"Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and uproot from our land but from our minds as well." - Frantz Fanon
Hello users of Hexbear, the intent of this announcement is two-fold the first is that we would like to do another community moderator drive, if you have a community idea or want to help an existing one then please send an application either through hexbear or matrix direct message.
The call for new mods is crucial to our efforts to reduce racism and misogyny on the site, we need users to report and enough mods to be able to quickly act on the reports throughout the day and night. Also, CW or content warnings are essential to the safe browsing of Hexbear.
In addition, comments or posts removed for racist or misogyny will also be accompanied by escalating temporary bans. Upvotes will not be the single reason for a ban, however they may be used in conjunction with other posts/comments/upvotes. Consider this post the warning, however, mods are encouraged to reach out to hexbear users before a long duration ban.
The second is to increase transparency with regard to the site while not repeating the mistakes of previous attempts that were ultimately counterproductive, in part due to wreckers.
Previous attempts to increase site transparency and user participation were targeted by wreckers through increasing the intensity and frequency of struggle session drama.
Using matrix's increased level of user permissions as an anti-wrecking measure while having an increased barrier to sending messages with a clear process to gaining the ability to send messages, we hope to mitigate wrecking attempts.
Leading to the creation of the Hexbear Proposals chapo.chat matrix room.
This will be a place for site proposals and discussion before implementation on the site.
Every proposal will also be mirrored into a pinned post on the hexbear community. Any other ideas for helping to integrate the two spaces are welcome to be commented here or messaged to me directly.
Within Hexbear Proposals you can see the history of all site proposals and react to them, indicating a vote for or against a proposal.
Sending messages will be restricted to verified and active hexbear accounts older than 1 month with their matrix id in their hexbear user profile.
All top level messages within the channel must be a Proposals (idea for changing the site), Feedback (regarding non-technical aspects of the site, for technical please use https://hexbear.net/c/feedback), or Appeals (regarding admin/moderator actions).
Discussion regarding these will be within nested threads under the post.
To gain matrix verification, all you need to do is navigate to my hexbear userprofile and click the send a secure private message including your hexbear username.
In closing, I want to state that this site would not exist without the volunteer labor of the moderators, who I am deeply grateful for.
I would also like to take this moment to remind people that lemmy direct messages are not encrypted, and finally please use this post to discuss these changes, share community ideas, or express interest in moderation.
Application
What is your Hexbear username?
Do you have any preferred pronouns?
What are your thoughts on capitalism?
What are your thoughts on imperialism?
What are your thoughts on trans rights?
What are your thoughts on racial justice?
What do think about current and previous protests around the world?
What are your thoughts on Veganism and Animal Liberation?
Do you have any experience with other leftist online communities?
What did those experiences teach you?
What is your approach to moderation, and how do you work with teams?
How do you deal with online drama and people who try to start things for the sake of it?
What current comms would you be interested in moderating?
Do you have any ideas for community engagement?
What is your general time availability? (Time zone, amounts, common browsing times, etc)
Element information
Element is a messaging app that lets you talk to people over the Matrix protocol.
To get started, check out this link, where you can choose to either download Element for your platform or, if on a computer, open it in a browser.
The instructions that follow are for the desktop application and the web application, but the process is similar on all apps:
Press "Create Account"
We host our own Matrix server, so if you want you can change matrix.org to chapo.chat.
This is completely optional; users who sign up with a matrix.org username can still talk to people with chapo.chat username.
(Note: It is chapo.chat, not hexbear.net. Also, registrations aren't always open on chapo.chat; if they're not, just create an account on matrix.org)
Fill in a username and password
Hit register, and you're done!
I'll be honest having my upvotes monitored by secret committee has always made me very uncomfortable and I do not like this as an approach to push the site into whatever the mods want to unilaterally create. I genuinely thought that ended after that giant purge in the first year I didn't know mods still did that.
This is not to say I'm against any of the reasons mods want to moderate upbears. I just don't like feeling like I'm under a microscope even if Ihave nothing to hide. I know it's not popular to say, but I know I'm not just talking for myself here.
Traffic has seemed way down since the comm struggle session and I worry mods underestimate the chilling effect that unapologetic, undemocratic, heavy-handed moderation has an an ultimately delicate community.
When I am tired at the end of the day I often upvote comments and posts without thinking. I’m sure lots of people are like this
Admittedly same, though I don't need to be tired to do it. And sometimes I upvote comments of conflicting opinions (both even) after reading them over too tbh. Not to excuse things like this, but rather it's definitely good we're having this discussion.
When 2 Hexbear users are in disagreement, I will often find that they both make points that I find compelling and thought provoking and I'll end up upbearing the whole discussion thread.
I will upvote bad posts if I think it makes people more likely to see good posts down the chain (obviously within reason). Especially now with federation.
This is also true for me when I am tired at the end of the day. And at the middle of the day. And the beginning of the day.
I'm just tired.
This isn't a constant thing, the process is someone says: "Hey this really reactionary comment got a lot of upvotes can you check that?"
A user that shows up on a few of these requests are going to get closer attention, this is what we mean by upvotes are used along with modlog and post/comment history when determining the appropriate mod action to take against someone.
As per the previous struggle session, we have changed the way that site changes are discussed and enacted to give more transparency/user interaction.
We still have hundreds of daily active users, more than we had months ago, that being said this site has never prioritized growth or user count. What we have prioritized is making this as protected of a space possible for our marginalized comrades.
These comrades have asked for the recent changes, and without a doubt I could have communicated better. To that end we seek to improve the transparency process and allow more user engagement with said process
Thank you for your response. I do think it's one thing to look into upvotes to check if it's just new accounts that are upvoting something reactionary, but quite another to be disciplining users in otherwise good standing for an upbear. I think it's better to just delete the post and accept without policing that some people upvoted it.
I would add that adding transparency is good, but quite different from a democratic process. For example with this decision to be monitoring people's voting behavior, in other comments you have been quite transparent about your intention to continue doing so which doesn't really feel much better than you doing it in private - either way it seems like you have already made up your minds to continue doing it. Being transparent and permitting discussion without any sense that you might ever alter behavior based on user feedback doesn't feel like much an improvement to me but I guess that's just me this isn't a hill I'm interested in dying on.
this site has never prioritized growth or user count.
I'd also want to remind you that the mod team is not the site. That may indeed be true for the mod team, but I've been here since day one and there are many users on the site who do indeed prioritize growth, myself included. That doesn't mean I prioritize it above anything else, but I do think this is a good positive community and want to to thrive and at least have a consistent replacement of good comrades as people naturally move on.
GOOD POST
Especially about transparency not being the same as democracy and creating a "free speech zone" not being the same thing as actually taking community opinion in to account when making important changes.
Personal opinion, but I think a lot of people (as well as this site in general) need to expand beyond this site- as in, this would go regardless, no one (not even the mods/etc) should have this as their one source of socializing/human interaction (probably).
I don't think I'd say I prioritize growth, but I think it would be nice if this site could be a space from which people could expand outwards and develop their own circles (which if it fit their priorities/preferences, would prioritize growth). Things like the recent webfishing groups, tracha, hexcraft (still need to check it out myself), the movie-watching stuff, etc. all would be such examples. The world is big enough for infinite social circles that harmonize with one another (ideally, realistically this doesn't always happen but it absolutely can and usually does, people just don't look at the successes which are a daily part of life for pretty much almost everyone).
Not entirely sure where I'm going from this, but having a discussion about what Hexbear's priorities are would probably be a good idea. And then also having a discussion about how to create- if not on Hexbear, adjacent to and maybe mutually benefiting from it- other spaces with other priorities would probably also be cool.
I think whether the site withers of flourishes is completely orthogonal to the question of having diverse social circles.
I organize in real life with real people, and I have a rich, diverse and nourishing social circle. That has literally nothing to do with whether it's good that this site gets more engaged and active users.
Agreed, though FWIW flourishing is also a matter of preference. Quality vs. quantity and all that. Not sure if I'd say the site has the best mix of it now or not, but it's probably better than anywhere else other than Lemmygrad in my opinion, while also having the added benefit of being more active/shitposty/etc than the grad.
Do we want more engaged and active users if they're coming from- I dunno, lemm.ee, or lemmy.world, for instance? I don't think anyone here would want that, or rather there's a reason we're all on here. It's something to be discussed, definitely, but whatever it is will have to be a balancing act of such conflicting interests, sadly.
Do we want more engaged and active users if they’re coming from- I dunno, lemm.ee for instance? I don’t think anyone here would want that
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(looking even just briefly at your profile) not you, you're one of the good ones....
we love you.You're an honorary or a full (certainly in spirit) Hexbearer or Lemmygradian IMO.
I dont think Lemmygrad is better. Too slow to be as entertaining, and not enough effort posts to bridge that gap. Engagement matters, but we also don't have to follow to VC capital oriented norm of fostering engagement.
A huge part of what makes Hexbear work is the very high level of engagement from users. We didn't have VC funding, we had an ethos of "ALL POSTING IS GOOD POSTING" that strongly encouraged users to set aside ideas of "good posts" vs "bad posts" and just post. A lot of people don't interact on internet forums because they're afraid of judgement, insults, or harassment. The "all posting is good posting" thing promoted just posting whatever inane shit knowing that it would get upvotes no matter what, which greatly reduced the barrier to participation. And that directly lead to the enormous posting power that made us an annoyance for reddit and led to this place having more posting power than the rest of the Lemmyverse combined.
I hadn't really thought about this in years, but all those "DAE piss and fard?!" posts are a legacy of "all posting is good posting" and encouraging members to just post something rather than restrict themselves to effort posts, or even being on topic. It keeps things moving and staves off the fatal stagnation that can set in to small insular communities over time as power posters drop off and are not replaced.
no one (not even the mods/etc) should have this as their one source of socializing/human interaction (probably).
No one should but many of us live in places where we cannot talk openly about our beliefs, and many of us have to very carefully hide our identities to avoid violence. This is an almost uniquely safe space on the internet. I'm not aware of any other spaces like it.
This isn't a constant thing, the process is someone says: "Hey this really reactionary comment got a lot of upvotes can you check that?"
In this case, did a moderator request it? In another comment you said:
For active hexbear users, we do encourage a mod sending a warning message, however that is not required. We frequently give 1 day temp bans without such a warning and while we do wish we had more mod tools available, we work with what we've got.
but afaik mods can't see votes, only admins. Did an admin relay this info to a mod? Did a mod request the users be banned and an admin carried it out? Or did an admin initiate this? (Or am I wrong and mods can see votes in their comms?)
More than one person requested the admin vote audit, both mods and users.
Only admins can see votes, we are seeing if we can change that setting so all users can.
For site moderation issues, yes a mod often says "I banned this user from the community and think they need a site action"
Only admins can see votes, we are seeing if we can change that setting so all users can.
This is a horrible idea. Seems like a perfect util for feds to use to deanonymize users by looking for usage and voting patterns. If this happens, I will probably only use Hexbear while logged out, and I suspect others will too, killing engagement.
we would definitely put this to a vote before implementing, just investigating if it is even possible.
I've said it before, but the amount of drama that public upvotes would generate would be so apocalyptic that I almost want to see it happen
Agreed. The outcome I see would be users interpreting upbears on a post based on how they use upbears. Given that different posters use them in different ways they'll almost certainly be at cross purposes with the people who did upvote.
It also makes it much easier for cliques to form as upbears go from being a general marker of engagement with a post to support from specific users. Now if two posts have 20 upvotes each all we really know is that people engaged with them. If we can see upvotes and know that each of those posts has upvotes from different sets of users we've not got factions. Instead of two posts with equal user engagement it's two speakers and their supporters. I see absolutely nothing good coming from that. It'll promote the formation of cliques and factions. It'd be much better to remove upbears entirely if they cannot be left alone as they are.
There is such a thing as too much accountability and anonymity does have a purpose. If someone wants to support an unpopular post, or raise a bad post to greater attention, or upbear a post to mark it as read that action would be subject to judgement by a public who does not know why the user chose to upbear or for what purpose. This is just awful all around. It's straight up a theory of mind problem; People trying to judge the intent of others with insufficient information, which isn't going to lead to accurate estimations of other people's goals or purpose.
Guangxu clique except it is 25 people from the Trans mega fighting ten people from the news mega and three guys in the middle who hate Iran because it clamped down on a niche Communist movement during the 80s.
we are seeing if we can change that setting so all users can
This would make me feel less safe. Do not think the vote opinion of user should be public. Vulnerable user more unsafe.
oh my god, what kind of spambot runs right up to an admin and does its thing.
edit: I know it's a bot and can't really strategize, but I literally watched this live going "hold up what the devil is this? Clicks account to see who/what this is Oh wait it's already banned lmao owned"
I can respect the ambition of a bot that shoots their shot like that
Are admins able to see how often someone upvotes posts?
Like, if a user who doesn't upvote very often has upvoted a lot of banned comments, that might be indicative of their opinions, but someone who upvotes everything isn't necessarily endorsing those comments.No we are only able to see votes on a specific post/comment
No, same, I really dislike the idea of a secret clique policing arcane user actions using secret metrics. It leads to a strong chilling effect. If there are to be rules and punishments the expectations for appropriate and inappropriate behavior should be clearly stated. I'm all for arbitrary and cruel use of power, but to keep a community functional people need to know where the limits are especially when we're getting to something as arcane as upvotes where different people view them in radically different ways.
Lmao when you get all your knowledge of communism from 80s red scare movies
Thank you for giving us a moment of user-mod unity by appearing here just to be dunked on, fuck off now
If y'all are going to start making upvotes public, then mod actions should also be public, not hidden behind anonymity or "modding accounts". "Radical openness" in one direction isn't radical openness, it's just an excuse to abuse mod powers. If we have a right to know how people upvote, we have a right to see how you all are enforcing or aren't enforcing things.
to our efforts to reduce racism and misogyny on the site
I'll say it again and again. The Code of Conduct states:
We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.
Do better. These struggle sessions, and the admin response, have weakened my confidence that you truly care to uphold this.
For instance, in this current struggle session, the admin team (Alaskaball's statement that carries a disclaimer that it is their view alone doesn't count) has failed to acknowledge how this action has made our users feel less safe. Many comrades called out how disabled/neurodivergent users can be disproportionately impacted and your response doesn't even come with an apology, let alone enough to reassure me that using the upbear button, perhaps in conjunction with a poorly phrased comment, isn't going to get me in this kind of situation — I have a hard enough time as it is ensuring that I've phrased comments acceptably and clearly (although feedback when I have erred in doing so is useful) or put posts in the right comm, etc.
For instance, Yukiko doesn't feel safe upvoting comments anymore, and the response to her comment about how the interaction between this and her ADHD makes her feel less safe is to remove it for being "hostile", instead of acknowledging the underlying concern. How is that commitment to welcoming regardless of disability?
P.S. If you feel like removing this comment, just permaban me. I would sorely miss the community, but in that case, I would know I'm not welcome.
We have in the past used upvote auditing to determine mod actions specifically to address the CoC clause you are quoting, and we will continue to do so in the future.
I recognize that many users upvote everything in a post to mark as read, as well as mistakenly upvote while scrolling on mobile which is why a single upvote will no longer be enough for a mod to act on, but it will continue to be used in conjunction with a user's voting patterns, mod-log, and post/comment history to make an appropriate action. Sadly, any feature request, like a way of marking a comment as read rather than voting on it, is not within our capabilities.
When multiple people of intersecting marginalized communities say to us "this comment that made me feel unsafe has a lot of upvotes, which make me feel worse, can something be done about this?" we acted. I'm sorry if those actions made the recipients feel unsafe, which is why we are asking mods to have more than a single upvote as evidence for an action.
For active hexbear users, we do encourage a mod sending a warning message, however that is not required. We frequently give 1 day temp bans without such a warning and while we do wish we had more mod tools available, we work with what we've got.
The previous struggle session was a result of the mod team wanting to uphold the code of conduct and received pushback for what was done. We have changed our site proposal process to give more transparency and opportunity for user interaction with the process.
If you have specific ways that we could improve, please comment here or use one of the other avenues provided.
Thank you for the comment, I won't be removing it.
If you have specific ways that we could improve, please comment here or use one of the other avenues provided.
There was a lot of angst thrown around on the last issue and the mod team acknowledged a need for transparency and this issue seems to be the same problem and now there is another indication that the mod team needs to be transparent and it's been maybe a week? I'd love to see some real recognition that the site rules are binding to the mods too not just a "oh we'll do better this time, really". I should know if my actions are ban worthy or problematic, and you should be following that same rule book.
If something falls outside of the rules but is a problem maybe my comment gets removed, maybe I get messaged but it shouldn't just be a ban cause some mod didn't like it but didn't have something grounding that decision.
edit: for what it's worth this is how I have been treated and I missed the "objectionable post", I just find the unilateral action & communication coming out after troubling
edit 2: I also notice that in both cases that the need for greater transparency was acknowledged it didn't change the mod team's actions or belief that they should have done anything different (comms were shut and we're still going to be banning people based on upvotes, unless there's several more days of struggle sessions I suppose)
We have in the past used upvote auditing to determine mod actions specifically to address the CoC clause you are quoting, and we will continue to do so in the future.
I'm not opposed to it as a holistic measure in principle (e.g. if someone is clearly and consistently upvoting CoC violating content and not others), but are there specific criteria that you plan to use? This warning is quite vague, and carries the risk of being reinterpreted in the future to permit, say, banning people for commenting in opposition to a planned change in a struggle session, in conjunction with upvoting similar comments in that struggle session.
When multiple people of intersecting marginalized communities say to us "this comment that made me feel unsafe has a lot of upvotes, which make me feel worse, can something be done about this?" we acted. I'm sorry if those actions made the recipients feel unsafe, which is why we are asking mods to have more than a single upvote as evidence for an action.
Thank you for sharing the admin team's thought process. I understand that it can be difficult in the moment to make administrative actions.
Nonetheless, I hope that admins have reached out to the affected users and acknowledge their feelings and the steps the admin team will take to ensure their concerns will not be an issue going forward.
If you have specific ways that we could improve, please comment here or use one of the other avenues provided.
I'm a little late to the party in terms of the struggle session — I only knew about it after this post had already been made, so I'm not intimately familiar with the specifics. I will also confess that I'm not intimately familiar with what correct moderation decisions should necessarily be, since I'm not a mod/admin.
That said, maybe if you had wanted to use the upbear list, messaging all users who upbeared it, good faith or not, with counterpropaganda would have been a good idea to make it a teaching moment for those who saw that comment and could potentially use a takedown even if they disagreed? Explain the difference between "working with fascists" and potentially converting them, or explain why even potentially converting them isn't worth trying, etc.
Thank you for the comment, I won't be removing it.
Thank you for responding to the comment.
banning people for commenting in opposition to a planned change in a struggle session, in conjunction with upvoting similar comments in that struggle session.
I think the current admins have shown time and time again they aren’t going to act in a way like the TC69 debacle went down. Upvoting the reactionary shit that that comment was is different from good-faith dissent.
messaging all users who upbeared it
I definitely agree this is how it should have been handled initially, especially because several of the users are long time good users.
I think the current admins have shown time and time again
This is a good thing, but it is always possible the composition of the admin team could change, and it would be good to set the precedent right.
Honestly at this point people should just stop up voting stuff, if the mods think it is noteworthy they will tag it to the front page or something. I upvote people as a courtesy when they respond to me instead of doing name calling whenever we disagree, I guess I should stop doing that just in case.
How about just not issuing bans over upvotes.
If an undesirable comment has too many upvotes just let people reply and dunk on it if it's bad, and let people who agree reply back. I don't believe that anyone is being protected by the way you're doing things right now.
Better than having hyper mods looking for reasons to ban people and extrapolating what users mean when they comment/upvote
If an undesirable comment has too many upvotes just let people reply and dunk on it if it's bad
A proud Hexbear tradition. Shitting on lost libs/fascists is the height of high Leftist culture.
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Am I missing something obvious, or is the new upvote policy and the motivation for it not in any way explained in this post, or in the proposals post, or anywhere visible? I had to trawl through a bunch of posts to even find out what's going on, from what I could see, the policy is explained and introduced in this comment, in a now locked thread, in a comm we've only had for like 3 weeks, that has a grand total, of, uh, 64 subscribers? Is this what we mean by transparency?
Like, imagine if someone was, I dunno, hiking in the mountains for the past month, and they suddenly come back to some new moderation policies that will be entirely incomprehensible if you haven't gone through 10000 comments worth of site lore. I mean, I actually did fucking follow the tanks drama, but I guess I miss like one fucking thread and now I might as well be completely out of the loop.
For a site where we often tell people to touch grass, we sure as hell seem to expect everyone to be terminally online enough to keep up with our incessant stupidity if they want to have any chance of understanding why any action is being taken.
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I'm also throwing my hat into the ring as a habitual upvoter. Like, I don't quite use upvotes as a "read" button, but I definitely don't think too much about it. I upvote pretty much anyone who responds to one of my posts, unless they say something particularly disagreeable, I dunno, it just feels like... a courtesy somehow? Sometimes people will make some joke or obscure reference that goes completely over my head, and I'll just sit there and ponder it for a minute... and upvote it anyway
I dunno, it sounds stupid, but am I expected to treat every button press through a purely rational and analytical lens here? I'm not the site's fucking UX designer, I'm just a monkey who clicks on things.
I do use it as a "read" button in exorbitantly long threads (which, you know, we do get a fucking lot of), sometimes I'll see that a response descends into
, upvote it, scroll down to read some other, shorter subthreads, and then come back to finish reading the first one. Now, sometimes I'll get tired and give up on reading the rest of the thread, and thus obviously not upvote the remaining comments in it, but this isn't any sort of indication that I agreed with the first few responses and disagreed with the remaining ones, it's just an indication of where I lost interest and gave up 
.I will also often upvote both sides of an argument too (as long as, again, one side isn't being particularly disagreeable or impolite, and it should obviously be noted here that the line between "I mildly disagree with this but will still upvote it" and "I definitely won't upvote this" is inherently vague, arbitrary, and vibes-based, I'm not a Sentiment Analysis algorithm, I'm a human being, with moods, and headaches, and various petty attitudes that I may or may not even be consciously aware of). There isn't much rhyme or reason to this, the idea of "upvote = agreement/support" is just entirely disconnected from users' behavior here.
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I pretty much stay out of struggle session discourse (aside from, occasionally, uh... lurking the threads and silently upvoting the side I agree with
, but I guess I'll have to stop doing that lest I end up backing the losing side in one of those 
), this is maybe the first time I'm posting something serious in one, but this is genuinely starting to wear on me, it's been what, 3 weeks of near-permanent revolutionstruggle? Every time I see a new pinned thread a sense of dread comes over me, how long is this going to fucking go on for? Can we just like, put a fucking moratorium on policy changes until things calm down a bit?⠀
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I'll link a couple of @Frank@hexbear.net's comments from the past thread, since he's way more eloquent on this than I'll ever be, and I'm not sure how many people have even seen that thread (refer to pt. 1): on the inversion of mod/user roles and on discipline requiring trust.
The last one in particular I will reiterate - discipline requires trust. At this stage, I am not sure if I can reasonably trust the moderation team: the mod statements from the previous drama, the embarrassing "self-crit" of one of those mods that followed, the fact that you made someone an admin with the reasoning of "well, they used to be an admin before!", said person proceeded to completely mismanage the situation, start randomly handing out bans as some form of humor (?!), and just casually nope out of the mess they created and delete their entire presence here (I don't care how many times you say "we disagree with her decisions", the fact that this was allowed to happen in the first place is such a severe lapse in judgement that I don't even know what to fucking say), the attempt at some kind of Tom Clancy scheme of manipulating other lemmy instances for some reason... given all of this, just this general caliber of decision-making competence on display here, how am I supposed to trust the moderation team to actually pore over individual users posts and upvotes and engage in some kind of internet psychoanalysis in order to discipline them fairly?
I understand and sympathize that lemmy's moderation tools are lacking, but that's not the fault of the users. In fact, the general attitude of a lot of the userbase seems to be broadly critical of this site being a reddit offshoot! Although this is of course difficult to objectively judge (some of this is just ironic
"phpBB forums... they don't make 'em like they used to *sip*" posting, and many users don't actively comment so their attitude is unknown), the broad popularity of the megathreads does seem to indicate the posters yearn for a different kind of site structure than the one we have. Now, at this stage it's of course not really an option to just throw the site away and begin anew as something else, but still, being stuck with a shitty website that lacks functionality isn't something the users should be punished over!
what was the point of the last few weeks?
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the fact that you made someone an admin with the reasoning of "well, they used to be an admin before!"
No, you're not missing something. There's been barely any (opinion: what I would deem) acceptable context provided for these changes and when pressed we were told "go check the modlog lol". One can check the modlog and expect that there's some kind of upsurge in bannable bigotry but to my eye its business as usual. The mods want this site to be something it isn't and are trying to force that on a small, shrinking userbase that doesn't agree.
mods and admins are cops, they keep proving it in this struggle session
I agree with a lot of what you said, and this post is about how we are changing to try and regain some of the trust.
We have always used upvote auditing to help inform moderator decision, this post is about stating that the previous 1 day ban wave for upvoting a single comment will not happen again. We are not constantly monitoring upvotes or logging who votes on what.
Over the course of the past year, there have been maybe 10 posts/comments that we did an upvote audit on, usually when we suspect vote manipulation or a reactionary post/comment requested by a community mod. In the event a user shows up on 3 out of 10 upvote audits, that causes us to look closer. It is used in conjunction with mod-log and post/comment history to decide what site-wide mod action to take.
A mark comment as read option is in development, but until then we will not be banning any active hexbear users based on upvote patterns alone.
We will be putting an extended freeze on all changes for the near future and will not be adding admins for the foreseeable future.
You are 100% correct the past few weeks have been unduly stressful in large part due to how these changes were communicated and decided. Opening up the site decision proposals to the community at all stages and striving to learn from the mistakes of the past month is what we are doing to try and rebuild that trust.
The point was to take specific actions asked by marginalized members of the community to help hexbear feel safer, while I stand by the intent behind the actions I do acknowledge failure in executing and community communication.
Thank you for your comment, and if you have anything more to add, please do so.
Its all highly online drama people just need to make sweet love to some grass and do something constructive
People would gloat and love this sort of shit (checking upvotes for bans to transphobes, etc) all the time a couple years ago. Now everyone is acting like the admins kicked their dog for doing what they've been doing and have been applauded for
In terms of the software the site uses, I do kinda agree and would love for hexbear to branch out and host other federated software that can communicate well with the threads here
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to our efforts to reduce racism and misogyny on the site
Of the hexbear users that were banned for an upvote on the reactionary comment, four had she/her pronouns, three had they/them pronouns, three had he/him pronouns, and two had any/no pronouns. Now before someone misinterprets my comment, I'm not saying that women and non-binary people cannot be sexist or racist, I'm just saying that our renewed efforts to combat this undesirable behaviour appear to be hurting those we aim to protect. Maybe we need to re-evaluate our strategies given this reality, and the events of the past week(s). Using the same methods we used in the past to combat undesirable behaviour (in regards to voting bans) are not working and just causing more tension between the userbase and moderators/administrators.
I'm just saying that our renewed efforts to combat this undesirable behaviour appear to be hurting those we aim to protect.
No, these efforts are first and foremost to make the site feel safe for our empoc and GSM populations. At least that's what I expect the policy to be. Irl or online, if for example I see a woman making a hostile environment for other women, I'm not gonna just let her because she's also a woman.
Now before someone misinterprets my comment, I'm not saying that women and non-binary people cannot be sexist or racist
I literally said this in the comment. You could've actually read the comment instead of misinterpreting it. This is not the first time this has happened. In the previous effort to combat misogyny, a bunch of women and non-binary people were misgendered and stated to exhibit cishet men behaviour because they posted in a certain community. Now in an effort to combat misogyny again, a bunch of women and non binary people were banned for upvoting a single comment. Not even a pattern of behaviour, a single vote. This didn't even happen during the transphobe banning spree, there it was established that it would have to be at least a couple of comment.
If you're just going to misinterpret everything I say in bad faith, why even reply?
If you're just going to misinterpret everything I say in bad faith, why even reply?
Stop. Idk who this hostility is aimed towards but I haven't interacted with you to my knowledge before this comment, and I'm not trying to interpret anything in bad faith. The quoted part of your previous comment has nothing to do with anything I said, nor any claims I made.
Now in an effort to combat misogyny again, a bunch of women and non binary people were banned for upvoting a single comment.
Yes, as well as a bunch of men because it was just a bunch of people. And as you've pointed out twice now with no argument from me, it is possible for trans people to be transphobic, and women to be misogynist. And both to be racist. The only thing I disagreed with is that we're hurting those we're meant to protect. I pointed out that my expectation is to first and foremost make the site comfortable for our empoc and gsm comrades, and that includes from other comrades of the same groups when necessary.
In the previous effort to combat misogyny, a bunch of women and non-binary people were misgendered and stated to exhibit cishet men behaviour because they posted in a certain community.
Please tell me what the exact quote was, because I do no remember anyone saying that the women and enbies who take part in dunking are engaging in cishet men behavior. I thought they said the comm had cishet male vibes or something to that tune. But either way, this feels like a revisionist retelling of what happened. That was a statement by a single mod, among a list of many. And if I remember correctly, when it was retold to countless trans women and enbies on the site it was misrepresented as the way you told it. Though it's possible my memory is wrong too, it wouldn't be the first time and I'm happy to be proven wrong.
. But either way, this feels like a revisionist retelling of what happened.
What aaaaaadjsf said reflects what happened. Apparently the quote was from an internal discussion where the context was somewhat different, but the way it was written in the admin's post was clearly misgendering and resulted in a great deal of upset and shock from the community and drove the escalation of the incident from a discussion about the dunk tank to a much wider incident about admin/moderator behavior and community trust. The statement was in a post made by @CARCOSA@hexbear.net which gave it the appearance of being made on behalf of the mod/admin staff as a whole.
If you're just going to misinterpret everything I say in bad faith, why even reply?
Seriously, if you have no plans to address the arguments presented why even reply.
You know what, I'm done with this bullshit. Last time I got death threats, this time no one even bothers to read the comments in good faith. Bye bye.
What is wrong with these people? You're nothing but reasonable and you get treated like shit. They get handled with kiddiegloves too. If you responded like they do, you'd be banned immediately. How can they be this hostile and then blame others for making the site unwelcoming?
This is just helltaker homosexual being helltaker homosexual. There are a ton of accounts here who are endlessly hostile and face no repercussion and many who are rarely hosting and get punished for it.
If you’re gonna participate in these kinds of discussions you should use your own account.
There are mods on this site who have made death threats toward users and they never get punished or removed. It’s a toxic culture coming from the mods where people think it’s ok to make death threats if the target “deserves” it, ie disagrees with me on whatever topic we are discussing.
It should never be ok to make death threats in any scenario ever. Period. Against anyone, against reactionaries, literally whatsoever.
Online Death Threats are such immature and stupid behavior. Makes one seem weak and insecure to make them, and if someone really intended to kill someone then they should just do it without leaving evidence online anyway. It’s completely incoherent to do.
I’m somewhat notorious around here for being an asshole, but even I have never stooped to that level. I will insult someone, say their beliefs are chauvinistic or stupid, but I won’t make threats. That shit is so cringe but enough people get on board and start doing it and you can’t really stop them.
Jesus, I didn't realize there were death threats flying around, wtf?
Hope you don't leave, I generally like your posts.
It was the debatebro user from those previous struggle sessions. Really heinous shit from that person.
I've seen some other people say it was actually some mods that sent them, too.
That's really not a good take. You probably should retract that.
no, you're an internet person wearing persecution around like a costume
please touch grass
I would upvote this post but I don't want to get into twubl
I've been examining my own upbear behavior and... there's no consistency. It depends on my mood, what comm I'm in, what the discussion is about.
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Sometimes I'm upvoting everything to mark it as read, usually in the general mega and news mega
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Sometimes I'm not upvoting anything
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Sometimes I'm upvoting because I support an argument
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Sometimes I'm upvoting because I disagree but I think the argument is well stated.
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Sometimes I'm upvoting because I just want the writer to know someone read their post
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Sometimes I'm just idly, inconsistently upvoting without any thought at all, from muscle memory
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Sometimes I'm upvoting everything because "all posting is good posting", a years old joke dating to the way the Subreddit strongly, strongly encouraged users to post no matter what. This was in contrast to the rest of reddit where there were very few posters compared to lurkers. This contributed to our famous and unstoppable "posting power" - A very strong community norm of posting, even if it was inane or meaningless, rather than passive viewing. That, in turn, defined the sub and later Hexbear as strongly encouraging active participation in contrast to many online communities where "low effort" posting was either formally or informally punished, and which in turn supressed many would-be speakers due to a chilling effect rising from fear of being judged or scorned for "bad posts".
I have some screenshot, shit, let me find it.
Show
Yeah, here, found it. So, Subreddit with EIGHT POINT SIX MILLION MEMBERS Vs. Small Communist Shitposting Lemmy, who would win? Upvoting everything contributed to the culture of user engagement that lead to Hexbear out-posting the entire rest of the Lemmyverse combined by a good margin. That's a big part of why I found this incident to be so out of line. Arbitrary policing of something as contextless and ambiguous as upbears is directly against what created and sustains this place. As I've said before arbitrary moderation actions that directly run against community norms create a chilling effect and discourage user participation due to fear of running afoul of un-written rules or the whims of inconsistent moderators.
It's late and I'm running low on steam, I'll try to come back to this tomorrow.
Upvoting everything contributed to the culture of user engagement that lead to Hexbear out-posting the entire rest of the Lemmyverse combined by a good margin.
Yeah, I think this is one of the things that is often overlooked. Not really related to the rest of the content of your comment, but to the calls to remove the upvotes.
For the people who are a lot more active and vocal as recognizable posters you may know that actual people are actually reading and considering what you post instead of you just posting into a void, but to me it isn't as obvious. I have tried getting into other online spaces that people keep saying are very welcoming, but it is disheartening to just have your posts seemingly entirely ignored while 20 or so powerposters just talk past you and you disappear in the scroll/pages never to be seen again, so I usually just end up lurking and then dipping out.
But it is also number go up brainworms and my comments are largely devoid of any valuable or interesting insights so they're of dubious value. But I think removing the upvotes would have a more profound effect on the site than some think, especially when it comes to welcoming new users.
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In addition, comments or posts removed for racist or misogyny will also be accompanied by escalating temporary bans. Upvotes will not be the single reason for a ban, however they may be used in conjunction with other posts/comments/upvotes. Consider this post the warning, however, mods are encouraged to reach out to hexbear users before a long duration ban.
Good. Me getting slapped for what I've said twice now was nonsense. My fighting for trans and minority folks should've clued you folks in to the fact that maybe, just maybe, I didn't read the whole fucking post. Hells, you, Carcosa, have had experience with my bitchiness in the past for me fighting for my trans comrades, so it was kinda bonkers to get banned for that reason.
Seriously glad you're attempting to shed these issues. Cause like, the site's slowly dying and accelerating it through nonsense actions is just going to kill it much quicker than its expiration date.
That being said, I'm not removing my uBlock rule for the fucking upbear button. I'm not chancing that shit again.
Where do you get the idea that the sites dying? Before federation we had like 500 users a day and now it's almost double that.
Not trying to be a dick or anything. I just genuinely don't understand the recent doomerism given that we've been through struggle sessions before and only come out stronger each time so far.
Granted, I stay out of most struggle sessions, so sorry if I'm being ignorant about what this is all about.
We currently have no real method with which to increase our user base reliably. We’ve stagnated. Our daily user count has been dropping slowly since then and, without users coming in, it will slowly die. It’s also easy to say that all of this drama as of late is driving people off. All these factors taken into account and we will eventually die. User retention is extremely important when you’re not sitting on a major website.
Also, federation was a couple years ago at this point. It did do us well, but any influx of users we would’ve seen from it has long passed.
I ***try *** to stay out of these damned things myself, but somehow after being on this site for over four years and avoiding it entirely, I’ve managed to get caught up in the last two. It’s incredibly stressful, but sometimes it’s for a good cause.
Does the site publish DAU stats? Coming from niche forums, I don't think growth is particularly important. You have to hit critical mass to become a stable community, but at a certain point you don't have to grow to stay alive. Having more people on here would be cool, but I've been taking "the site is dying" comments fully as a joke. Do people really think hexbear is literally (literally) doomed?
We have the sidebar statistics, which I look at semi-regularly. Why? I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Hexbear has a shelf life like most websites that make up the internet. We’re not large by any stretch of the imagination. Slowly over time, without pause intervention, we’ll slowly bleed users until there are few of us. That’s just the simple nature of things. I’ve lived through the lives of quite a few message boards in my time and almost all of them are down to a dozen or less users now from twenty years ago.
Sure, the shelf life may be ten or even twenty years. No one really knows. But making extremely poor decisions like our admin staff have been making lately cause that clock to tick more quickly. It might erase minutes, days, or even years. No one can really tell. But it does take time off of it.
I use the site less and less. The vibes are off. This bit account has extended usage, but this is the first time I'm on here in days. Wait there's a new strugglesession about upvotes now?
The site has been noticeably worse recently, even if you aren't super involved in the drama
I mainly go here for the news mega these days. I'm so tired of the weird mods. I feel like I'm back in school interacting with a bunch of crybullies again.
Hexbear DAU is heavily tied to current events, we are currently having a higher DAU than we did for months before the united states election. We have undoubtedly trended towards growth when looking at hexbear's numbers over the past years.
You are correct that all websites have shelf life and am grateful for anyone choosing to spread word about hexbear but I've been clear for years that I don't particularly care about growth/numbers with regard to site priorities.
The site always has a period of doomer vibes after a struggle session, and then the site pops off when a news event happens. Im hoping the changes we are making can ensure the health of the site for as long as it exists.
We were the fourth most active site during the election (.world, nsfw, .ee) when we have been the fifth for most of this year (.world, nsfw, .ee, sh.it)
Ultimately, these statistics aren’t why I do what I do. While I don’t want to see the site die like I’ve seen many times in the past, I just want it to be a safe space for all my comrades. That’s literally it. I don’t particularly like struggle sessions. It sucks seeing the aftermath of one. There’s just nothing pleasant about them.
But if it means that my LGBTQ+ comrades, ND comrades, or POC comrades can feel safer about being themselves here, then I will wade into the trenches every gods damned day of the week.
I agree with you 100%, and I am truly sorry that you got caught in them. One of my goal with these changes is to work towards stopping struggle sessions from occurring.
The website is dead because a dozen people have been hanging out there consistently for 20 years.
huh, yeah I'm just coming from a completely different frame of reference then ig. That sounds like a pretty good page. I'm actually pretty happy with admin, so maybe we just don't see eye to eye at all lmao
Likely, which is fine. Not like this is a crucial opinion difference so it doesn’t matter at the end of the day.
Also, when I say dozen, I mean that’s the most. Several are actually just dead with zero users and my favorite has five users. Not sure why we haven’t just gone off to a discord at this point. I guess BBCode is just so much fun.
There is a discord, at least there was. Isn't that where we migrated from? Frankly though, I hate discord and I don't know how people enjoy it. I guess I am an oldhead, though.
I am pretty sure this site is now wholly dependent on the news mega and the Trans mega. Punishing upvotes will weaken them too.
Hell, I'm not sure; that thread was an intense anxiety-inducing pile of shit. And admin responses to it aren't exactly leaving me with warm and fuzzy feelings about this place.
You joke, but all the good content is in the various megas. The main site is just cheap dunks and pointless drama at this point.
That's just real life stagnation and depression creeping in. No idea what this website could possibly do about that though.
We would love to hear you and other users thoughts on what needs to change. Part of this new change is to make it easier for users to do so
While the Megathreads are great, encouraging posts outside of them would be nice as well
please and thank you, i dont begrudge megathreads or anything but i dont really 'get' them and i have to believe there are dozens of us
I mean the territory outside of megas is like 90% memes, dunks, and struggle sessions. Nothing against comrades who enjoy that kind of thing but I rarely feel the incentive to engage with that kind of post much
I don't mind those posts, but I'd also like more variety outside the megas. Hence the desire for more fullfledged posts
Please just take away the like button like you did the dislike button. It will save time if upvotes can lead to accidental purges.
Great ideas, there is a current lemmy git issue regarding the marking a comment as read. The latter function you are describing sounds like the star "save" icon under a comment.
My anxiety is telling me that people hate the main site because I post there
I barely ever comment, but will absolutely pop out of the woodwork to join the chorus.
Your posting always gives me little bits of joy in my day, and the community is much better for having you in it
You're generally pretty positive and I'm never unhappy to see owlposting.
i love your posts and you and @SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net are why ive never had to become a megathreader
"levity" is the perfect word to use for DirtOwl's posting. Shit can get really heavy both here and in life, and said posts literally shake off the burdens with laughter.
You're my favourite owl and this site would be worse without you
You bring general mega energy to the main site. Cowbee and other well read comrades bring news mega energy to the main site. Etc. etc.
Keep doing what you're doing
I've been sticking to the news mega too much, but unlike the main site posters like you. It's funny, because I was anti-mega-thread when we first starting launching them, and I still kind of am depsite sticking almost solely the news mega now.
I love the Megas I just keep forgetting about them because I'm very very scatterbrained
I actually think the megas have hindered the growth of this site and sense of community, despite primarily being a news mega user lol. Also I get forgetting about them. I have basically stopped posting in other comms, which I kinda regret
i think what hinders growth is ppl feeling like theyre getting bullshitted
example:
https://hexbear.net/post/3894195
someone posted reddit screen shot about food in the food comm. perfectly logical right? ppl enjoyed it and there were quite a few comments and upvotes. there weren’t even any arguments in the thread. what a great day on the internet.
just kidding asshole, it’s a reddit screenshot, wrong comm, post removed.
I’m really indulging by engaging in this meta discussion i’m not sure how strongly i feel about any of this but this is just my vibe assessment. I think part of the answer might be: it’s very straightforward on how to post in the megathread as opposed to the hoops required to post on the rest of the site
I think part of the answer might be: it’s very straightforward on how to post in the megathread
You'd think that, but go try and figure out where to post a joke about a current news event. The general will remove it for belonging in the news mega, and the news mega will remove it because the mods of the news mega have decided that it's now only for "serious discussion". There's a bunch of mods here who have started taking this site way too seriously.
I really hate when a post that already has a bunch of comments gets removed for being in the wrong comm, whether it's my post or I just commented in it.
The megas are actually the problem, but a lot of people aren't ready for that discussion.
Something that I believe needs to be taken into consideration but has barely been referenced is how (un)educated someone may be when it comes to leftist theory/thought.
For example, at least one of the people who were banned for upvoting the comment explained how they interpreted it (and one mentioned ADHD too I think) in a way that conflicted with how an admin summarized it (a red-brown alliance).
A lot of other people summarized this site as the "dirty owl pig poop forum" in the other struggle session, so if the standard is going to be raised when it comes to how well versed a person is in leftist theory that's fine but it should be openly stated. Given that there's a disability community, and I believe at least one person with severe CFS, going down this route will probably lead to more conflicts, however.
Regardless, for anyone who genuinely cares about the users on this site or imparting leftist thought, having what's pretty much a community to direct your "vitriol and scorn at" when someone slips up (on top of public ridicule due to the nature of the mod log) seems like an unfathomably bad idea.
Yeah I tried to bring this up. Policing upvotes is putting the onus on users to view a post in the same manner a moderator does, which the user simply cannot do. The user and moderator are always going to have different knowledge, different perspectives, different opinions. Even if the User had perfect knowledge of the moderator all that would do is turn upvotes in to "The moderator agrees with this post" button.
And the original post about this had people with a number of different kinds of disability each discussing different reasons why policing upvotes would be burdensome for them.
On paper upvotes and downvotes are supposed to, I think, make interesting discussion topics more visible. In practice they get used all kinds of ways.
I now appreciate your overreach even less now as I’m being treated like shit for this by other users. If this shit doesn’t let up, I’m fucking leaving. I don’t need to put up with this because my brain can’t easily process walls of text.
EDIT: I’ve spoken more in depth with one of the folks and it seems to be a case of mistaken tone, but I definitely have caught flak for this already from another.
The second is to increase transparency with regard to the site while not repeating the mistakes of previous attempts that were ultimately counterproductive, in part due to wreckers.
Previous attempts to increase site transparency and user participation were targeted by wreckers through increasing the intensity and frequency of struggle session drama.
Would be really interested to know what exactly these are referring to.
What previous attempts are being alluded to?
Who are the wreckers?early on in site history there were attempts to make decisions by vote but the polls just got spammed iirc, there was no mechanism to stop cheating, and with open registration it was kinda impossible to determine 'real users' vs someone who made a bunch of accounts. not to mention the shitshow generator that was userunion
There are some poll websites that are pretty damn good at keep people from voting more than once. Might be worth looking into.
Also we could just put a prerequisite for voting. Perhaps accounts need to be a month old?
Thank you for the comment, we will not be making any changes for the near future.
Every announcement by the mods here prepended with some communist quote before posting the worst ideas for managing hobby politics webforum is some level of larp I don't think I'll ever reach without a solid brick of methamphetamine in my bloodstream.
Why are you doing this to yourself, i will never know.
to watch thoughHere is a proposal: don't remove posts with some amount of comments in "wrong" comms, like nerds. Your labor in removing that thread is less than a comment, its goal is roughly meaningless, and its result is annoyance. But some mod can have some no-fun-allowed fun i guess.
Want to show how much you care about comm sorting? make the mod repost and reprint all comments in "correct" comm, so that people can continue conversation.
another proposal:
Make upbear only visible to the poster own comments, hide them and only use them for sorting reasons otherwise:
pros: those who like upbears will still see them.
cons: that would require work
I like that second proposal. I feel like that would be a nice balance between old school forum posting and an upvote system
