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.
honestly, I've spent a lot of time around Melina before on hextube and never really had toxic or negative interactions. As an outside observer to these beefs, it usually seems like fae's insistence on not dropping a joke/bit that collides with a confrontational user that takes it extremely seriously. A ban is justified if those accounts were provably Melina alts harassing people, but tbh the grudge seems far from one sided.
If you're interacting with someone in a hostile way "as a bit" and you're repeatedly asked if you're doing a bit, and you tell them no you're not "as a bit", then you just suck. That's not a bit, that's just being shitty. Even if it was a bit, it'd be a really shitty bit. Bits are supposed to be funny, and that's just shock-jock "oooh I'm so edgy" comedy.
I've had those interactions with fae in the past. Big part of the reason why I blocked fakenews.
Two Minutes Hate is generally discouraged, but telling someone reasonably engaging to kay why ess for not liking their unfunny pet project maybe should get a touch grass ban before their impassioned reply guy?
Unbanning Melina the first time was an unforced error, from which we are now reaping.
Removed by mod
i really appreciated how supportive they were about covid stuff and cracking down on minimization and misinfo which led me to be sad about their initial ban a long while back since it cut their time as a c/covid mod short. but yeah i share a similar sentiment.