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

  • hellinkilla [they/them, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    Create a Mod Accountability Post and link to this discussion.

    I can really understand why mods would be hesitant to agree to this. If I imagine myself under such scrutiny, it feels like physically painful. Given the hostility that comes up. The mod/admin team cannot be solely comprised of people with this very specific variety of public humiliation kink.

    We need to find a way to walk step by step to a place that is amenable to this kind of thing. Without a lot of casualties every time.

    I think that it would be better if the mods are considered to be mandated by the communities/users. So the accountability ought to be shared by all of us. Actually the present example of the israel-cool emoji is such a great example. The userbase apparently had a real change of heart on an issue since it was originally decided years ago. At the same time as a lot of people around the world. The criticism was, ultimately, on the collective that consented/relented, even reluctantly, to the original “policy” of no burning israel flag emoji. Anybody could have submitted an emoji to /c/emoji during that entire time yet I don’t think anyone did. At least not that was brought up.

    • ratboy [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      If I imagine myself under such scrutiny, it feels like physically painful. Given the hostility that comes up

      I mean, my thoughts are that they already are constantly subjected to this every single day. Every community improvement post. Every meta post. Passive aggressive comments everywhere. So in my brain, finally satiating people’s want for an open discussion that is specific to this might be a way to “rip the bandaid off” so to speak. Like anything said in the post likely won’t be worse than what the poor admins have had to deal with for the last year or more, and itll be contained and maybe they can make more sense of the complaints.

      At the same time I think it should be very tightly moderated when it comes to name calling and singling people out. Discussion should very specifically be about the problems, not specific mods/admins.

      The only problem I see with simply voting in mods is that these complaints will still remain. They do that with admins already and it hasn’t resolved anything.

      When it comes to the Israel flag emoji, there was a HUGE struggle session about it, and I don’t remember if there was an official stance on it, but the main emoji maker was someone who was against it and I think people just gave up on fighting about it instead of there being an actual decision. So to me that still just points to this larger problem that if people feel like they just have to give up instead of feeling heard, they will just grow bitter. However that mod did really think about this a LOT and to me it shows a testament to their ability to be introspective and I respect the hell out of that, regardless of the outcome.

      I really see where you’re coming from and I don’t think that my position on this is more correct than yours. It can totally blow up, I do recognize that people turn nasty really quickly and idk if either admins/mods or users could handle this kind of conversation gracefully. It really would take a LOT of emotional intelligence and ability to express what the actual deeper problem is instead of just pointing fingers. I just think that we havent actually tried to do that kinda thing with very strict ground rules so why not when its been so messy doing it the way we have been already

      Also lmao at your kink comment