Edit2: the ratio is amazing. I’m exhausted. This has quadrupled my hexbear time for the day and I will be limiting myself for a bit lol. I feel like we got somewhere in a couple of good threads thanks to Hellinkilla and ratboy. Good luck, comrades.
Edit: the rant wasn’t clear enough. In Previous struggles users have expressed frustrations with how mods/admin decisions are made. I would like to discuss how they are made and hear from them. Mods have also stated before that they wish we could be better, I’d like to hear how and know how they think this should be approached.
Rant/effort post coming:
What’s the follow up to the recent problems with how mods/admins have handled recent issues? Did I miss something? Can we get some explanations about how this site is structured and what roles we see for admins/mods generally?
history of struggle session, not necessary but gives context
We had a fairly large and fairly one-sided struggle session a couple weeks ago. Z_Poster was banned (and still is, as far as I know) and the emoji was added. Some users (thinking of @hellinkella, smong others) did some effort to really parse out where the pain points were and who was involved (largely Zionism inherent in some positions, Jewish exceptionalism). Only the emoji and banning occurred with no other promises/ideas from mods/admins.
There then followed a leak of mod logs where opinions were still very different than the userbase. I would encourage people not to open it or ask for it, please, and especially not to share it. But I think a significant amount of us did see messages that, regardless of context, gave an image of admins/mods that think the userbase hates them, disagreed with the userbase in significant ways, and which wants to steer us in a better direction. The mod chat was also absurdly active at the time, but there’s been little talk about what WAS discussed, only discussions about what was missed, where more context is needed, and things that were not done in a timely manner. This was not further discussed. (Personally I’m super appreciative of you all, doing work I don’t want to do on a website I enjoy thoroughly, and don’t hate any of you–including previous ones I’ve argued with, but would like to see some changes which will follow below and hopefully other comrades will add to it/change it for the better).
We had an EM/POC post which was tangential to that, but where there seemed to be large support for the userbase with regards to the ideological differences between mods/admins and the broader userbase. There was also a banning for which apologies followed quickly, but which indicates the structural failure more generally. There were of course other topics covered, which I won’t speak on here. I didn’t see any solutions proposed and accepted, from any of the topics relevant to this post. (Please correct me if I read this thread wrong, don’t want to speak for you, EM/POC comrades.)
Was there a follow up? Is that coming? Is the discussion behind the curtain of the mod chat? I understand you all have lives, so don’t spend all your time working on this, but some knowledge of how you’re working would be good. Otherwise it feels like purposeful pushing back of feedback/decisions so that we will forget the passionate feelings or give up. If that’s the goal, it’s a horrible strategy and should just be explicitly told. “3 months after a struggle session is the earliest we will make changes in processes” is better than nothing.
I would also recommend we have an open discussion about the direction of the site. It seems the mods/admins have indicated to have better ideas for what we can be (I remember this from the “dunk” discussions too), but have not made clear what their position in that is. Enforcers? A vanguard (with our input as leading determinant)? A different vanguard (against our input for but in our interests)? Theoreticians that have the ideas but want the users to take the lead? Knowing this would make clearer how to interact with you, and how to make our experiences better. Maybe we do need growth and improvement, but we haven’t been clear about how, and talking down is how most have experienced that. I already love this place, so when I’m frustrated I don’t think of leaving. But that’s not universal
Copy and pasting my response to another user who was asking about it in the EM/POC weekly:
The post in question btw: https://hexbear.net/post/5974671
Basically, a comrade had some heavy criticism about how Judaism is used as a cover for zionism and even went to the point of saying that antisemitism is an illegitimate concept in the current day, being used as a rhetorical weapon against those colonized by or trying to speak for those colonized by the zionist entity and catering to them in these issues is no different than catering towards white people in regards to race issues. They were harsher than my quick summary can convey, but the user had their comment removed and was banned by an admin for antisemitism, which was then overruled by another admin who apologized on behalf of the team. I wasn’t monitoring real-time, but between the initial banning and the admin who lifted the ban checking in, it appears hell was raised about it and for good reason didn’t immediately stop after.
While the ban was lifted, I believe I saw that the user in question found it a pill that couldn’t be swallowed, and it appears they have left the forum.
Had some branch-off debates about how to solve the issue, from forcing mods to have their name signed to mod actions, or maybe just having more shades of skin on the mod team will fix this.
Upsetting, but it is what it is
Basically, that combined with the emoji struggle sess’ has left some users with the unflattering taste of Zion left in their mouths. Didn’t help that some agitator apparently leaked mod DMs, and some of the users who expressed grievances also got to see private venting of the mods as they ‘aired grievances.’
Ultimately, it is what it is; not sure what the point of a fuss is. Can always swap over to 'grad if it’s a big enough issue.
While antisemitism is absolutely used as a rhetorical weapon I’m not going to entertain the idea that antisemitism is an illegitimate concept and I’m not surprised that a mod would kneejerk to banning someone for stating that.
Yeah… Reading the comment: https://hexbear.net/comment/6448883, the first two lines without context do set off alarm bells, and even in context I’m not sure I can agree:
#1 certainly isn’t true historically, and I don’t really know that it is in the present either, but don’t have as many examples come to mind. #2 sets off alarm bells but I might actually agree on further consideration. In the same way I wouldn’t say there is a coherent christian or muslim ethnicity, nation, or people.
But the main issue was, the admin (lack of) communication around the post being a free speech zone.
I’m realizing it wasn’t clear enough in the post, but I’m not fussing at that level, but realizing that there are clearly problems an abstraction level higher, within the system of the forum. The lingering taste of Zionism is definitely there, but I’m focussing on how we even decide what to do generally. If the answer is “how it is works for us” then fine, but then I’d like to at leats understand it so we don’t have to have a struggle at the next banning because it was unclear (banning is an example, banning isn’t the only subject)
I mean, I’m just applying standard forum rules. It’s whatever admins/mods vibe with unless enough users get pissed off. It’s been broadly in line with that so far, from what I’ve seen.
Also, the above was mostly contextualizing the EM/POC thread and how it was relevant to the emoji one.
Thanks for the clarification!
If it’s a vibe process, that can be fine, but that should be made pretty clear and responsibility taken for how that “vibe” reflects. The “vibe” was influenced by zionism, for example, and little was said about why that was wrong. The explanation for that is that mods don’t have to do self-crit (or else we won’t have enough mods). But these 2 things don’t really work together well. So can we do something about that? Shift from a “vibe” based to something with topics and voting in a forum, so others are responsible instead of only mods? Just spitballing there, but that disconnect is an example of the lack of clarity.
Yeah, it was a fuck. I agree with you that ultimately, there’s no point of a fuss.