Edit2: the ratio is amazing. I’m exhausted. This has quadrupled my hexbear time for the day and I will be limiting myself for a bit lol. I feel like we got somewhere in a couple of good threads thanks to Hellinkilla and ratboy. Good luck, comrades.
Edit: the rant wasn’t clear enough. In Previous struggles users have expressed frustrations with how mods/admin decisions are made. I would like to discuss how they are made and hear from them. Mods have also stated before that they wish we could be better, I’d like to hear how and know how they think this should be approached.
Rant/effort post coming:
What’s the follow up to the recent problems with how mods/admins have handled recent issues? Did I miss something? Can we get some explanations about how this site is structured and what roles we see for admins/mods generally?
history of struggle session, not necessary but gives context
We had a fairly large and fairly one-sided struggle session a couple weeks ago. Z_Poster was banned (and still is, as far as I know) and the emoji was added. Some users (thinking of @hellinkella, smong others) did some effort to really parse out where the pain points were and who was involved (largely Zionism inherent in some positions, Jewish exceptionalism). Only the emoji and banning occurred with no other promises/ideas from mods/admins.
There then followed a leak of mod logs where opinions were still very different than the userbase. I would encourage people not to open it or ask for it, please, and especially not to share it. But I think a significant amount of us did see messages that, regardless of context, gave an image of admins/mods that think the userbase hates them, disagreed with the userbase in significant ways, and which wants to steer us in a better direction. The mod chat was also absurdly active at the time, but there’s been little talk about what WAS discussed, only discussions about what was missed, where more context is needed, and things that were not done in a timely manner. This was not further discussed. (Personally I’m super appreciative of you all, doing work I don’t want to do on a website I enjoy thoroughly, and don’t hate any of you–including previous ones I’ve argued with, but would like to see some changes which will follow below and hopefully other comrades will add to it/change it for the better).
We had an EM/POC post which was tangential to that, but where there seemed to be large support for the userbase with regards to the ideological differences between mods/admins and the broader userbase. There was also a banning for which apologies followed quickly, but which indicates the structural failure more generally. There were of course other topics covered, which I won’t speak on here. I didn’t see any solutions proposed and accepted, from any of the topics relevant to this post. (Please correct me if I read this thread wrong, don’t want to speak for you, EM/POC comrades.)
Was there a follow up? Is that coming? Is the discussion behind the curtain of the mod chat? I understand you all have lives, so don’t spend all your time working on this, but some knowledge of how you’re working would be good. Otherwise it feels like purposeful pushing back of feedback/decisions so that we will forget the passionate feelings or give up. If that’s the goal, it’s a horrible strategy and should just be explicitly told. “3 months after a struggle session is the earliest we will make changes in processes” is better than nothing.
I would also recommend we have an open discussion about the direction of the site. It seems the mods/admins have indicated to have better ideas for what we can be (I remember this from the “dunk” discussions too), but have not made clear what their position in that is. Enforcers? A vanguard (with our input as leading determinant)? A different vanguard (against our input for but in our interests)? Theoreticians that have the ideas but want the users to take the lead? Knowing this would make clearer how to interact with you, and how to make our experiences better. Maybe we do need growth and improvement, but we haven’t been clear about how, and talking down is how most have experienced that. I already love this place, so when I’m frustrated I don’t think of leaving. But that’s not universal
I had no idea about this example! Interesting. I’ll have to read the full article.
But even if I agree also, if there’s just a wider acceptance that it’s fine not to know, and the admins get to act as benevolent dictators (to the best of their abilities and ideologies), I’m fine with that! But could it be at least told when that’s the way it’s handled? Just a “if you disagree, become a mod, it was a backroom decision and it won’t be changing”. I’d appreciate it more than having threads about input and struggle sessions where nothing is really stated about this.
The way it went down on the site was that a group who believed in the Settler theory were essentially calling everyone who advocated standard ML theory racist. Because MLs are generally very willing to be open to issues framed around making poc comfortable on the site this resulted in nobody noticing it was actually an ideological conflict between a divergent group and the ML position. This went on for months unnoticed. Once the MLs realised that this is what was actually occurring a real turnaround occurred on it and the ML side won. Basically MLs were losing a sectarian struggle because they didn’t even realise they were in one.
The tl;dr of this conflict is basically that one side thinks america is like israel and palestinian settler theory therefore applies to poc fighting in america (against white americans). Hardline ML theory finds this reactionary and incompatible with marxism, it is emphatically stated in Stalin’s “Marxism & the National Question” sections 4+5.
have you investigated Indigenous Land Back movements within Turtle Island?
Not familiar enough with the US struggle for indigenous people to say anything except that indigenous groups like the one with Nick Estes are probably right. If the interpretation of Stalin is in line with those, I’m probably down.
Thanks for the description. Is it also clearer what my problem is generally in this thread? You’ve been very engaging and I’m not feeling like many are picking up what I’m saying
The Red Nation and others would disagree with the FRSO take Awoo linked and are fully in support of the idea that the US is currently a settler colonial nation and needs to be completely decolonized.
My best reference for this is Losurdo’s Class Struggle which would give the framework that people/nations can be multiple classes at once (varying over time, location, functional situation, etc), with direct contradictions between some, cross-contradictions within others, and needs to be understood in that whole. Dismissing the US as a Settler State is wrong if anyone does it. Making that the entire basis of the revolutionary process would also be wrong, because there are more class dynamics than that. Principal contradiction doesn’t mean the others disappear or are ‘not important’, it just means that they can become a part of another, and solved as a part of that other. Idk what the principal contradiction is, which is why I think commie indigenous groups would probably have the best positions (inhabiting both revolutionary classes in both of the 2 largest contradictions discussed). But I’m not gonna get into the weeds any further than these general statements. Not my expertise!
I think your problem is that you want to understand how/why decisions/conclusions are made and think that this isn’t clear sometimes.
I think it’s mostly consensus except where there’s a huge issue and then it’s dictatorial. I don’t know if my word is good enough to satisfy you on that but unless Carcosa drops in here to confirm it I don’t know for sure.
If I’ve got that wrong and there’s something else, then I don’t know and I’m not getting it fully.
I think that’s a possible answer to one form of this problem! The problem is a disconnect, more generally, between mods/admins and users that results in, among other things, unclear reasoning for decisions! It also results in the mods/admins talking about making us and the site better despite users’ desires. It also results in struggles sometimes generally because of slow responses from mods/admins.
My point is more: if these are the what’s/why’s/how’s of decisions, how did we arrive at that and how can we make that work best? Simple things like the mod logs with the rules is already a method to solve it, but if there’s struggle sessions about “why’s” then we can do better. We solved the ideological struggle session about Zionism (likely? But still don’t have the feedback to know yet), but people were very frustrated in the moment with it, and that could’ve been avoided with changes to such rules/methods/processes.
Without giving too much info, this is very related to my professional work, with systems engineering, complex systems management, work proces management, design process development, are all things I deal with daily across multiple companies, government orgs, and such. I’ve been seeing this for a while but didn’t care to mention it until recently realizing I was waiting on more info and hadn’t heard anything. Since then it’s been bothering me. The language I’m using is different (both literally and I’m trying to remove all jargon) but I’m generally capable in this field, so that’s pretty frustrating
I think one of the problems you’re going to bump up against if you’re dead set on getting a hard written set of what’s/why’s/how’s is that the site has a very real problem with dedicated wreckers who pop up from time to time who want nothing better than to have this kind of information in order to pick at weaknesses. The less information the wreckers have, the harder it tends to be for them to pick at weaknesses in the structure of things.
Definitely a sensible worry! Is this what admins/mods are thinking about when not posting explicit rules?
I generally agree with not having only explicit concrete rules (like the word filter can be circumvented pretty easily, wish it was easy to make similar words go away without grabbing too many real useful ones). But then having some process to decide the spirit of the rule would still be better, or at least a discussion about the spirit of that law how the mods see it! An example, Z_Poster definitely evaded bans previously, but ignoring that, would evading the 2nd to last ban specifically with regards to the emoji have been satisfactory? Like van evasion because of a wrongful ban is something that seemingly most said was fine, at least in the struggle session.
I can only speculate based on what I would be thinking. I would be thinking that.
On explaining why another user was banned or not, I would be thinking that it’s between the site and the user. Third parties that aren’t involved aren’t necessarily privy to information that is private to that user. That is at least how I handle my own communities outside hexbear.
Thanks for the interaction. I get where you’re coming from, but wish we could better generally. I do definitely feel like I expect more from this site than the average person, which is a disappointment, but I guess this is why I’ve seen “it’s a website not an org” a bunch. Funny enough, my org has tons of rules/processes that aren’t explained well enough to work within them but I’m also trying to get leadership to take more active roles in explaining them.
The final options is to adjust my expectations and not care much about it anymore. I guess for the site, for now, I’m gonna do that. Just enjoy it as shit posting with a background I will never understand.