Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
I think the main takeaway from the Melina/Beluga/dsplayer situation is that the correct way to handle a consistently shitty user isn't to make them a moderator. I mean come on.
And we're now being told that the site has a "toxic culture", by the same people who allowed this shit to go on for so long.
Make it make sense.
I'm gonna try my best to make it make sense, please don't kill me for it.
Melina is actually a perfect example of the toxicity that's been present in our site culture, and I want to thank you for bringing it up. Previously our admins had been taking a rather forgiving and hands-off stance on things like moderation, site curation, and bans for Hexbear local users. It often took a lot of requests from both mods and users over a long period of time to actually get a ban for someone who was causing trouble.
We've all just been reminded how frustrating and confusing the previous style of administration could often be but I think there was some overcorrection that occurred, which has led to a number of the issues we find ourselves facing now.
This scene, but with posting instead of phones
Yeah, as I wrote when carcosa stepped down, we've arrived at the current situation through the consequences of completely rational actions. Splitting up the mod teams made sense, being hands off made sense, making the mod log anonymous made sense, making the mod chat anonymous made sense, not having a vote makes sense (the federation votes were exhausting). Not having a big discussion makes sense.
I disagree with the rationale behind a lot of the actions, but each one was a thought through choice made after weighing pros and cons and calculating the risk of things turning sour. I'm really happy it sounds like there's being made some corrections, but I really hope no one is beating themselves up over past choices. The logic of what was decided is pretty clear (except fot TC69 coming back and her conflict resolution, but we do have a poweruser/celebrity poster problem and when you're seeing things from the admin/mod-side and you're talking to people like Melina then those things also seem rational.)
At the very least the decisions were well-intentioned and that should be remembered.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Seems perfectly reasonable to me, thanks!
honestly, I've spent a lot of time around Melina before on hextube and never really had toxic or negative interactions. As an outside observer to these beefs, it usually seems like fae's insistence on not dropping a joke/bit that collides with a confrontational user that takes it extremely seriously. A ban is justified if those accounts were provably Melina alts harassing people, but tbh the grudge seems far from one sided.
If you're interacting with someone in a hostile way "as a bit" and you're repeatedly asked if you're doing a bit, and you tell them no you're not "as a bit", then you just suck. That's not a bit, that's just being shitty. Even if it was a bit, it'd be a really shitty bit. Bits are supposed to be funny, and that's just shock-jock "oooh I'm so edgy" comedy.
I've had those interactions with fae in the past. Big part of the reason why I blocked fakenews.
i really appreciated how supportive they were about covid stuff and cracking down on minimization and misinfo which led me to be sad about their initial ban a long while back since it cut their time as a c/covid mod short. but yeah i share a similar sentiment.
Don't even get me started. I agree with you 100% on this one, I have long been dismayed at the quantity and degree of troubling actions that certain users including Melina have been permitted to take without recourse over such a long time frame.
I'm happy to be closing the book on this one, and will be on the watch for other longstanding troublemakers.
Sincerely appreciate this. Rock on.