“wow hexbear’s most annoying user returns and the site immediately starts to implode. really makes you think!” -a brave but fallen commenter

It’s an honor to be y’all’s most annoying user. I have been back for all of 3 days and I’m already catching strays, hell yeah.

To start out this classic “TC69 takes the reigns” post, I want everyone to take a moment to read this “I’m leaving” post I made during the Great Pronoun Wars and it’s slew of bloody battles before we move on as a refresher for where things were when I left. I want everyone in this chat to take a big step back and look at the overall reaction to this struggle session with my leaving post in mind. I want everyone to consider if there is still work to be done in the community.

Over the years while completely detached from the community for mental health reasons, I’ve heard whispers on the wind about the state of Hexbear – telling me that while things have massively improved for trans people, there is still work to be done in the chauvinism, misogyny, and overall toxicity departments. Wild that I managed to catch some strays, but I hope that “really makes you think”, I guess.

To cool everyone’s jets, you will be getting your slop back, but it’s definitely not going to come without some changes to the community as a whole. I’m talkin’ constitutional amendments. We will be updating the COC in the coming week-ish to explicitly disallow misogynistic and chauvinistic language/sentiments – what will be explicitly said, I don’t yet know but I do have some ideas having reviewed the COC for the first time in 3 years last night.

Having just come back outta the blue, I didn’t have much of a stake in this struggle session nor much context for the circumstances that led to this decision being made but from what I can make sense of, it sounds like we’re combing for the aforementioned issues with too fine of a comb. My view of the situation is this:

  • I will provide an example to start. There are three overlapping communities that I remember receiving heavy pushback to have separated: Politics, Electoralism, and News. Each of these communities may have the same posts on average, but the way in which users discuss the content is distinctly different. I view this attempt at community changes in a similar light. Before the next point, I will say that from what I’ve gathered, I view the dunk_tank in more of a "here is some general stinky shit regarding politics, lib brain rot, electoral copium, etc., etc. Let’s all point, laugh, crack jokes, regurgitate the lukewarm takes we saw on Twitter yesterday” way.
  • With point #1 in mind, I agree with the overall sentiment of a counterpropaganda community as well as see a healthy appetite amongst users for a more educational approach to “dunking”. However, I don’t think taking out the holy centrist middle ground and asking for more effortful posts was the best step. Perhaps all we want to do is point and laugh, perhaps a baby leftist sees something Not Good TM somewhere else on the internet, and while they do not have all the context or education on the matter to make an effort post of why said thing is Not Good TM, they do have the ability to identify it as Not Good TM and can post it to let other people tear it apart. There is value in that, but we need to work on the shadowboxing and cut down on the aforementioned chauvinistic, misogynistic and overall toxic tendencies, folks.
  • There is equally value in seeing chud shit online and wanting to go in-depth for new leftists about why something is reactionary, but I don’t think everyone is meant to be a poster – not that I don’t believe in y’all’s posting power, but it’s true. 353K posts, 4.75M comments. Some people just live for the comment sections and that’s okay, I love you all the same. Commenters are still braver than any troop.

I feel like the overall sentiment is that we don’t have a problem with dunk-esque content, just the means by which it’s discussed – particularly involving, again, the aforementioned issues and conversations devolving into shadowboxing.

So here’s what we’re gonna do. COC Update, then run a slop channel naming competition for a new contained community. I’m going to make a megathread for the community to decide the name of our new slop trough. Most upvoted comment after a week decides the name (some restrictions may apply, I’m not going to let this turn into the Mountain Dew naming competition, obviously).

That’s it, that’s the post. I apologize for the rustiness in making community announcements, it has been a while. Love you all.

Original post here: https://hexbear.net/post/3856299?scrollToComments=false

EDIT: Look, I just got back from a 3 year hiatus 3 days ago. I'm definitely not privy to everything that has been said or done with regards to this issue while I've been slowly walking down the pool stairs and adjusting to the temperature of the water. From what I've read, some outta pocket shit was definitely said, and I apologize on behalf of the team for the defensiveness and botched communication on this rollout. For now, I'm working on addressing things that are immediately within my control and power as per usual with these types of "TC69 picks up the pieces" posts.

We aren't some turbo transphobic cabal, as I said 3 years ago in the exact same way, we're just volunteers trying to continually better the community and navigate taking action against certain types of behaviors/sentiments (something literally no other social media platform gives a fuck about doing, if they aren't actively encouraging negative behaviors to begin with). While what was said did not come from me, I can guarantee it was made under immense stress and pressure, per usual. That does not excuse it, but there is certainly a reason why the running joke is "wow TC69 is literally Stalin with her 5 attempted resignations" - see Carcosa's attempted resignation last night. I love y'all, but this is getting outta hand.

Please be patient as we work through these issues and navigate taking steps to improve. And for the love of G O D please let me catch up some more before our next struggle session.

EDIT 2: I said it 3 years ago, I'll say it again today. I'm not going to sit here and post every little example of things we're describing as an issue when the modlog is publicly available. It's accessible from any page on the site at the very bottom and in the sidebar of all comms. Please let your keyboard breath and spend like 15 minutes reviewing the modlog, lmao.

EDIT 3: Sangria was Alaskaball. Banning themself was a bit. Furthermore, they were unaware that fella was a gendered term, as was I. Yes, they did effectively misgender themselves if you consider fella to be a gendered term. They don't consider it to be. Therefore, non-issue on this point.

EDIT 4: I'm locking the thread. I tried my best to give some decent paths forward amidst the chaos. Someone else can deal with this.

  • REgon [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    I'm glad to wrt to the slop things and the rules things. I'm surprised there's no mention of any actions wrt to the mods or transparency. Unless that falls under COC somehow, but that's not the vibe I'm getting.

    This strugglesession evolved slowly over time as it became clear the actual reasons for closing the comms were not the reasons given. It gradually became evident a subsection of the mod team have really shitty attitudes about what it is they do and the position they have in the community. They're reddit power mods wishing to rule over ever shrinking digital fiefdoms. If we want to reckon with "chauvinism" then we need to start with those holding the most influential positions, and we need to set in place a system that makes it so this cliquey backdoors ratfuckery shit does not happen again.

    Like the labour shitfuck to your tory fuckshit I applaud your initiative, but I invite you to go further :tory:
    There's a lot that could be done to achieve more transparency. I'll find my old comment for some of the bulletpoints

    edit: Christ I had to scroll thru a lot of dreg to find it. Can't believe you'd literally force me to see all those dumb takes and not even give me the ability to post, truly this is onethousandninehundredeightyfour.
    Anyway, link to long post The relevant bit:

    I don't think this is the last time this situation will erupt, if nothing changes about how moderation is handled and how site changes are handled.
    Keeping the two comms open just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Not kicking the mods who wrote that shit out is also a bad sign, for the direction this whole thing is headed.

    I would really recommend that mod discussions aren't anonymous anymore. Have the matrix board or whatever it is, but make it so everyone can go and look what is being posted, just like with the modlog. The only time discussions should be anonymous, should be when there is a risk to operational security, and not a vague risk, an actual one. It should also be announced whenever those anonymous discussions take place and explained why they have to be anonymous.

    Early in the site days we went away from displaying which mod took an action in the modlog, and just blaming everything on automod. I think reverting that would go a very long way to bust a lot of this cliquey shit.

    When users notice certain users get special treatment, they get banned for commenting on it, until the situation becomes so egregious that it cannot be hidden anymore. Not allowing the userbase to call out bad mod practice, is also not good. We've closed both userunion and feedback because the mods don't like the "drama" - Getting called out for shitty behaviour. We really need a comm where the userbase is free to voice concerns and grievances. That would also go a long way towards avoiding these situations in the future. And this time mods shouldn't remove posts just because they dislike them, that's pissbaby shit.

    Other good effortposts I found while scrolling thru the dreg

    Finally: For those who are just now tuning in and wondering if all the fuss is about the naming of some comms. It's not. It's about people feeling lied to, talked down to and mistrustful of the mod team due past behaviours and the way this was handled. This comment thread probably gives you the best idea of what was the catalyst for being Very Mad Online.

    @TransComrade69@hexbear.net I'm done now, you can dunk on me knowing no more edits will come. one-more-thing I'll still think Naruto is worse than One Piece though

    • ratboy [they/them]
      ·
      4 days ago

      Ah yes these transparency suggestions are exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned you having good ideas about it. I do think that there should be some sort of safeguards in place to keep mods from getting super overwhelmed from bad faith complaints but better to do that than not have any arena for constructive feedback and concerns

    • morte [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Good post. This sums up quite a lot of my feelings on the matter. @Frank@hexbear.net's posts on this strugglesesh have been truly excellent (and far far more eloquent than mine but ty for including me anyway lol)

      Its clear there needs to be some shakeup in the moderation. Everything about that post not neutrally discussing policy changes was simply unacceptable in my opinion and accountability not being taken would be a grim portent for the future of this site. Which would suck because this is by farrrrr one of the best trans spaces on the net. Maybe this stems from the fact that we were fundamentally always a reddit clone, and a similar moderation system will inevitably attract types similar to reddit mods, and I dont really know what is to be done ab that. We do have some great mods and admins and im sure that the mods behind that post are well intentioned for the most part. Moderation is not easy. Bring constantly exposed to the worst users is not easy. The site wouldnt run without the hard work of a lot of comrades devotong their time and energy. But whoever contributed to that post needs to get over themselves, own up, and do some self crit. This cliquish, smug superiority needs to end because if its allowed to continue the site is going to end up like every other dead leftist forum

      No half measures waltuh waltuh