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.
While I shouldn't weigh in too much, especially post-hoc, I could've told you that having TC69 back as a mod or admin was a very bad idea.
As important TC69 was (and from a legacy perspective is) to creating an aggressively positive trans culture, she, for better and worse, acts incredibly narcissistically when she is placed into positions of power, and more importantly, in my opinion, she is/was ideologically incoherent as moderator. You cannot simultaneously say 'its just a website' while also banning people for small indiscretions or personal beef. After all, 'it's just a website' why should the moderators care that much? She tends to take so much shit that goes on here personally and yet expects nobody else to.
A poor decision unless you enjoy drama.
I think the whole "cult of personality" thing feeds into it. Coming back after years and being made an admin immediately while being lauded as our Stalin and all that, I don't think it helped. And she wasn't in anyway ready to handle that struggle session either, let's just say mistakes were made.
The big issue is that the cult grew in her absence, as when she was admin she was an incredibly controversial admin for the community, and it would have been fine if she wasn't granted admin immediately. But 'TC69 thought' has, over the years, mostly been distilled into the good parts of it (which are unequivocally good) with the more problematic aspects forgotten or memeified.
For a long while the "TC69 thought" joke made me angry. Took a year or so before I felt neutral about it and a bit more before I started being able to join in. I thought we all recknognised it was ironic.
It's true that TC69 was always divisive. But the reason she is so fondly remembered is that in the big picture she was pretty much always right. Idk, I think her timing was just bad mostly. She came back right when the worst struggle session in a long time was kicking off and tried to take control of the situation after it spiraled out of control. I definitely don't think she read the room very well in how she did that, but also she was less established here and people were prepared to think the worst. Probably would have been better if she had come back as a regular user for a while before trying to be an admin again
I don't really agree with this. The reason she is remembered fondly is because a lot of users who disliked her schtick left - and that wasn't just transphobes. She made the site way less inclusive for ND people, she made it a hostile space where you were unsure about what was going on. This turned people off. When she made her first "I'm leaving" post there were plenty of people celebrating it - and getting banned for it.
This was the basic cycle of TC69 handling any issue the end result was that she banned people until they no longer complained. Thinking that if you hear no issue, there is no issue. This is certainly true, but it also means you lose a lot of people.
The way the VCJ thing was handled was fucking abysmal.I'm glad she made it a better place for trans people who she liked. I'm sad she was not interested in just making the site a better place.
edit: Others who remember the VCJ thing better have corrected me.
I actually must politely disagree. The VCJ mistakes were all made at the beginning by other people and TC69 came in at the end after multiple admin resignations, including dev admin resignations, and did clean up. It was very bleak. People genuinely were not sure if the whole site was done. The only way that fire got put out is that a whole bunch of people who couldn't stop fighting got banned. I myself was probably an ass hair away from getting banned, but managed to shut the fuck up. IMO she tried to do the same here and did not pull it off.
Tbh I wasn't around for the very start of the VCJ thing, so I can't speak to that. I'd come back from a break. I've edited it
I was here for the whole thing
And then people revise history to pretend that vegans were perfectly happy until VCJ showed up when that absolutely was not the case.
I sadly had been away and then came back in the midst of the VCJ thing, so I don't know what was going on in the time leading up to it. But yeah we do love revising history here, it's another bad trait.
I remembered that a few months ago I grabbed some old links from the debacle, for a bit of context.
Edit: would probably help if I remembered to include the link
https://hexbear.net/comment/5319994
I don't think this is true but her tactic of "criticize my decisions and I'll ban you" makes it seem that way after the fact.
I don't think they helped matters or anything but afaik she just handed out bunch of temp bans
I meant 3 years ago.
When I say right in the big picture I mean that while not everyone she banned three years ago deserved it, the site was better after all the she people she banned were banned
I don't think that supports "she was pretty much always right"