The thing i disliked the most about this was mods being dickheads about the whole thing. Say that you're going to change the name, list your reasons, respond to objections, i couldn't care less. But the agressiveness and rudeness made me kind of pissed honestly. And then calling it tone policing when people disliked it? yeah sure act like dicks to people who share your worldview for petty shit like this, i bet it'll do wonders
nothing more than putting their foot down after a community decision
Wait are you saying this was a vote months ago?
Every time I saw mods bring it up out of the blue, people said it was dumb. So it wasn't a vote? You made it sound like it was.
"but I like offending people" uh huh, yeah I'm sure that's an honest characterization
Anyway, since it's not an actual community decision, which is fine, the right way to go about it is to just not do cringe shit. Say yeah, we understand if you don't like it, but we have several good reasons (and there are). Naysaying an actual community decision at the 11th hour can be met with rude dismissal or whatever. And when someone is flailing around wondering "why am I getting such a bad reaction" it's really cool when "because this" is met with "lol here come the tone police"
Yes, I am concern trolling. When it was originally brought up, I said "new name? more like pee pee" but now, I decided to concern troll. A cabal of 3 users decided to upvote that comment, and that was when Chapo Chat descended into reaction.
I am the cabal, and all three users.
peepee.peepee is the new name. You can rest now.
You said the guy who got 3 upvotes was one of the main people posting that opinion lmao
I’m on here multiple times a day every day and this the first I’m hearing about it
For what its worth I have participated in some threads about the name and the vibe of the replies from sitemods/admins was always "Good points but we're gonna do this anyways"
Not to mention the fact that the most recent one I saw was literally a nazi-malthusian troll advocating FOR the name change
Nah. Stick to everything that got us here.
The subreddit undeniably had better quality than this. Site functioned better. Mods were more helpful.
oh yeah the mods who banned you because they found you annoying was awesome lol
That was only true for the last year or so of the sub though, when it had already been quarantined etc.
That's all I was there to experience though, and I'm sure I'm not alone. And it seems to me that trying to go that far back in time to an era of a place that doesn't exist anymore is a fools errand
I'm being oppositional because
A) it's fun
B) amab
C) i prefer the current name
I'm happy to engage in more serious discussion, but due to mishandling of the issue by admins, there is no other discussion on this site.
It's our fault for taking you seriously, got it thanks for being straightforward :)
I did.
Refusing to accept user feedback as a bit is not okay
It goes against the Hexbear.net mission statement.
Also, could you guys at least leave an explanation when locking posts and deleting comments, referring to the specific rules being broken. It would be great if we could meet or excede the average level of Reddit moderators.
But why would admins care what users think of their actions?
Did you miss when the thread about the name change got locked when a lot of user feedback was coming in?
after it literally not being an important enough issue for people to even weigh in on
Do you have any idea of the vanishingly small number of people who even physically scrolled past whatever discussion you're talking about?
You said yourself it got like 9 upvotes, which means probably 20 people saw it. This site upvotes at a higher rate than many sites.
Let's throw out some ways of understanding the current phenomenon. People didn't post before, and now they are posting a lot. What gives?
Possibilities:
- They didn't care, but now they see an opportunity to harass the mods. Ooooh, those users!
- They're just stupid, and loved the name change, but they pooped their pants and need a nap, so they're being angry. Ooooh, those users!
- They cared, but they were holding back. "Don't say anything now - we wait until March" they all said. Oooooh, those users!
- Close to zero people saw the old thread. Nobody stickied it. The new thread was stickied, so everyone saw it. That was the first they heard about it.
Which one of those do you think it was?
Lol I never remotely said it was a secret conspiracy, they just don't recognize that it had zero visibility, and are interpreting that to mean nobody "cared before" and you're making some of the same weird conclusions about people.
The whole idea that nobody cared before is in the garbage unless you believe one of the stupid bullet points above.
You know how like, people view web pages? Each time they look at a page on this site, they see a certain number of posts. The particular post you're talking about didn't show up on the computer screens for more than 0.02% of the user population
But yes, God Ordained that the level of inherent interest in the post would twist fate, hiding the post from 99 percent of users. Then God Ordained that everyone would be mysteriously very interested at a later date, because the mods had incurred His wrath.
All you have to do is say
"Yeah, I think it's somewhat likely that a significant portion of the user base saw that post"
Democracy, for those already in control.
I tried posting in User Union. Unfortunately, the admins had decided they weren't taking user imput and deleted it. If you'd been paying attention, you would have known. They were actively spamming it in /c/main.
Some admins said they were pushing for it within the admin circles, but there was never a publicised request for input.
wait, can you post one?
I manually went through every post on userunion and this is the oldest thread I could find, I didn't see any threads on the name.
I remember the constant struggle sessions, but not that it was resolved at one point. I remember the !main@hexbear.net and !traphouse thing was decided by a vote, I could not find something similar for ChapoChat / Hexbear
ever gave a shit when asked
Asking is when you write a question on a piece of paper and throw it out a window into the breeze
but the fact that you remember the “struggle sessions” should be evidence enough that this has been discussed for months.
Yes I know that this has been discussed for months. But my point is that for !main and !traphouse there was a vote but I can't remember or find a vote for the site name.
I also went through every post in userunion and can't find any post dedicated to discussing the measure.
I saw one person, TransComrade69, if I remember correctly, saying she was pushing for a name change, but it was not on a dedicated thread.
One mod mentioning it in the comments of a random post is not seeking out user engagement. Regardless, shutting down discussion of measures once they're formally announced is still bad.
I don't think sexism in the user base was worse than it is now but it being part of reddit meant a lot of shit was spilling over from many other places. But being on reddit also meant there could be interaction with the libs in other subs whereas and that's been lost.
Multiple people have said it was worse but it's never clear if it is actually the core user base or the people coming into the sub from other places. I see a lot of the same shit that was bad from the same sub repeated here pretty often. The old sub was much larger and much more open to the rest of the Internet so it's not entirely comparable.
I never called you an outside agitator and I'm not sure what this post has to do with my reply to you. If it wasn't clear I am not saying the people complaining were spilling over from other places, but the people doing the weird sexist shit. I've talked with some people who were saying that, including someone who was apparently sent some really weird super racist shit. The thing is, in most of those cases it was primarily people spilling over from other subs, lurkers, short lived accounts, etc and not so much regular users creating the issue. Which comes with being a much larger sub with interaction with the rest of the Internet and fast growth. So agreed that this place is better as a safe space, but I don't think it is because the old sub had a significantly worse culture, but rather because it was much bigger and open.
About rebro I definitely agree, I really didn't like that era of the sub. It's just that most and my best memories of the sub were before that, because the rebro era was very weird and definitely not the best, combined with the quarantine. And again, I want to clarify that I don't think that there wasn't sexist stuff, but that it wasn't much worse than this site is. I did notice a lot of sexist jokes etc but I've noticed stuff like that here too, and frequently it is a bit too subtle to moderate. One thing that may complicate things is that I never sorted by new. Perhaps if I did I'd see more of it. That there were lots of super weird people around I know, I literally can't forget it because one of these people for some reason is still occasionally sending me angry shit years later for something I don't even remember any more. But I guess that comes with reddit.
It's impossible to go back to that anyways.
The subreddit undeniably had better quality than this.
Hard disagree there. This community definitely has more interesting discussions, which might be only because it's smaller, but it's definitely not worse.
Some discussions are better, but with less visibility they're also less likely to actually convince anyone.
And some are just as bad as ever.
I completely agree with all of this, but the mods are being dickheads rn. Every struggle session would be so much easier if they weren't in the style of Twitter hot takes. "LISTEN UP Y'ALL, 👏 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 WE DO WHATEVER THE FUCK WE WANT, 1/?"
I often like the mods, but they often create struggle sessions by using this sort of tone. I think it comes from the job of modding, which can be stressful. I think we need more mods to take the load off.
wtf are you talking about?
We're all comrades here. There's no reason for anyone to come blazing out the gate with openly hostile shit. Like, making the same post but instead just saying "hey we'd like to rename the site, suggestions on a new name?" would work fine and not make a thousand comment shitstorm.I would think there's a pretty obvious different between trying to silence people and not being a huge dickhead for no reason but I guess not?
Me not even knowing what the fuck is going on
:dem:
The mods have consistently done a fantastic job of navigating all of this shit time and time again
Dude. The mods created the shit
Maybe I'm just blind but I've literally never seen people complain about the site existing in the first place? Like those people presumably would just leave, or try to wreck and get banned
yeah pretty much this, don't see why folks are so quick to assume bad faith after good faith has been demonstrated so many times
The mods who banned trans users who disagreed with disabling upvotes are good faith (to…errr…protect trans users???)
lmao what?
Then they changed it anyway. Then they had to change it back because no one liked it
they undid it because people asked them to. Tyranny!
It doesn’t come from anything that users particularly wanted
might not come from things you wanted, but everything you've mentioned did absolutely have user support. Otherwise, as you pointed out, it'd have gotten changed back because no one liked it
who keep announcing (read: declaring) changes to site in the most shitty and unhelpful ways possible.
I'll 100% give you this one, the tone struck during announcements and such is way off, and a lot of problems could be avoided with a more careful approach imo
Do you mean removing downvotes or did upvotes get removed at one point and you're talking about a different thing?
The main thing is that you keep attributing mistakes to malice, which I heavily contest. No one is saying the modteam is perfect or even has a great track record, but they do consistently try their best to respond to feedback and make this place better however they can.
I just want one website that I visit for once to not have weird mods, or weird inter-mod drama.
I get ya, but it seems to me if every website has this problem, it's a lot to expect for this site, birthed from reddit, to break that mold so magically.
Keep pushing for changes you think will be good, but imo the best way to do that is in good faith and not half joking like your posts started here, as that's a surefire way to get taken as a shitstirrer instead of a concerned user. Also makes it much more likely that you'll actually see the results you want
Just made an alt 'cos I just got banned for being a "wrecker" and "breadcrumb" or whatever that fucking means. So no "pushing for changes I think will be good". Criticising mods for things they've objectively done is "wrecking". This after months of contributing to the site, mostly by posting news and other articles to the site I thought would be interesting/useful.
Sorry but I was just proven right by the mods. Banning for absurdly minor shit.
I'm following every comm and literally saw ONE chapo episode posted in 8 months, this is way overblown, who the hell cares about the name.
Cringe ass name based on an unfunny forced meme. Hexbear was never funny. Name it butthole.net
I too love unnecessary, site-dividing struggle sessions based on pointless aesthetic changes.
Love our mods/admins/devs and don't think they should catch shit about the decision, but I do think making major site changes that are guaranteed to upset a big portion of the userbase should be avoided by default.
I just prefer my struggle sessions to be about topics that help us grow as leftists, allies to the marginalized, and people.
This is literally the first I'm hearing of it, unless you're talking about the PSL thing in the stickied thread.
I go back and forth between being super online and off the grid. First thing I see upon logging on is a massive struggle sesh over a seemingly pointless name change with TONS of vitriol.
Is the name preventing bring new users a common experience from our trans & women comrades here? Or is it just PSL being unwilling to browse our site for 30 minutes?
Don't know if I came off as hostile, that's absolutely not my intent. Please don't insinuate I'm advocating for ignoring the requests of our trans + fem comrades because I disagree with an aesthetic change currently having a massive fallout. I just want to avoid the inevitable dividing and conquering that happens to almost all leftist communities.
How many replies you going to have to differnt people that start with
I don't mean to be hostile
No worries, we all feel frustrated pushing back on common tropes that get us heated.
There’s plenty of “but hear me out and debate me you’re wrong” posters telling Trans and Fem comrades that they’re wrong to feel like sexism and Transphobia are as big of an issue as they claim in regards to the old sub, some of it’s mod team, etc, when they’ve expressed that as at least part of their desire to move on from it.
Completely agree. The unwillingness of many users to listen to very much valid claims about sexism & transphobia are infuriating.
On top of that there’s a few “But I like being edgy and offensive” posts. Which is… something.
I love edginess, but within reason. As long as our edge isn't harming marginalized people, I see it as a benefit. I think our shitposting is our greatest draw to newcomers, and we should lean into being a place where libs would leave steaming with rage. But I think being edgy and being offensive are two different things. If our edge is ever interpreted by our trans, BIPOC, or women users as being offensive, we need to scrap that form of edge. Is that how our relation to the sub or pod is being received? Is our image just a mirror of cumtown because of the name chapo?
Edit: wanted to follow up on what I mean by "edgy".
I'm referring to guillotine memes, bullying transphobes, shitting on libs, pig poop balls, etc. Definitely don't want to advocate for anything bigoted
100% agreed. You can tell someone is more committed to the edge than justice when they disparage the idea of moderating their language to not hurt the marginalized.
If we do manage to bring orgs here, we should absolutely be on our best behavior and avoid some of the edgiest "dae kulaks deserved 9/11" takes for a few hours and keep c/main clean temporarily.
I'm always pretty wary of tone policing because it's usually a way to quiet radical voices in favor of lib shit. I think a lot of the value of this community is derived from the ability to say things that would get you banned on Reddit/Twitter, and I'd hate to lose that in order to please civility fetishists. I don't think it's a serious risk on this platform, but a lot of the conversation about trying to be the "lib-to-left pipeline" worries me that we'll lose our revolutionary views in favor of becoming an AOC 2028 fan club.
Obviously, basic respect for women, BIPOC, and trans people isn't that and should be expected.
Unironically, I think the admins should be our vanguard because we will be the target of campaigns to tame the revolutionary nature here, be it electoralist succdems, fed ops, or future radlib users. I see the "we need to change the chapo branding so orgs/new radlib users feel comfortable here" as a signal to these forces that we're malleable and have a vulnerability ripe for targeted abuse. If PSL reps aren't willing to do an AMA because they think we're a succdem podcast fanclub, we should just find PSL members that are willing to do so unofficially, rather than change characteristics about our community. I won't die on this hill this time because PSL is explicitly marxist, but we really need to have a larger communal conversation about what we want to be.
I agree with pretty much all of this take.
I've been in favor of draconian moderation, especially when dealing with bigotry, and I think the mods/admins have been doing a fabulous job thus far. I can't think of another community so excellently moderated, let alone one that is centered around politics. Bigots and intentional wreckers should be banned immediately, as they usually are. People disagreeing with that aren't worth keeping around. I don't want to defend wreckers or people antagonizing the mods, nor provide rhetorical ground for them to do so, but rather encourage reflection on how decisions are handled so that the environment is less ripe for wrecking.
I don’t think it’s civility fetishism to treat your comrades with civility
Completely agree. However, the mods weren't exactly civil when announcing. The decision was announced alongside text basically saying: "If you don't like this, you're wrong, fuck you! Here's a list of pre-emptive dismissals of your concerns." TC69 is one of my absolute favorite users here, but I think she handled that announcement very poorly. I always agree with banning harassment and especially misgendering. The user in your example is certainly an asshole, and should've been banned, along with a good number of other users, but I'm hesitant to extend that to most other users peeved by the decision and the way it was presented. Otherwise reasonable people will forgo judgement when emotions are high. I don't think being a dick or making a few comments that could be seen as "wrecking" is innately ban-worthy. Mods being recipients of the assholing (and a lot of it) shouldn't change that. There's a middle ground between civility fetishism and being laisse faire about users' treatment of others.
Our first two comments in this thread are a perfect example of how easy it is accidentally to come off as antagonistic and how perception of intent affects the tone of response. Call me a lib, but I think this is why exactly why civility is still important. I presume you dealt with a bunch of people being assholes about the subject before reading my response, which probably made you more likely to read hostility in my comment (which was certainly a fair reading of the text I wrote). This is precisely why I'm being so generous in my analysis of people being dicks about this whole ordeal. The announcement didn't open civilly, so it's easy to understand uncivil responses to it.
Handling shit like this would be a lot easier if mods had temp-bans and other tools. There definitely needs to be a middle ground between asshole behavior being allowed wholesale and getting banned for being a dick. I want mods to be able to err on the side of enforcing good behavior and general respect without one misunderstanding or heated/drunk slip up costing someone their account.
The "muh freeze peach, mod tyranny" & "this is why chapo/the left sux" bullshit is certainly annoying and immature at best, but that response is exactly the basis for my original comment in this thread.
Preface: I don't think most decisions should be democratic, and the opinions of devs/mods/admins should carry the most weight by far.
Even so, a big change like this should be made with extreme consideration as to how the community will react. None of this fallout was necessary, and large decisions should be made as if we're protecting something precious that will inevitably be attacked externally and from within. The CIA intern assigned to fucking our shit up should at least need to put in some effort.
The site name, while purely aesthetic, is the first point of interaction and something many users have grown an emotional attachment to...making it very likely to cause strong opinions. This was done without any input from them. From that perspective, the mod/admin team should have been able to see this coming from a hundred miles away, and opted to handle this with more grace. While individual wreckers are certainly at fault, the initial handling has given the wreckers ground to wreck, and space to garner sympathy because even non-assholes may feel sour about the move. I think people who may be wrecking (esp in a moment like this) may not be intentional wreckers. The better the mods handle decisions, the fewer non-wreckers will jump to wrecking and the less sway wreckers' words will carry.
Takes like this are doing more work to misrepresent it as something it entirely isn’t, and signal to bad faith assholes that it’s a successful strategy, than any completely superficial changing of the name will ever be.
I'm curious as to how you see this as a misrepresentation? The last thing I want to be doing is giving ground to the assholes who want to wreck. Any criticism I have for the mods/admins is purely in good-faith. I just want to see this community thrive as it grows/matures, and I see bloodbath struggle sessions where no one better understands their history, theory, or their comrades as detrimental to the health of the community.
My quote wasn't exclusively referring to the name change, but also the frequent suggestion that we behave as a forum to pull normies left. But even referring solely to the announcement, it seems that the PSL thing was the only major justification as to why we should change the name, the rest being dismissal of why we shouldn't.
I am very thankful for all the free labor our admins, devs, and mods are putting in for us, and generally don't want to critique their actions, because they should be able to make mistakes. However, this was a clear misstep with a lot of opportunity to cause damage that could have easily been mitigated by a number of actions. While the mods are basically doing the thankless job of being an internet janitor for free, they also probably should avoid handing out laxatives & PCP to the patrons of the venue they're responsible for cleaning.
I feel it's important to point out that the way average users use this site differs greatly from how power-users and mods use this site, and it likely has a big impact on how people perceive the community and its problems. There's been a number of times where I've been oblivious to some context obvious to people who had been following posts that day. When I sorted by 'active' (or 'hot', whatever is the default), I noticed a lot less bad behavior, bigotry, and wrecking...to the point of asking myself "am I not noticing this shit because I'm an ignorant white boy?" in some of the threads complaining about it. I'm certainly glad I never questioned anyone's claims, even when my perception differed profoundly. Since I started sorting by 'new', it's apparent that all of the shit from their claims was very real. I think the high quality of moderation prevents many users from seeing a majority of the toxic shit...leading to them never being aware of the extent of the problems of our community, and thus, unempathetic/defensive to valid perceptions of such. I believe the converse is also true. Power users and especially mods seeing all the turds users smear on the wall makes it easier to assume a given user is attempting to do the same. We all need to do a better job at fostering good will amongst the community here.
Also what's up with that user having deer/doe as their pronouns? Why is that even an option? Is there some valid use of them as pronouns that I've never seen the logic for? To me, it seems like a built-in way to encourage transphobia.
Sorry for the bible of text. ADHD brain won't let me finish a thought prematurely.
I kinda think that maybe the new name should be a little more overtly leftist but I have no good suggestions and as always I stand behind our mod team regardless :sankara-salute:
At MOST you’re going to get a “that’s kind of a weird name but sure” reaction. Instead of outright disgust and avoidance.
Wait they're changing the name to appeal to decorum obsessed liberals? Sounds pretty lame
What PSL people? Hang out where? There's actually a very good point in keeping it, because that's the only reason anyone knows how to find this site. What's wrong with the old sub or mods? Getting removed from reddit is a badge of honor unless you mean they want to distance from beatnik thespian. Are we going to be libs next so the dsa will hang out with us too?
I don't see how this site is any further left than the podcast and as a PSL voter myself I don't get why it's so important for a meme site to land the PSL endorsement. Changing the name isn't gonna deter rebro from talking shit on Twitter either, I'm afraid.
getting PSL people to come and hang out, having to explain 15 minutes of archaic terminally online lore about being the “anti-woke” left and other dudebro shit that’s a holdover from reddit
I would assume you'd then still have to spend considerably longer explaining all the awful posts populating the front page at any given moment to any serious minded person you wanted to visit
(Not a knock on anyone trying to accomplish more serious things, just saying that for a chunk of the userbase this place is where their Obamaposts go now)
Saying we should maybe get rid of the piles of discarded pizza boxes accumulating on the floor or open the window to let some fresh air in is an affront to everything we hold dear
"Please do not care about the name of the website you spend time on and want to grow."
the bar is so low that “meh” is the better option.
Uh, why would that be the case.
People are suggesting options besides the two, why is your thinking binary in that we need to settle for one of these poor choices?
The mods announcing stuff in cringe epic reddit speak is pretty tiring. The discord has its problems but they managed to distance themselves from the chapo name with minimal friction because the decision was communicated by adults.
I'm just pointing out how a similar community handled a similar issue. I'm sorry if you took offense to that
Maybe you shouldn't have made this thread if you were going to be hyper-defensive about the topic.
They only care in so far as being able to engage in drama
I also don't understand that; one of the main reason I keep coming here is the wholesomeness of the user base. Drama is just tiring.
