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.

  • Hexboare [they/them]
    ·
    14 days ago

    I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread.

    Still got REgon, Aradina, morte etc banned

    • Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.ml
      ·
      14 days ago

      I'm unbanned now. The worst part is that I also got community banned from like ten communities (including tdt lol) and would have to resub to them, but I think I'm just going to not for most of them

    • SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]
      ·
      14 days ago

      Oh so they aren't even honest about unbanning the people who were banned for being critical, even though we're being told the bans were rescinded, and the person who gave the bans "feels bad" about it? This just gets worse and worse.

    • NewAcctWhoDis [any]
      ·
      14 days ago

      Doesn't necessarily matter, but why was Aradina also banned from a bunch of communities for the same period of time? At first I assumed it was a powermod but there's no single mod in common between all of them.

      • Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.ml
        ·
        14 days ago

        It's probably because I'm a .ml account and it's a byproduct of that. It(byproduct) banned me from an odd mix of places I use and places I've never posted, so it doesn't seem malicious anyway.

    • Lyudmila [she/her, comrade/them]A
      ·
      14 days ago

      Working on it! It'll take a moment, so slight delay to further answers!

      E: Got aradina and morte. Regon unfortunately is retaining the temp ban. Please let me know if I've missed any others.

      • NewAcctWhoDis [any]
        ·
        14 days ago

        Do we get an actual reason for REgon's ban? Modlog says "Please give your keycaps a break and take some deep breaths."

        • Lyudmila [she/her, comrade/them]A
          ·
          14 days ago

          REgon has had a long-standing history of hostility including stretching back to their now deleted former account, and a cooldown period was deemed appropriate well in advance but wasn't actually applied at that time as they weren't actually being hostile or accusatory then. It's not permanent and we'll welcome them back in a few days.

          • Hexboare [they/them]
            ·
            14 days ago

            There were a couple instances of hostility over the past couple days but they made edits when it was called out

            I think this was the wrong decision, worsened by the "debate bro" alt continually posting about how REgon was definitely going to be banned.

            I would have unbanned them and given them an opportunity to have say their final piece here, with a warning that hostility in the future would result in a cool down temp ban.

      • booty [he/him]
        ·
        14 days ago

        Regon unfortunately is retaining the temp ban.

        agony-4horsemen

        Holy shit

        • Parzivus [any]
          ·
          14 days ago

          I do feel bad for the admins that stayed awake until 4 AM to take flak but damn this just keeps getting funnier