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
CW: suicide
I’ve sat with this awhile as I wanted to consider my words carefully.
My issues with the moderation team began with the apparent double standard of a mod (who is now demodded) being able to tell another user to kill themselves without any immediate consequences beyond having the comment removed. It took the whole ZP situation blowing up for them to be removed from the mod team.
Suicide and suicide baiting is something that affects me deeply as someone who has lost people close to me to suicide and as someone who has struggled with suicidal thoughts and impulses. Maybe it’s my trauma that led me to read into the comment but I do not know how else to interpret it. The relevant part of the comment is as follows: “Please fucking touch grass. Actually touch dirt six feet beneath grass”. I have a difficult time interpreting that as anything other than telling them to go kill themselves. If I am wrong and there are more charitable interpretations I am open to them.
I apologise for being an asshole about it in recent struggle sessions. Talk of suicide and suicide baiting affects me deeply, and it hurts more because of Hexbear’s usually fantastic track record of making sure such topics are properly tagged with trigger warnings. Seeing someone in a position of power engage in suicide baiting upset me.
Anyway, thanks for calling me out but judging by your earlier responses I’m guessing you’ll just tell me to leave and touch grass. It might be for the best
No reason to say that to you, as your reply is not in any way hostile.
Like I said, the admin team is serious about their duties and do discuss and take action when appropriate. Just remember there’s only a few of them, sometimes they log off for a while, take breaks, get sick, etc. Don’t always expect to see immediate action since they’re not all-seeing. My main point is its very unfair to insult them. Its just personally irritating to me because I see them work so hard to make the correct action, and every struggle session i see people complain about them not doing enough or being abusive.
Sorry to hear about your bad experience, though. Not much else to say about it; I’ve been online all my life so I don’t even register stuff like that anymore as suicide baiting.
I’m aware, but there was over a year between the aforementioned deaththreat/suicide baiting incident and them being removed from the mod team. I know these things take time but it wasn’t until there was greater scrutiny due to the whole ZP thing that they were actually removed from moderation. I’m not asking mods to be perfect people, but it would be nice if they were held to the same standard as everyone else and not given what looks like preferential treatment.
Are you saying that you read “touch dirt six feet beneath grass” as something other than a request for the other person to be dead?
I’m genuinely not sure what else it could read as and it’s hard for me to not take this as a bad faith defense of the behavior.
Its like a generic ‘fuck you’ to me. I’ve been on forums since 2001, its as common as any other insult.
Maybe I’ve been on different parts of the internet but I can’t say I’ve come across the phrase “touch dirt six feet beneath grass” before. Maybe it’s an Albany expression?
Jokes aside, it’s still against the Code of Conduct and the comment was removed at the time, so the mods did acknowledge at the time it was against the rules and was more than just “a generic ‘fuck you’”
Anyway it does feel like you aren’t engaging in good faith so I’m going to shut up about it
Sorry if it comes off that way, I’m taking it seriously
Telling people to ‘kys’ is a very common variation of telling someone to ‘fuck off’ on basically the entire internet. Hexbear is probably the only adult place I know of that would delete a comment for that, which I’m absolutely fine with.