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.
Please bear with me if I fail keep up with questions and comments. It’s quite late here, but I’ll do my best to address things and will link and pin Q&A’s here
“Why were we banned in the first place?” -NewAcctWhoDis
“Just to clarify, most of this is just around @Alaskaball@hexbear.net being banned and that was something they did to themselves?” - radio_free_asgarthr
Several questions and comments on site culture, not forgetting about chauvinism issues, and more - cowbee
Why did you quote @radio_free_asgarthr@hexbear.net asking a question about the Alaskaball thing? The answer to his question is actually “No, most of this is about completely different things, Alaskaball just did a poorly timed bit with some confusion on gendered terms, but that was resolved and is just a tiny blip in this whole debacle which has many facets involving admins and mods complete disregard for the users of this site, which in turn has many of those users very upset.”
I am trying to understand, I guess the issues with the admins and mods goes deeper than Alaskaball, but I guess I don’t know what is happening other than mods maybe being a little ban happy?
One of the justifications for the removal was that the dunk culture on the site is inherently ‘white cishet bro’-ish. I’m paraphrasing, but this comment goes a little deeper.
Literally no one is upset about the Alaskaball thing and it was only for like 20 total minutes that anyone was before the matter was cleared up. Pretending it has anything to do with the core of the struggle session is just yet another in the seemingly endless series of shameless admin lies.
Hello users of hexbear, I have gone back and tried to unban everyone from the past couple days related to this struggle session.
I was offline most of yesterday so I missed what happened.
From the bottom of my heart I am deeply apologetic to everyone who was hurt by the statements and actions of the past few days. I know it will be a long and tough road to regaining back the trust of the userbase.
We are going to let this post sit for a couple of days and then move towards rebuilding. I’m back today and am happy to answer questions.
So I know alot of people are upset at TC69 for various reasons. I wasn’t here when she initially was a part of the community, but I had only heard positive things before this shitshow.
Did she only step down from admin, or did she delete her account? I think it would be a shame if she left entirely due to some pointless struggle session.
I think stepping down was the correct decision, she probably should have reacclimated to the new hexbear environment before being put in that position to begin with, it’s a heavy burden to bear. I still want her to feel welcome here though. I love my trans comrades!
Jfc did we drive her away AGAIN!? I am once again insisting nobody do anything about anything while I am asleep/busy.
Seriously thinking of becoming a mod just to prevent this petty bullshit from tanking the site again
“Drive her away” is certainly one way you can describe the reaction to her conflict resolution skills
edit: made it less mean
old text for if you wanna call me out for it
“Drive her away” is certainly one way you can describe being mad that she banned people for disagreeing with her and asking questions like “in 15 pages of the modlog there’s only 2 removals for ‘misogyny’. Even if there were more, why would it be an issue if it’s in the modlog? That’s where banned posters go.”
As the one true leftist I unfortunately have to intervene
Upvote if you agree that I am the one true leftist and should be the only one posting
Edit: Seriously though, I agree with @Awoo that we should try to post less and let things cool down a bit
i think we could perhaps do with a deeper discussion about the problems with the dunk tank. the name is easily changed, but it seems obvious to me that the real catalyst for this shitshow was the content of the tanks and obviously how this was described by mods. aside from the essentialist way the point was communicated, i think we actually need a proper discussion involving the community about what was wrong with the tanks and why mods thought this was the best solution. particularly if people are going to get their slop back.
i was not a tank poster and i do feel like i understand why the mods wanted to close the tanks, but i don’t feel like the reasoning has been articulated well enough. and in terms of the community i feel like their defence of the tanks has been too personal to be constructive. i do understand the response, particularly from the people erased by the “cis-het white male” thing. but i feel like unless there can be a more constructive and less essentialist discussion on dunking, this isn’t gonna get properly resolved.
I agree with your sentiment but honestly I have low expectations for an actual cogent, meaningful, and well thought out argument being actually formed as to why low effort posting is bad and should be curtailed.
If the most focused push to change the culture has been… <vaguely points at the smoke and rubble> … this, I don’t think there’s some set of alternative discussions that would have convinced anyone that were being saved for later. Because if that was the case why didn’t they use those instead of whatever the hell all this was?
Like sorry sometimes you only get one shot at convincing someone to your point of view and this was the attempt. It’s over.
i mean yeah, i do see your point. but i still think trying to discuss it seems important? my thought process is essentially: if the dunk tank mods voted to close the comm, then presumably they aren’t up for modding it unless the issues are resolved some other way. so at the very least if people want their slop back some sorta discussion has to be had? or just new mods, act like nothing ever happened. that seems a bit empty.
i’m not saying there was a set of alternative discussions that would make everything clear. i’m more thinking the people behind this need to sit down, write up a coherent argument, post it, and invite the community to decide if there is any substance to it or not. then we decide how to proceed.
i’m more thinking the people behind this need to sit down, write up a coherent argument, post it, and invite the community to decide if there is any substance to it or not. then we decide how to proceed.
Honestly they did that already. They wrote down their statement, and here we are.
Yes, a deeper discussion on this is forthcoming, but everyone needs a little bit of time to cool down before we have that conversation.
I feel like I missed a lot of things
