SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]
Awoo is easily one of my all time favorite posters on this site. I am very much a long-term Awoo superfan. But in this case, I have to say, I think she is off base and does not fully appreciate or understand what has happened here. You have been one of our most powerful posters in this recent struggle so much so that you were silenced and stripped of your godgiven here
Thank you for saying this and I hope all of it isn’t forgotten, because it seems like a narrative is forming that “it was all just a big overreaction” when no, actually it wasn’t. I keep seeing people around the site say “really, this is all just over some comms getting renamed?” but NO, that’s not what this was ever about.
There have been a couple mod/admin resignations that were not called for and not helpful (one seems to have been walked back and I hope the other is too) and there has been an admin resignation along with account deletion that very much was the right move that I hope is not walked back. But the ultimate problem of mod and admin unaccountability to the much larger base of people who use this site and make it what it is, and the seeming disdain those mods and admins have for us, those more important problems still have yet to be addressed in any meaningful, lasting way. I’m losing hope that hexbear will emerge from this a better place and I’m fearing that the userbase will forget why everyone was so mad in the first place while the problems that led to this remain and the the toxic, negative peace status quo slides back into place. Wow does that ever sound familiar.
I don’t believe it either. It’s not even necessarily that I don’t believe Lyudmila who may well be honest that that’s what the mod in question said. But that doesn’t mean I believe the mod in question. Of course she would say she was busy and offline and was not making alts to harass users when asked if that’s what she was doing. There are several places in this chain where you can disbelieve what’s being reported. I don’t believe it for one second either. It’s also telling that half of my question wasn’t even acknowledged, let alone answered. To me, that’s pretty much confirmation that not only is this mod that same banned wrecker from months ago, but that the mods are aware of this, accept it, and keeping it quiet.
If you really want a good idea of what’s been going down, you should skim the major threads where it has been going down:
https://hexbear.net/post/3856299
https://hexbear.net/comment/5613033
https://hexbear.net/post/3867510
https://hexbear.net/post/3871189
bonus lemmygrad thread: https://hexbear.net/post/3872357
Also important: https://hexbear.net/post/3866246
I think it will take time to gather examples and identify who might need to self-crit or take a ban.
Then they should have done that before making blanket statements and changing one of the basic functions of the site based on that supposed information, and they shouldn’t have lied about it by giving other reasons at the start.
we all need to be receptive to criticism without getting defensive.
That is a very important quality and ability for any leftist to have, yes. But the criticism needs to be directed at the people it applies to and it needs to be specific as to where they are going wrong. Rather than blanket statements about everyone who likes to dunk and saying only that they’re misogynistic debate bros without any examples. Again, all of that needed to be in place first if it is even valid reasoning and not just an excuse to just do what they want to do.
We need to know how to listen to each other and hold slow, patient, thoughtful dialog.
Which is what most users have been asking for and what most mods and admins have been refusing to do.
That’s where it originated but it is well beyond being about that alone now. As just one other little event to mention here, it was revealed that our main admin was telling other lemmy admins about this as a plan a week before any hexbear users were told about it. That admin (who has since stepped down amid calls for them not to, so they may return) told us that they were lying to the other lemmy admins to try to get them to remove their dunk comms, and that they weren’t lying to us. But that is as weird as it sounds.
One of the things that was revealed by showing mod chats and mod reasoning for the change was that they were saying the people who like to dunk here are toxic cis-hets exclusively when that is clearly not true and got a lot of our trans and queer users who enjoy dunks rather upset at being told their behavior is toxic cis-het. Plenty of misgendering ensued as well.
There’s also a person who has been making alts and harassing people who express dissatisfaction with this unilateral mod/admin decision and it is almost certain that this chronic harasser is herself a mod of some comms here.
And there are plenty of other things going on with this too, so hopefully that gives you an idea as to why this is beyond just being about some comm changes. I’m also exhausted and probably didn’t explain things well, but again, I hope that gives you a better idea what’s happening.
It really is astounding how the mods and admins keep making it worse. It could have been solved so easily at several different points, but they seem to insist instead on doing the condescending lib PR thing and pissing everyone off, then banning them for expressing discontent.
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.”
