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.

  • REgon [they/them]
    ·
    11 days ago

    I gotta say as a participant in a lot of these sessions, and I know this sounds funny or stereotypical, but...
    Most strugglesessions I've experienced happens because of the following

    • People disagree on something minor
    • Mods take one side
    • The side with the mods make low-effort posts dunking on the others, while claiming the others are just [insert baseless accusation] + mad + infants (we love our casual ableism folks)
    • The other side, being met with increasing hostility and dismissal are getting increasingly frustrated and desperate as they are still not being met, despite making great efforts to have their POV understood
    • Mods ban one or two of the worst offenders of their preferred side, and a bunch from the others until the thing dies down
    • Things die down
    • People ask questions about what happened
    • Mods remove any mention that does not support the narrative that their side was rational under cover of "avoiding metaposting"/"no relitigatin past strugglesessions"
    • ND users especially are fucked because they don't understand what they did wrong
    • iie [they/them, he/him]
      ·
      11 days ago

      My understanding is that struggle sessions are rarely one-sided, they're a feedback loop of escalation, hurt, and defensiveness in which all sides contribute. In this session, for example, there were comments accusing the mods of being a cabal of power-seeking transphobes. That's an escalation that shuts down discussion rather than fosters it.

      I make the analogy that, just as revolutions tend to be chaotic and bloody regardless of their ideological content—libs conveniently forget how mess the French revolution was—struggle sessions have their own realities independent of the specific topic and specific people involved. The same unstable feedback loops arise in any struggle session.

      My takeaway is that, in general, looking past this specific struggle session, we all have to work together to foster healthier discussion dynamics here.

      • REgon [they/them]
        ·
        10 days ago

        My understanding is that struggle sessions are rarely one-sided, they're a feedback loop of escalation, hurt, and defensiveness in which all sides contribute.

        I completely agree, I tried to illustrate that loop.

        In this session, for example, there were comments accusing the mods of being a cabal of power-seeking transphobes.

        No there weren't, that's a reductive representation of the position the "dunking is not inherently a cishet white man thing" people held.
        No one, except for the mods have talked about "shadowy cabals running the whole thing". I've talked about there being a clique of mods whipping up a frenzy in the private modchat, not a shadowy cabal of transphobes. I - and others - have talked about there being a separate culture in the modchat, between some of the mods in the modteam. Not some deepstate of evil wreckers trying their best to misgender users from the shadows.
        I and others have talked about how the modresponse was bioessentialist and how the mods subsequently misgendered people, though not on purpose, but by way of their rhetoric. Which did happen. Nobody called them transphobic, except for the misunderstanding when alaskaball banned themselves and people - who at this point were pissed at being banned "as a bit" (really for disagreeing with TC69) and infantilized - interpreted "fella" as being misgendering, which I don't see, but I wasn't there.

        I make the analogy that, just as revolutions tend to be chaotic and bloody regardless of their ideological content—libs conveniently forget how mess the French revolution was—struggle sessions have their own realities independent of the specific topic and specific people involved. The same unstable feedback loops arise in any struggle session.

        I agree in part, but I disagree with the "both sides are equally to blame" framing I interpret from your text. Following your analogy: The french revolution could have been avoided if the royalists weren't dumbasses who ignored and suppressed their subjects until it got to be too much. This analogy is obviously flawed since I've got loads of bread and I don't have to post here. I can just go elsewhere or disappear. Also I can't be killed thru the screen, yet.

        My takeaway is that, in general, looking past this specific struggle session, we all have to work together to foster healthier discussion dynamics here

        My takeaway is that we have to look at what happened and finally confront the current structure of moderation of hexbear is one that is inherently flawed.

        • iie [they/them, he/him]
          ·
          10 days ago

          No there weren't, that's a reductive representation... [paragraph I'm still wrapping my head around]

          Sorry if I got it wrong. I don't have a very good understanding of what happened.

          That said, I'm not here to re-litigate the details of what happened. I probably shouldn't have tried to find a real example.

          My point is that the thread was not a functional discussion. People were escalating and not listening.

          Following your analogy: The french revolution could have been avoided if the royalists weren't dumbasses

          My analogy is that certain situations have their own emergent properties, not that the causes of a revolution can be mapped to the causes of a struggle session. I'm talking about the chaos itself.

          Struggle sessions and revolutions are both examples of situations that gain a life of their own. Emergent effects dominate over the desires of the participants. No one's in control of the situation.

          My takeaway is that we have to look at what happened and finally confront the current structure of moderation of hexbear is one that is inherently flawed.

          That might well be, but I hope we can talk about it slowly and patiently from here on out.

          • REgon [they/them]
            ·
            10 days ago

            Sorry if I got it wrong.

            Don't apologise for not being online enough. Honestly sorry for getting it "right".

            but people absolutely were escalating

            Definitely agree

            I'm talking about the chaos itself.

            Makes way more sense for me now, thank you for the clarifyer.

            I hope we can talk about it slowly and patiently from here on out.

            Personally I feel like things would work out if we just got even meaner and more hostile from hereon out (tone: joking)

            Really though, I genuinely hope so too. I am really happy with how it has been handled since lyudmila started posting.

            I don't have a very good understanding of what happened.

            :cognitohazard: <- Click for knowledge that damages your mind as if it was eldritch, but you don't get any cool powers from it

            • iie [they/them, he/him]
              ·
              10 days ago

              Really though, I genuinely hope so too. I am really happy with how it has been handled since lyudmila started posting.

              Yeah, me too, it's a relief to see people decompress and process things now that the action is over. I just wish we could have moved at this pace from the start.

              I've gotten so much out of this site over the years, I hope we can keep things going here for many years to come.