Hello users of Hexbear, we wanted to inform you that we are going to be locking the_dunk_tank and dredge_tank communities. We have created two new communities /c/gossip and /c/counterpropaganda to serve a similar but clearly distinct purpose than the dunk/dredge tanks.
Not only is the dunk tank a term that has racist origins, but also many posts there were almost no effort and often times requiring later edits to show how they weren't reactionary, not useful with regard to developing rhetoric and furthering dialectical analysis of that which we dunk upon.
To that end, we wish posts of reactionaries to be placed in !counterpropaganda@hexbear.net along with an accompanying explanation (as simple or complex as desired) with the intent of countering the reactionary propaganda in the post body, as of now comments are not subject to the same rhetorical rigor rule.
For the posts that are not "low-hanging fruit' of notable people we ask that you use !gossip@hexbear.net .
These changes are mainly part of a continued effort to remove the racist and misogynistic elements from our community and grow.
Any moderators of the dunk tank or dredge tank that want to be a mod in the new communities let me know.
Any users with questions or comments please use this post, this change was made at the behest of the entire Hexbear mod and admin team. We will be looking for more moderators in an organized volunteer drive shortly, if you wish to submit an application you may send it to me via hexbear or matrix direct messages.
Use this post as a place for discussion to these changes. We will keep things as they are for 2 weeks and then reflect on the feedback, including this post: https://hexbear.net/post/3858346
As a personal addendum I am sorry if the closing of the tanks these changes removes a beloved space on the site and if you want to suggest a community to replace them you may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.
Sitewide or community changes come from proposals put forth from the mod team, discussed, and voted on by the mod team.
Any users wanting to suggest a community to replace the tanks, may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net current discussion is here https://hexbear.net/post/3858346 or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.
You may also consider using !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml as a substitute for dunk/dredge tank posts as well
The mod statement can be found here: https://hexbear.net/comment/5613033
Application
What is your Hexbear username? Do you have any preferred pronouns? What are your thoughts on capitalism? What are your thoughts on imperialism? What are your thoughts on trans rights? What are your thoughts on racial justice? What do think about current and previous protests around the world? What are your thoughts on Veganism and Animal Liberation? Do you have any experience with other leftist online communities? What did those experiences teach you? What is your approach to moderation, and how do you work with teams? How do you deal with online drama and people who try to start things for the sake of it? What current comms would you be interested in moderating? Do you have any ideas for community engagement? What is your general time availability? (Time zone, amounts, common browsing times, etc)
Hello everyone, I want to personally apologize for how I handled this change.
During my time as an admin I made the decision to shift decision-making from a group of admins admin to all the moderators. My reasoning is that the barrier to entry for a hexbear account to become a moderator was pretty low, and we have a 90% acceptance rate for applicants. Therefore, a mod collective is going to be the users most interested in shaping the site.
The reason that I made this post and I edited down the discussion to the comment below is to protect any mods from harassment. Not everyone is open to defending their thoughts against the userbase and I didn't think they should have to as long as one of us was willing to engage with this post. I personally agreed with the mod sentiment that this change could be a chance to improve the site but did not mind the dunk/dredge tanks however it was a majority of mod team members that voted in favor of this change during the week+ that this change was discussed & voted on.
I recognize I could have done multiple aspects of this better and I think it is clear from the discussion of this change that it was not the right approach.
Another admin will be putting up a second discussion post for what we will do after some time with the current change. Closing the tanks will be permanent but the decision on if we will be opening a spiritual successor to exist alongside gossip and counterprop has not been made.
The screenshot circulating in this thread of my statement in the lemmy instance admin chat was an attempt by me to get the drama communities on other instances closed, ultimately a failure on multiple counts.
With all that being said, I would like to thank everyone for their input and state that I will be stepping down as admin as a result of my mistakes in facilitating the discussion, executing the change, and communicating with the userbase.
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i present an offering to thee to temporarily satiate thine cravings for blood whilst we internally consider the feedback we've gotten
Locking this thread for now to avoid further spiraling. Update coming from me in the morning. ❤️
Shitheads deserve to be dunked on and being civil to the right is a lib move
i wasn't sure if I wanted to join the struggle session, but I feel like I have to get my words out.
we have taken demographic polls of this site. we have pronouns, we have an em_poc comm and we have had struggle sessions about both of these in the past.
the gall to decide that our queer users are giving off 'cishet vibes'. the gall to decide that our POC users are giving off 'white vibes'.
this is genuinely disgusting behaviour, and I cannot believe the admin team let this fly, let alone decided it was worth adding to the argument. I am aware of what other info has come out - this point still stands regardless. why has the admin team signed off on this argument? why wasn't this shot down immediately? why was it ever entertained as a valid argument in the first instance?
Site works fine for a year
It's time to set this place on fire to keep them on their toes
And simultaneously with this crusade against white cishet mindset, you delete poverty finance.
Really do be feeling that downwardly-mobile professional class tbh
Today I learned that dunking has cishet white man vibes or something? I try to fucking
and this shit happens.I think the real site culture change we need is to stop the admins cosying up with libs.
If any of the instances were upset at things in the dunk tank, it's probably because they are NOT our allies. Why appease them?
Hexbear is only federated with communities we're compatible with. We're in a cosy spot. Users are generally comfy, kind, happy. Hexbear is a nice bubble of sanity and occasionally an excellent effort post grows out of that.
This is not the vanguard party. This is a commie bar / working mans club. We don't need more serious leftists spaces. We need more cosy leftist spaces.
The name change is a good move once we found out the racist history of dunk tanks but the mods need to take a step back and remember this is just an obscure lefty shit posting forum, it's (probably) not going to be the catalyst for the proletarian revolution that destroys the capitalist class, seizes the means of production, and ushers in a new golden age of peace and human dignity.
It's a place like minded people can get together in a space where we know we won't be shit on for thinking trans people are people, genocide is wrong, capitalism sucks, etc. I don't think that having a comm where we criticize/insult shit takes is negative to the site. If it does stray into attacks on their appearance or other stuff that isn't their terrible takes users are free to remind their fellows that's uncool or report them so the mods can do it. I don't think it's bad to keep focused on more ideological dunks/gossip/takes/etc.
But I'm also a cis white guy so maybe it's my inherent biological need for dunks that's making me say this
Also if you're a mod and you don't like the community you're modding, log off? Quit? Let the users vote on a new mod?
It just occurred to me that it's also super disingenuous to tell people to request a new comm to replace the dredge tank, when you've already made a commitment to people who aren't users of this site not to allow a dredge tank like comm to exist.
Unless the picture that's floating around is doctored?
The only response I've seen to that image from an admin, is locking the only thread outside of this 1100 comment post where it was being discussed.
If it's real then that picture implies that no such comm would be allowed to be created.
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Starting to think that the real issue is that large portions of the admin team do not view themselves as users of the site who have stepped into a community role, but rather as managers and who have contempt for the unruly, unwashed masses they are forced to oversee.
but also many posts there were almost no effort
Its a bit contradictory to hold this site to a high standard of high effort leftist rhetoric when in reality this event revealed very fundemental superstructure of the site does not follow in the vein of leftist organisation and is more akin to neoliberal management structures.
inb4 "MUH WHO CARES TERMINALLY ONLINE"
I care keep seething lol
Anyways. This is not to say that the site should be a place of high effort posts if the superstructure was more leftist, its just to raise a point of contradiction.
A more transparent, democratic approach would have been to explain reasons for why a change has to be made and hold a vote amongst the userbase with some engineering control to prevent brigading. This would be more in line with leftist theory and principles.
That is all for that point.
Regarding the supposed discussions with other admins from other lemmy sites, as one of our users said, the majority of "people" who use those sites are insane hyper neoliberal crazy people who basically don't matter.
Therefore, I'd say that there is no need to appease them and we were doing fine before federation so why care about the opinions of their admins who are more often than not the enemy in the most visceral sense.
They support a system that considers each and every one of us burnable waste and would happily have all of us die in agony so that their profits remain in the green (see whats happening in Gaza atm)
So really, why pander to them?
If its about supposed death threats there would need to be valid receipts for such outrageous claims so the offending users can be dealt with appropriately (its not a problem if the recipient is a fascist/neolib)
Again, we will be absolutely fine if we just defederate from everyone and continue with business as usual.
Like the admins have been doing a fine job otherwise so theres no problem with us going at it alone is there?
I feel like trying to "clean up" this site kind of goes against the entire ethos of what this thing was in the first place
This kind of feels like old-school forum admin mindset, just being annoying and ruining the fun for no reason even though no one ever asked for that
The name change is fine though that was fucked up when I learned that
The way this was messaged really sucks, and I don't think I can really agree with the reasoning either. I guess creating spaces that involve being mean can turn toxic sometimes, but so can anything, that's why we moderate.
What's worse, the way it was communicated on the backend to other instance's admins completely mismatches the reasoning given here. And they were given advance notice well ahead of the announcement here?
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Why play PR games with people that hate us regardless? I thought we were on the same page about the
s.
