AI Didn't Start the Fire: Examining the Stack Exchange Moderator and Contributor Strike · HackerPapers discussionshttps://hackerpaper.kaipfister.de/p/2512.08884/Collected HN comments and submissions linking this paper.enMon, 02 Nov 2026 11:16:22 GMTAI Didn't Start the Fire: Examining the Stack Exchange Moderator and Contributor Strike — mentioned by antmanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50286537urn:hackerpapers:mention:2512.08884:50286537Thu, 29 Oct 2026 09:41:25 GMT<p>SO was a governance disaster. It was the infighting it was the strike, it was bad auto moderation tools. And the Stack Exchange strike wasn&#x27;t really about AI. AI was just the final trigger after years of management undermining the community that made the platform valuable. Stack Exchange was built on an implicit social contract people contributed their expertise and thousands of hours of unpaid work because they believed they were building a collectively governed knowledge resource. The company owned the platform, but the community created its value. After time, management became increasingly…</p><p><a href="https://hackerpaper.kaipfister.de/p/2512.08884/">Paper and discussion history</a>. A mention is not an endorsement.</p>cs.CY