Hey, everyone. Hope this post finds you all well! A few days ago, PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS opened a comm request thread to name the community formerly known as The Dredge Tank. Now that it's been about 4 days and the votes seem pretty steady, we're rea-
"STOP THE COUNT!!!"
"Mr. President, she's talking."
As I was saying, we're ready to call the vote. Nobody's been happy with counterpropaganda, and we've heard you loud and clear. I'm excited to announce that Slop. is now open for all the posts you'd have previously posted to The Dredge Tank.
El Chisme continues to remain the new space for posts that would have been at home in The Dunk Tank.
In case anyone's confused about this, I'm gonna give a really quick explanation so everyone's on the same page with what's going on with the Tanks. The names of The Dunk Tank and The Dredge Tank have racist origins. The moderators of those communities agreed that the names of these communities should be changed. Unfortunately, while Lemmy allows the display names of communities to be changed, it does not currently allow the actual comm names to be changed. In order to change the names of these communities, we would have to shut them down and re-open new comms under new names. The mods of the dunk tank and dredge tank requested the name c/gossip. While there are some legitimate arguments being made relating to misogynistic societal perceptions of that word, the mods include women and enbies who disagree and specifically requested this name. I feel that this situation parallels the initial pushback that was experienced with disabled in which users voiced concerns that this name could be ableist, but the moderators of that community are themselves disabled and specifically requested that comm name, verbatim. Along with this name change, the mods felt that slightly expanding the scope of the community and simultaneously lowering the bar for the previous Rule 8 would allow users to post about more minor public figures as well as more major ones. This was seen as an expansion of the community's role, allowing posts to the new Dredge Tank replacement (counterpropaganda) to become a little more focused. We communicated this poorly, but the intention was to have users offer a sentence or two countering the reactionary take shown in the screenshot. Given how things spiraled from there, we've taken a step back from changing any of the rules during the switchover from The Dredge tank to Slop. We're trying to take time to let everyone breathe without changing too many things too quickly, but we also want to actually make sure people can get back to posting. Hopefully you're all okay with this pacing, lemme know below.
EDIT: thanks to @niph@hexbear.net for pointing out that this post didn't include the descriptions of the comms.
Where am I supposed to post...?
Slop is for what the old dredge_tank was like. Roast anonymous reactionaries to your heart's content!
Gossip for an informal discussion regarding people with power / notable / tools of power
Counterprop for a formalized discussion regarding reactionary people no matter how powerful/notable.
In upcoming admin updates:
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I'll post some analysis of mistakes and missteps that were made in recent days, including some of the context that led up to those errors.
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I'll offer a clearer and more complete explanation and description of the ongoing site culture issues that have been previously mentioned. These were poorly communicated before, but I'll do my best to explain both the issues at hand as well as the importance of dealing with them.
The last few days have been really confusing and frustrating for a lot of people and a lot has happened. This is not an appropriate place to reopen, re-litigate, or rehash the struggle session. I will not be debating either the struggle session or the subjects of the upcoming admin update posts here. Please refrain from doing so as well.
"Folks, we're feeding the fish their slop, they're tremendously hungry, incredibly famished. And look: I get to feed them. They say: Mr President, please feed the koi fish, its din din time, and it is! I get to do the little shaka-shaka with the can, and they're happy, they're eating -they're eating- out of the palm of my hand, and they're getting so big and so strong. Look at all these koi fish! I bet they won't have any issues finding -finding- a special someone. And it's wonderful, it's great. Greydon Carter could never be a tremendously effective keeper of fish. His party is not so hot, and all of his betta fishes are dying! But Lyudmila's letting me feed them, and I'm doing a tremendously great job, and a looot better than what Sleepy Joe would do!"
But aren’t those two reasons contradictory? It honestly just seems from the outside like “gossip” was chosen because the mods felt that tank posts about celebs were becoming frivolous rage bait, and wanted to give a dismissive label to that kind of content, didn’t foresee the misogyny issue, and are now taking the reclamation line because they refuse to admit they were wrong.
To be honest I have some sympathy for the stance that the million “Musk is stupid” posts per day were frivolous, but you need to realise that the majority of complaints are (and have been throughout this debacle) about
It’s about the way issues have been handled more than the content of the problem. The arguments about the content of the problem are easily comprehended and have been politely discussed by everyone. The continued insistence on imposing a generally unpopular decision is contributing to the impression of (3).
Having said all that I do want to say thank you to both admins in this thread for making massive improvements and an effort to communicate better. I think your most recent formulation of the intended content of the new comms works well and should be pinned somewhere more prominent than in Nth level replies.
OH MY GOSH! I just knew I was missing something when I made the post, but I couldn't figure it out. Sorry, been really scrambling lately to make this right, and I need to pace myself a little so mistakes like this don't happen! Ok, back to the start of this comment, and then I'll go add the description of the communities to the main post
Multiple different people had different motivations for endorsing the proposal.
As one of the women who both endorsed and approved the proposal, my support was based on reclamation. Reclamation of the word gossip is very well-supported in even mainstream feminist circles to the point that I honestly thought it was common knowledge. Gossip has been badly maligned by patriarchy, but we have taken the word back because it's important. I wanted to create a more positive and fun vibe that would be less alienating insular in order to bring more leftist women and queer people to the site. A good example of the energy I'm hoping to give a leftist perspective on Hexbear can be viewed on r/fauxmoi, a gossip space on Reddit where I've seen some surprisingly good takes and even occasional leftist analysis. My secondary intention was that hexbears with unexamined biases and internalized misogyny might examine these, around the word gossip itself, perception of gossip as an inherently feminine activity, and the acknowledgement that dunking on Elon in the_dunk_tank is the same activity as celebrity gossip.
I'm really sorry about these. If I could undo them, I would. I suddenly needed to take a mental health break from site administration due to some personal life events last week, so I wasn't able to be the one communicate our changes. I had to come back early from that break to help communicate this better after it went poorly. I'm sorry I wasn't here communicating to you all.
TC69 definitely shouldn't have been "put into the driver's seat of a moving car," so to speak. She should have come back as a user or honorary admin without moderation tasks for a while to get reacclimated to the changes between when she left and now. Alaskaball's bit of fighting with their own account is really funny in a vacuum, but it was very poorly timed. They should have made it clear they were doing a bit instead of leaving everyone (including other admins) unaware and horrified, especially considering the state of the admin threads at that point.
The mods and admins have always been in charge of steering the direction of the site. Current motivations are to reduce some of the negativity and toxicity on the site and to become a more inclusive and comfy space for women, people of color and ethnic minorities, and queer people.
I'm gonna go add the explanation of the comms to the post. Thanks again for the reminder!