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.
Improper vetting and oversight of mods/admins is bad news when there has been doxxers, fakes, and sociopaths from the beginning. Because of the way the internet works however, this will never be able to be done perfectly. The culture of the site has to protect against stuff like this, it can't be one or two people. Having a culture that encourages posts that piss off half the userbase will always end in disaster. This isn't one person's fault, and part of it is the design of the site its self. I agree with the others who have said that badposting and fake news were always more harmful than the dunk tank. Those comms specifically are used to push lines and piss people off and have been since their inception. Just my 2c I'm staying out of this one from here on.
edit: I see some people trying to pretend like there isn't a culture of pushing lines with racism / misogyny etc, and that is really not helpful. The week of federation was a shitshow.