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.
I have what is hopefully my last thought on this. I think there should be a steering committee of people on major website decisions and I think that group should included interested posters in good standing who apply, and not exclusively mods/admins. It could be a standing body or one convened specifically for major decisions. I think there are a lot of people who don't necessarily have the time or temperament to be mods but who could provide meaningful input and it would help break down the opposition between the mods (evil, cabal) and the posters (beautiful, pure, light itself).
I am working on creating a matrix space that would be where all site proposals are posted, discussed and voted on. This space could also be where feedback and mod action appeals can be posted. Discussion regarding each proposal, appeal, or feedback would be within a thread under the top-level message.
It is open to join for anyone, the history of the channel can be seen and voted on, however only people that verify their hexbear account can send messages.
This is very much a work in progress and may change in the next couple of week but our priority is to change things to improve transparency/user engagement in the steering of the site
If it ends up being a place where people can't vote, but can just make sure they're at least heard, then that would be fine too. (though the other thing is preferable right now, if the aim is to grow the community and the community does grow, then at some point the direct democracy can become unwieldy. The federation votes seemed taxing to say the least.)
You're all doing a stellar job, I'm really happy to see it.
Thank you for everything you do, Carcosa
Posters Soviet when? Build dual power against the crumbling ancien regime of moderators
All power to the posters soviets!