I think that this would be the perfect post to get this community going.
Under my direction as admin of Hexbear I restructured the internal admin/moderator order. A large part of this restructure was to shift the majority of the site decisions to a larger collective of people dedicated to the site.
At the time I also reorganized the new moderator protocol to make it easier for new mods to be added and for those mods to have the power to appoint mods at will based on a vouching system. Only moderators who submitted an application were invited to an off-site moderation discussion room.
This room is where the proposals for the site were made, discussed, and voted upon. After a proposal was finished I would often write up a statement and post it for feedback and approval so that the entire process from proposal to post had as many opportunities as possible for the moderators to give input or present changes.
In light of the most recent decision I am taking responsibility as I established this decision-making process, I drafted the announcement post, I collected and edited the followup statement.
It is clear to me that I was mistaken in the effectiveness of this approach and that a more transparent approach is needed. As well as, creating more opportunities for user input need to be added.
I am more than happy to return to the admin team if the users want me to do so, but I am stepping away from all decision-making at an admin level. I will continue to be involved with Hexbear in any capacity I can and will not be leaving as a user.
Chapo.chat/Hexbear was never my project nor did I ever intend to take it over. My hope was to keep it going another day so the people that spent hours developing, coordinating, organizing, and educating on this platform could continue to do so. Everyone that has donated to mutual aid, organized fundraisers, wrote effort posts, and bad posts have done just as much if not more than I have.
I have faith in all the other admins both new and old to keep this place going and while I am happy to give my thoughts on any aspect of the site I think the best way to self-crit is to accept my mistakes and to let the other admins take the lead.
Thank you to everyone who has sent me kind comments and to those that continuously strive to make this place better.
I'll cast my vote in favor of @CARCOSA@hexbear.net not stepping down and returning to the admin team. The point of criticism and self-criticism is to learn from mistakes and struggles so we don't repeat the same mistakes and struggles. If the actions requiring self-crit are done from a place of good intentions and the consequences are learned from, this makes us stronger. I understand that others may have stronger opinions on some of the statements made, and that's valid too. I'm not erasing that. It seems you already know that users want more important decisions to be made with more transparency and wider input, as long as we move in that direction this was a positive event.
What needs to happen, more than anything, is an open discussion on how sitewide changes should be proposed and voted on that includes more transparency, that's what it seems like everyone wants. Additionally, toxic moderators and users should be called out and made to publicly self-crit, or be removed.
Really, I don't think it was that serious to begin with. I love that we have a space that we can all be ourselves in, and many mods and admins who want to do their best to improve it. Even if we agree or disagree on what that direction is, I do think the fact that we all use this site is a testament to the myriad different vectors of value it provides. From shitposting to memes to high-effort news analysis to
, this site provides so much for so many people with different wants and needs.
Those are my 2 cents as a half-year user of Hexbear. I'm not a long time user, so others should give their thoughts too. I mostly kept out of the drama because I had very serious personal issues going on the last couple days, so I don't have the same perspective as those in the trenches the whole time, I'm not invalidating those who disagree with my more hopeful stance. Really, I just want to have a fun site to relax and shitpost on, keep up with the news, and talk about whatever games I'm playing, and I love that this site lets me do that. I'm sure many of y'all feel the same.
Anyways, I'm gonna
and 
for a while. The people more invested in this drama can keep hashing it out, I'll return in a few days when this has hopefully blown over and a consensus between users has been reached.
Yeah I totally agree. I mean, I know most of the time I post nonsense, but every now and again I effort post and it's nice that this is place I can do both. I truely believe we can both be serious, and completely stupid in one place and it can work just fine.
I enjoy people's mutual aid, organisation and news posts. I also enjoy people posting the weirdest shit about beans. The place wouldn't be the same if we lost either.
Yep, 100%! And again, if we fire admins every time they make a mistake with full intention of improving the site, where are we supposed to find trained admins who have learned from mistakes? Hoping everyone can just learn automatically? That's unsustainable.
The mods have obviously been a mixed bag, clearly there are good ones and some toxic elements. I don't have a good solution to that and others are working on that, but I don't have the time nor energy to read all of the receipts and go through that, so I'll let the rest of Hexbear decide on that aspect. I think they should be allowed to publicly self-crit, and the toxic ones should be removed.