#ReinstateMonica

• A summary of the issue by the fired (ex)moderator Monica Cellio.
• A summary of the uncooperative behavior of the company against the community.
• A neutral log of the events so far, maintained by the community.

While I don't intend this to be a tl;dr for the links above, I'd like to summarize why I think you should be interested in this issue. The following is, of course, simply to the best of my understanding.

Monica Cellio, who was a moderator on many of the Stack Exchange sites, was fired by the company, with complete disregard for the principles that Stack Exchange is supposed to value, for raising sensible questions about an update to the Code of Conduct which requires the community members to use people's preferred pronouns when known. While Cellio "completely agree[s] that it is rude to call people what they don't want to be called" [emphasis theirs], they raised an issue with the seeming positive enforcement of using people's preferred pronouns. They sought to clarify as to whether using gender-neutral pronouns, rather than people's preferred pronouns, would also continue to be OK. Briefly, after the argument had ensued, the company fired Cellio with what appears to be nothing but a complete disregard for the due process, transparency, and frankly, basic decency. The community has largely taken a strong stance against the company and many of the moderators have resigned in the protest. As the community-maintained log mentions, as of December 2019, the company appears to have reached an agreement with Cellio and the latter has indicated that they are obliged to not comment further for legal reasons.

I am an M.Sc. student in Physics. I'd use this space to prepare an ensemble of quotes I like.

• "Science chirps for itself." -- Dr. Sheldon Cooper (The Jiminy Conjecture)
  
  

• "When I was a kid, I was Catholic - at least until I reached the age of reason." -- George Carlin (It's Bad for Ya, 2008)
  
  

• "I just don't care about metals!" -- Nima Arkani-Hamed (JoeFest, 2014)
  
  

• "Your motives always run deeper than simple fun." -- Dr. James Wilson (Moving the Chains)
  
  

• "[It] means you are an irrational patriot. Put it another way, a patriot." -- Dr. Gregory House (Risky Business)
  
  

• "When I saw the cities burning, I knew that I was learning that I ain't marching anymore." -- Phil Ochs (I Ain't Marching Any More)