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
I don’t think people have speculated exactly why the leaker leaked the mod chat. Personally, I think it’s pretty consistent behavior for a disgruntled mod. There are plenty of places to leak the chat logs to if they were a truly malicious actor while them leaking the chat logs to Hexbear user fits more with a disgruntled Hexbear user who wants the drama to stay in Hexbear.
Outside of the disgruntled mod spilling the beans on their true motivations, we can only speculate. Perhaps they think ZPoster shouldn’t be banned, perhaps they have an argument with Nakoichi and leaked the chat to make them look bad, perhaps they are just unhappy with the general direction of the website, and so on.
But I do not think the admins are capable of this amount of self-reflection. They will most likely claim that the leaker was a wrecker (how was a third-party user able to gain access to a private chat that most Hexbear users don’t even know exist) and sweep it under the rug per usual.
My predictions are this:
Since the admins failed to sweep the whole adding the emote-banning of ZPoster-banning and unbanning of LoveYourself saga under the rug partially because the leaked chat logs fuel drama, this encourages the mods who perhaps do not fully see eye-to-eye with the admins nor agree with the current direction of the site to leak chat logs as well in order to push their particular agenda.
The admins will try to solve 1 by becoming ever more paranoid about potential leakers. Maybe there will be a extra super duper secret no-ZPoster-stans-allowed chat that only mods who have been ruthlessly vetted are allowed access to, which will just instantly lead to stratification between vetted and unvetted mods.
We know who leaked the chat log.
They were a recent add to the mod team, and they dow loaded the entire chat from when they joined until a couple days after z was banned. When the leak was sent via url we closed the old mod chat and started a new one with active mods.
The leak does not contain the entire discussion of zppster, the emoji, nakoichi and the moderation of that larger meta event.
I would have been more than happy to discuss their dissatisfaction either on hexbear or in DM. I did exactly that with another mod who thought we were using AI tools to moderate which is 100% false that mods comments are still up and they are still a member of the mod team.
The only change to the mod chat is that we are being more vigilant about not posting personal info there. It is quite sad abd malicious to leak months of irrelevant discussion and personal info because of a disagreement over moderation.
I’m not quite sure how engaging in multiple posts where I’m begging for concrete ways to change is sweeping it under the rug but I can understand how someone would reach that conclusion.
I’m actually also approaching this from worry about the mods/admins. Having all the these tasks outside of just direct “application or rules” that are relevant but not really written/described makes it also more dangerous for them. (Doxxing can be legitimately dangerous). These little, mostly ignored, portions of the free labour they provide can be actually a lot, and especially difficult given that there are little guidelines. That’s one of my main concerns!
I don’t really understand what you are saying? The division of mod labor is intended to mitigate burnout but the highest source of stress are these extended meta discussions filled with insults and hostile comments.
The Matrix is for discussing mod rulings ex: “hey I I this report in my community, do you think it should be removed?” “Sure but maybe message the user to change it before removing it?” “Ok”
While the admins ask mods their opinion about site changes just as we ask the userbase it isn’t solely on us or them we have tried to use the entire site to make large changes the past few months
You’ve said elsewhere that mods/admins are enforcers of the rules (my phrasing, but idk how else to use 1 small term to describe the role). My point is that this is not completely true! It’s true for banning/removing comments (just taking your word for it). But there’s interpretation of those rules, creating/delisting comms, making new rules, etc that also require other roles like “judge” (interpreting in new context) or “POC Veto” (for new interpretation of POC relevant stuff) or “emoji manager with veto power” (WhyEssEff, who does great, to be clear) etc. And there’s always the “decides how we delegate/decide these roles” role.
From my experience in various organisations of all types, these unnamed and undescribed roles always lead to issues. Often they’re just so small and unimportant in the day-to-day that nobody cares until it becomes relevant, then everyone thinks ‘wait how does any of this work?’ and people get pissed that the people with more material power just get to decide how it works. In this case, the material power is just mod/admin rights, and it’s even possible to join the crowd just by asking! Which is nice, and technically much better than corporate methods, but also more dangerous for those that do pick up those tasks because they have this material power without being seen as a ‘real authority’.
And there’s this attempt, which is good, to get community feedback, but it’s always unclear how that feedback relates to any of these unnamed tasks. It’s good to make a mod who is POC that can have a quick veto power w.r.t. relevant stuff for quick action (idk if this exists, but I could imagine it), but deciding who that is, and what limitations there are is still a role somebody is picking up, either implicitly or explicitly. And, in cases where it goes wrong, that person will get named and people are angry because there’s someone doing something that nobody understood or knew!
I think, in contradiction to what others have said, that there are attempts to really get user feedback and to put users in the leadership role (enter Allende with “at the top comes the people” story). But when it’s not clear how that works at all, the shadow of a possibly non-existing authority behind it all doing the actual decisions comes into form. Does it exist? Idk, and I would guess you don’t want it to. But without making the whole process clearer, its creating this danger, and extra stress too, for mods!
And to add, roles can be delegated to the entire userbase. Maybe the “decider of rules” is actually us? But if it is, I really don’t understand how to go about making changes in it and how we all approach that fairly. Do we just message an admin who will make a post? Or create a post with the possibility of stirring up a shit storm? Someone has decided how the site deals with that, I assume, but it’s very unclear