Unicorn Meta Zoo The Stack Exchange Community Team

Welcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a podcast by members of the Stack Exchange community team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio.

Participants


We are talking about how we handle difficult users.

Links

If you’ve never played Lemmings, fix that.

Wikipedia’s Assume good faith policy.

Don’t flip the bozo bit. (Not defined in The Jargon Lexicon as I assumed.)

Our Code of Conduct.

For many years, we relied on a general be nice policy.

I’m not sure if this is the article Abby was talking about, but The Paradigmatic Nature of Biblical Law is something our team has discussed over the years. A key quote:


Ancient laws did not work this way. They were paradigmatic, giving models of behaviors and models of prohibitions/punishments relative to those behaviors, but they made no attempt to be exhaustive. Ancient laws gave guiding principles, or samples, rather than complete descriptions of all things regulated. Ancient people were expected to be able to extrapolate from what the sampling of laws did say to the general behavior the laws in their totality pointed toward. Ancient judges were expected to extrapolate from the wording provided in the laws that did exist to all other circumstances and not to be foiled in their jurisprudence by any such concepts as “technicalities” or “loopholes.”


If that’s not the right link, it’s still fascinating. ;-)

Many of the CMs took the TKI conflict style assessment a few years ago. Most of us preferred conflict avoidance, which probably explains a lot.


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Juan remembered that Abby mentioned that difficult users are not always “negative”, but couldn’t remember the other word she used. Listening back, I can’t tell what word he forgot. Maybe “problem”?

Since this podcast was recorded back in April, if you are having a conflict with one of us right now, we weren’t talking about you. After many years of interacting with members of the community, we’ve accumulated plenty of experience with just about every sort of person you can imagine. So any similarities to specific individuals are entirely coincidental.

What do you think?
Take a listen and respond in the answers below.

Welcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a podcast by members of the Stack Exchange community team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio.

Participants


We are talking about aspects of leadership in our communities.

Links

Abby’s definition of a leader reminds me of the Potter Stewart test.
Joel’s book is Smart and Gets Things Done.
We set up a Team just for out moderators to share their wisdom and knowledge.
Our elections uses a single transferable vote system for taking your preferences into account.

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“This is the no touching podcast.” This is certainly correct since none of us are even in the same state. If anyone ever asks you to explain a double entendre, change the subject immediately as every word out of your mouth will instantly take on an unintended sexual meaning.

My title really did change to Community Product Manager. It’s mostly ceremonial.

“Unfortunately, as you probably already know, people” could be a leadership motto. It’s tempting to blame folks for problems we have as Community Managers. On the other hand, we benefit from leaders empowering others to accomplish our goals. I am forever in their debt.

What do you think?
Take a listen and respond in the answers below.

Welcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a podcast by members of the Stack Exchange Community Management Team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio.

Participants


Back in May, I interviewed Nicolas while we both were in NYC for a meetup. Nicolas has been instrumental in helping out international Stack Overflow sites to be among the most active on the network.

Links

Stack Overflow на русском
Stack Overflow en español
Stack Overflow em Português
スタック・オーバーフロー
Русский язык

Meta
Jon Ericson interviewed several community managers at our most recent meet-up. There were three questions:


What, if anything, gets you excited about your job?
How did your life experience before Stack Exchange prepare you for this role?
What is your favorite site?

We’re running these interviews for the summer (or winter, if you are in the southern hemisphere) and we’ll be back to the regular format next episode.

What do you think?
Take a listen and respond in the answers below.

Welcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a podcast by members of the Stack Exchange Community Management Team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio.

Participants


Back in May, Jon interviewed me (Catija) while we were both in NYC for a meetup. Serendipitously, I get to share it with y’all on the one-year anniversary of my first day working for Stack Exchange. The interview was a lot of fun to do and I hope you enjoy listening to it!

Links

Arts & Crafts
Interpersonal Skills

Transcript
Some users have generously volunteered to transcribe episodes on the podcast wiki.

Meta
Jon Ericson interviewed several community managers at our most recent meet-up. There were three questions:


What, if anything, gets you excited about your job?
How did your life experience before Stack Exchange prepare you for this role?
What is your favorite site?

We’re running these interviews for the summer (or winter, if you are in the southern hemisphere) and we’ll be back to the regular format around August.

What do you think?
Take a listen and respond in the answers below.

Welcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a podcast by members of the Stack Exchange community team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio.

Participants


An interview with Cesar M, our newest community manager.

Links

CMX Training
Writing
Role-playing Games
Board & Card Games

Transcript
Some users have generously volunteered to transcribe episodes on the podcast wiki.

Meta
Jon Ericson interviewed several community managers at our most recent meet-up. There were three questions:


What, if anything, gets you excited about your job?
How did your life experience before Stack Exchange prepare you for this role?
What is your favorite site?

We’re running these interviews for the summer (or winter, if you are in the southern hemisphere) and we’ll be back to the regular format around August.

What do you think?
Take a listen and respond in the answers below.

Welcome to the Unicorn Meta Zoo, a podcast by members of the Stack Exchange community team. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump straight to the audio.

Participants


We are talking about the attributes of a healthy community.

Links

Our Gardening & Landscaping, Puzzling and Judaism sites.
Either “neesh” or “nitch” work for pronouncing niche.
"Big Dreams, Small Spaces is on my list of shows to watch . . . eventually. I believe Abby refers to season 2, episode 2 “Hitchin/Worthing”.
We exercise our communal sense of humor at least once a year.
My proof God programs in Perl.

Transcript
Some users have generously volunteered to transcribe episodes on the podcast wiki. I’m extremely grateful for users who helped fill in some of the previous episode’s transcript:


bvanrijn
ocæon
MilkyWay90

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This episode makes me think we need a real audio editor to get rid of plosives. It’s not an easy signal processing problem.

What do you think?
Take a listen and respond in the answers below.