As part of the strike negotiation results, several changes to the Moderator Agreement were agreed upon. These include:
- A mandatory review period for binding policies
- Stack Exchange, Inc. staff cannot mandate moderation actions be taken without a public policy supporting those actions
- Updating the Press Policy surrounding statements on moderation
- Determining if Stack Exchange, Inc. violated the Moderator Agreement
At the end of May, a new Code of Conduct was released. As the Code of Conduct is considered to be part of the Moderator Agreement, moderators need to re-agree to the Mod Agreement every time the Code of Conduct is updated. (The same applies to the Terms of Service.)
Re-acceptance of the new Code of Conduct was pushed off during the strike and negotiations in anticipation of changes being made to the Agreement, and wanting to avoid having to re-accept the Mod Agreement multiple times in a short period of time.
I'm aware that during negotiations, and for a good period afterward, Philippe (Vice President of Community at Stack Exchange, Inc.) was out of office. (Which was necessary and encouraged by myself, and this is not meant as a criticism of that in the slightest.)
At the end of September, I commented that I was expecting that the changes to the Mod Agreement would have to wait until Philippe was back, which was confirmed by a then-CM (moderator-only link). That milestone has long since been passed.
It is now almost December. It's been half a year since the new Code of Conduct went live, and moderators still haven't re-accepted the agreement. It's been close to four months since the negotiations were concluded and the changes to the Mod Agreement agreed upon.
Last week, the company accidentally violated the Mod Agreement by pushing a change to the Terms of Service without a review period by moderators, which is a violation of the agreement even under the current version, v2. They quickly recognized the mistake, rolled back the change entirely, and posted a public apology to Meta.SE, which is what was agreed upon during negotiations for violations of these kinds.
This incident did serve as a reminder that that negotiated agreement, along with the other negotiated changes to the Mod Agreement, still have not been officially added to the text of the Mod Agreement. There have been no posts about it in the Mod Team or on Meta Stack Exchange, as far as I've seen.
All this to say: What is the current status of the negotiated agreements for changes to the Mod Agreement? When can we expect the changes to the text of the Mod Agreement to be posted for review?
