinions without making it personal.