I think this is probably the most important part of this whole issue, whether or not Stack Exchange is acting in good faith. And it's true, how can anything they say be trusted anymore if they would lie like that to the community?

Whether or not they lied, I wish they'd say something about it. Staying silent about it really gives a bad impression.

It seems pretty clear that Sara Chipps is effectively lying. Even if she's convinced herself that "we've been as clear as we can and your values are out of alignment".[0] At least, if "An employee with a 'director' title" is in fact Sara Chipps. If it wasn't her, there's the possibility that the two SE employees miscommunicated, or could pretend so.

0) See https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias... at the second September 18 paragraph.

neither party may be lying. for example, Monica may not have received explicit official reprimands, however SO may feel that rejecting her position multiple times during communications meets this criteria.

That’s a pretty low bar and if accepted will place a chilling effect on any debate in moderator lounges.

Note that the essence of the debate is: “you must always use the person’s nominated pronouns” versus “you can write in such a way that pronouns aren’t used at all.”

To me there is a huge difference between, “you can write inclusively without talking about a person in the third or second person” and “I refuse to accept this attempt at inclusive regulation.”

But we will see what SO dredges up in order to justify their position that debates in a moderator lounge are the equivalent to formal requests.

Oh I agree that it's a ridiculous reason and SO needs to clean up it's act.

I just don't think fixating on very small factual ambiguities helps anything except political ratholeing.