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.
Could you please edit out that Melina made the alts, it was not them rather an outside wrecking source either the HexbearHates lemmyclubtroll or db0 as he leaked private communications a la the matrix screenshot of me
I am simply going off the modlog, which is public record. I am not privy towards any private chat or screenshot or DM and frankly, I don't want to be. And as of now, I don't see Beluga being unbanned or given an apology since the public modlog as of now still says that Beluga is banned and that "Beluga/Melina/dsplayer/etc was behind the alts and is not allowed back."
If it wasn't actually Melina, then Beluga needs to be unbanned then. Melina/Beluga needs to be exonerated and given a public apology. Let the record accurately and truthfully show that Beluga wasn't behind these alts.
I will strikethrough the third part of my post, and say that it's in dispute.
Yea I know it's confusing I'm sorry.
Beluga was temp banned for DM harassment, then the ban was changed to permanent when they were suspected of doing the alts but the ban reason was reverted to the previous reason as there is no way to prove who did the wrecker/harass alts.
I don't see Beluga's permanent ban being rescinded into a temporary ban in the public modlog. And regardless of Beluga's DM harassment, it's still fucked up for the admins to say Beluga had an alt that wished aaaaaaadjsf was murdered, meaning that a public apology ought to be given. Let the record accurately and truthfully show that Beluga wasn't behind these alts.
It was the opposite, one admin gave Beluga a temp ban for DM harassment, a second admin changed it to a perm ban with the reasoning that Beulga was making alts to harass, and then went back and changed the perm ban reasoning to DM harassment. This happened in a relatively short period of time but you are correct that jumping to conclusions is not helpful at all