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
calling my comrades zionist is insulting to them and its insulting to me. I keep telling you to touch grass because you seem to think its acceptable to say that to a comrade over a reasonable debate on the emoji. Do you think the ‘against’ side was arguing because they supported the state of israel? You think those people hang out around this site and moderate this site? you’d have to believe every single member of the admin team is a zionist; every single anti-zionist would do everything they can to remove them. You’ve lost your mind online and need to physically interact with another human being and regain sanity. Not responding to you anymore.
their insinuating that my comrades were being anti-semitic for requesting to use the actual flag was insulting to them and me too.
this defensiveness is the problem. if someone told me i was using zionist rhetoric i would take a step back and really think about what i said. no matter if i had past arguments with the user that called it out. but even so, since then we’ve had Jewish users, EMPOC users, and others feel that such zionist rhetoric was not ok. i don’t understand why they can’t own that mistake. mistakes can happen and we are all always learning and growing. just as commiting to be anti-racist is an unending journey where that learning never stops, i think that commiting to anti-zionism is the same. its about how you handle being called out. if someone told me that something i said was racist do you think my best course of action would be to get mad at the person for “calling me racist”?. either you get defensive and further alienate others or take it and better yourself and be a better comrade (especially if in a leadership position)
they seem more upset about being called a zionist by users that were frustrated and felt dismissed, when they should be taking that moment to meaningfully reflect on what they said and how that can impact others in our community.
i understand wanting to defend your comrades but what I don’t understand is why some humility around the situation can’t be shown by them.
seeing users (mostly empoc) leave the site over this and how things have been handled has really sucked. seeing how users (who are still understandibly very upset) are being treated also really sucks. those who are still here commenting want things to get better.
There is a very valid argument that comments made by mods were Zionist. This argument has been made exhaustively in other threads and are popularly agreed with by the users.
Other mods backed up those statements, allowed them to stand unchallenged, and aggressively moderated the opposing side of the argument, because they are friends and/or because they agree with them.
this removes context, and essentializes what is a relatively minor issue (but still worth discussing) into a larger more fundamental disagreement than it actually is.
Without going back to years-old posts which people have since self-critted on, the “mods making zionist arguments” were specifically 2 mods arguing with Zposter, who was a known entity, and had a history of going far above and beyond comradely behavior to insist this emoji be added. Saying “anyone who wants to depict the zionist rag burning just wants do holocaust stuff and burn the star of david” would be liberal zionist shit for sure. But that wasn’t what was said. What was said was “you [zposter] specifically have such a bone to pick about this issue [by bringing it up with such vitriol multiple times over the course of years] that you must just have an ulterior motive for wanting this particular pictogram to be hosted and endorsed by this website”. It still is a wrong argument, and a bad look, but it isn’t the same liberal zionist argument it’s presented as, and shouldn’t be generalized as such, because it wasn’t phrased in a general sense, nor was it directed at a user who “could have been anyone”, it was a particularized response to the stand-out behavior of 1 user.
To then take this argument, and generalize that the mods and admins are zionists and people covering for their zionist friends, is an extra step beyond the pale. If we can’t work out disagreements without this type of hostility and lasting schism each time, then what chance do we have of doing anything productive with our politics in the real world? This type of criticism is not constructive (some people stayed constructive, but the majority either were unproductive and hostile themselves or got in on the side of “unban zposter RIGHT NOW” without seeing the broader context of that ban or any acknowledgement that there was a problem with zposter’s behavior.
Edit: regardless I’m glad to see some productive conversations are happening now in this post, and I hope more structure and intentionality helps us work through these issues better in the future. Thank you for putting in the effort to explain and suggest improvements, not just relitigate, it’s genuinely appreciated
holy moly who’s alt is this. i won’t guess publicly because I have no basis and I bet you have more info available to you than I do.
the thread was not about z poster!!! the thread was about the emoji!!! why you all elevating zposter to some kind of fucking gold god poster everyone needs to be debating. it is diversion from political issues at hand. boring as fuck. pot stirring. etc.
Please see the bottom of this comment https://hexbear.net/comment/6423603 which has links to comments such as the below:
Which are just a few of the examples and I took them from only one of the posts.
Please show me where I fucking said that.
However I won’t see it because I am blocking you. You are extremely annoying and willfully ignorant.
And by the way I am not speculating about the friends thing. Here is one of the available evidences on that. Hestia made the following comment in the open floor empoc thread. I can’t find the comment now so maybe it was edited. A smart thing to do as it looks fucking terrible as do a lot of your hestia’s comments.
byyyye
post a reply from another account I’ll see it lololol
the context the offending comments were made in was a direct reply to zposter, hence it having the context of the commenters’ (nakoichi and lyudmila) prior interactions with zposter
right, its the slander that gets me. Not every disagreement needs to lead to outright condemnation and calling for the admins heads. If we can’t remain even remotely comradely in what is a relatively tight-knit highly moderated space made up of people who share basic values and principles, then what are we even doing online, what is the point of any of this? The same thing happens IRL, it’s just easier to shut down because screaming at each other is recognized as unproductive and not normalized to the extent it is online.
I’m once again going to recommend people read Constructive Criticism: A Handbook for a useful intro to Criticism/Self-Criticism and guide on how to productively struggle because this ain’t fucking it.
from what i understood the motivation of this thread is to move along the discussion of specifically what changes can be made here on hexbear to give people an option other than
all you are doing is kvetching in a thread of people sincerely trying to avoid the circularity of the drama, about how “we can’t remain even remotely comradely” when this thread is like the most polite one so far on the subject, everyone is going out of their way to be nice. i find your comment very funny for this reason and I would say to you “takes one to know one” and “i know you are but what am i”.
as to your link it looks interesting I’ll put it in my folder to read maybe later. is your suggestion is that every user on hexbear needs to read the 30k word document? perhaps you could pull out what you think as the most actionable and basic items and how it applies to a forum, as the first thing it says on this page is it’s from 1974. Telling people they need to read a pamphlet to be worth your time to interact with is arguably quite “uncomradely”. Not to mention unrealistic.