i really don't get this. the admin team has frequently floated an idea, not talked about it for a few weeks, only to make an announcement post that it's gonna be implemented out of nowhere. obviously people get mad the admin team has made a decision without proper discussion from the community. when this happens, the mods respond to criticism or suggestions with a condescending, memey tone. this aggravates people and then the admin team will say that wreckers are trying to tear the site apart, that people are complaining in a "toxic" way or whatever. even the announcement posts are made in a super fucking condescending tone as if we are all dumbasses who have to be led by our enlightened and morally superior mods.
this has been the overall arch of pretty much every site-change struggle session. of course resentment builds as people feel like they aren't being listened to and are treated like less-than. maybe if a huge portion of the userbase freaks out every time there's an admin announcement, it's not that the userbase is against its own self-interest, but that the mod team has a hard time communicating and not alienating its userbase?
Yeah, this has been the #999th part of the saga of
- Not really getting mass communications
- Misunderstanding the relationship between admins and users of a forum
- Lashing out
- Trying to speak to 10,000 people like they're one giant annoying person
please don't take it personally, this wasn't really directed at you, but at the community and especially at the admin team.
i think expanding the admin team would do a whole lot of good, as it seems like the admins we do have seem stressed and burnt out. at the same time i get that it's hard to vet new people.
another good example of how admins alienate people is the fact that they've made it so people can't make posts about the change outside of the pinned thread, but then they go ahead and allow posts that implicitly or explicitly supports them, such as but no limited to: this post, 1, 2, 3
shit likes this makes it pretty clear why people get upset and/or do stupid shit
I made a post about my grievances. Got a lock and an LMAO. Commented on a post in User Union with the changes I'd like to see to moderation. Deleted, with the reason "no".
Meanwhile, "power to the posters" and "limitless criticisms of power" are still the site's motos.
yeah idk, man. it does feel wrong for a socialist forum to have no oversight on admins and an admin team which disdains its users and will from time to time refuse to engage with criticism.
i'm pleasently surprised you haven't been banned. thank you for voicing your criticism o7
"Anyone who agrees with the leadership unconditionally has the right to criticize them"
I also had a post removed, and the mod log had a link to the discussion thread comment saying "all name change posts must be here:", but the post had already been locked lol
like who cares if people post, seriously
initially i thought restricting posting was a good idea, as it would contain the struggle session, not letting it interfere with the rest of the site. they did it but posting has slowed down considerably and you still have threads making it through the filter and comments about it in the megathread.
maybe restricting posts is still a good thing because it makes public opinion clearer? before you'd have threads with different opinions that were both highly upvoted and with comments in agreement, now people have to duke it out in the marketplace of ideas™ that is the announcement megathread.
I've reached out several times before and I'm still interested.
I appreciate the work you do moderating, but I don't like these changes and I will push back against them.
The plan for this site wasn't a top-down effort to reshape the community. We liked what we had and wanted to be free of outside interferance. User control is supposed to be one of the benefits of this site and if people are fighting these changes, perhaps it's best to let it rest.
What are you hoping this place can be? It's a reddit clone so it's gonna trend towards shitposting and memes cuz that's what the format is weighted towards. If you want it to be something more then I think you need a clear vision to aim for and to make sure everyone is aware of it cuz atm it feels like admins have created a shitposting board with zero barrier to entry and then got annoyed that the userbase reflects that.
Yeah we need more mods. You are doing so much work for the site, it's no surprise that you get grumpy now and then.
I posted this in a not great state of mind.
If you haven't been there, can you really call yourself a terminally online leftist?
That’s why I say change the damn name every three months. Normalize change.
Give people something to attempt to make humorous posts about. You can do hexbear for quarter, then cia.chat, then lib.rehab, then leftunity.lmao... the domains can’t be that expensive for these. A few of us could pitch in
I would say not all drama is bad. I think those who stick around have all learned something along the way (I say this as an old)
Why does that matter? We have all the George Soros funding we could ever want in order to establish communism
terrible bit idea: You know the random quote at the top of the home page? That, but for every single UI string on the entire site. Site name, tab text, synonyms for "report", etc
Getting mad online while you have zero stakes in something is one thing that must end when we finally bring the USA under the grip of socialist revolutionary Jeff Bezos.
