Hey everyone, I’ve removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn’t restore your account yet, let me know and I’ll fix it.) Don’t worry! We’re not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn’t seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I’ve talked to the other admins and mods, and we’re all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you’re afraid that there’s been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that’s absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you’ll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I’ve seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can’t get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it’s the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven’t been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren’t making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn’t foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
I’m sorry, but as a mod on this site I feel like I have to say something that I don’t seem to see any other mods/admins saying:
The mod/admin team are never going to remediate relations with the general site user base if this post is indeed how things will be working moving forward. There is no self-crit at all regarding the main thing people are upset about, which is NOT closing the tanks, but that mods/admins get to voice their opinion on this site and what it should look like/how it should be run via executive action that is not available to the average site user.
I’m sorry to tell any of my fellow mods/admins this, but your experience as a mod/admin does not make your opinion inherently any more or less valuable in regards to what the site should look like than that of the average user. Yes, you may see more of what happens behind the scenes, lower quality/aggravating posts, etc. but that is something you took upon yourself as a gesture to the community you are a part of, not a leader of. Not thinking posts are high effort enough is your opinion. Thinking posts dunking on libs are boring is your opinion. Thinking Hexbear needs to change this way or that is your opinion. If you have a problem with things, you must act AS A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY and voice your opinion on necessary changes just like anybody else. You should not get to be a more privileged user than the average person here and go ahead and talk behind the scenes with other people who have the power to change the site and decide what needs to happen without user feedback. Mods/admins exist to enforce a site’s rules and act as maintainece, not to be a leading body of powerusers who determine what the site should look like and how it should be run. The reason there was so much pushback on these decisions is that they were never (and still haven’t been, for that matter) presented to the community as something to be discussed at all, and changes were made by executive decision.
The only power the average user has to voice their opinion on how the site should look is via posting, and that is the only way mods/admins should get to voice theirs. Acting otherwise is a classic leftist org blunder that cultivates a massively toxic culture of powerplayers and in-groups at the levers of power that leads to growing tension and eventually fractures both within the in-groups and between the in-groups and user base at large.
A whole host of other very important issues (notably transphobia, misogyny) have arisen as a result of the initial actions taken by the mod/admin team, and there is no reason they can’t/shouldn’t be addressed. That being said, the ignorance/arrogance of the mod/admin team of marching on forward after their wrongdoings have clearly been outlined is concerning and needs to be undone as soon as possible. The only thing worse than making a bad decision is committing to it once it’s well known that it went poorly.
Undo the changes, bring them up with the community just like any average user would have to, gain valuable feedback from them, and take action from there. To genuinely save face + demonstrate that this site is for its user base at large and not just for a few elite users who want it to be their pet project, this the only way forward.
Incredible that people still don’t get this.
Infuriating that they seem to not get it on purpose, since they constantly reduce the critique to “we think there’s a shadowy cabal of transphobic mods who want to ruin the site” and then present it like that’s what people are actually saying. I’ve talked enough about that
Instead I’d rather give you some theory you can use. “The ladder of citizien participation”
I’m not gonna write a lot about it, the text is short and written for the layperson. It’s a neat tool for valuating how well your community planning actually integrates the community. It’s pretty sad a group of alleged leftists screech at the suggestion we should do better than step: 1 “Manipulation”. Most public projects in the US does better than that. Are you telling me you think the US state is better at working with communities than you are? SAD.
It’s very frustrating to watch it unfurl in real time when literally it’s so ubiquitous in leftist groups that it’s meme tier tip of the iceberg levels of understanding leftists, AND WE MAKE FUN OF IT ON HERE ALL OF THE TIME!!!