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 it will take time to gather examples and identify who might need to self-crit or take a ban.
More importantly, though, we all need to be receptive to criticism without getting defensive. That is part of having a healthy culture on this site, where queer, POC, and femme users feel comfortable voicing criticisms when they see problematic behavior that those outside their group(s) may be blind to. All of us grew up in reactionary cultures. That doesn't vanish the moment we join a communist website. Building a better culture here is an ongoing process that will continue long after this struggle session ends. We need to know how to listen to each other and hold slow, patient, thoughtful dialog.
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.
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.
Which is what most users have been asking for and what most mods and admins have been refusing to do.
I don't mean to be confrontational, but why? Why can't a person lead with a vague sentiment? Why impose a high barrier to entry? The goal of a conversation is not to accomplish everything with the first statement. If we have the patience to actually talk to each other and listen without getting defensive, then there's no rush to lead with a perfectly crafted effortpost that not many people here would be capable of writing. The truth will come out through dialog, through a collective effort of us trying to understand each other and overcome each others' limited abilities to communicate.
So you say something like, "This seems kind of unfair and vague to me, but I'm curious to know more about why you feel this way, and I would like to talk to you about it."
If there's no time to have that discussion in the midst of a struggle session, that is exactly what is wrong with struggle sessions.
People did basically say this though, but only got back "go look at the mod log". Which obviously doesn't resolve anything.
Asking in a hostile tone, in the midst of an active struggle session, is not really the same as inviting someone to sit down and talk things out with you. In that context it lands more as an attack or a challenge. You'll get a short response because they want to minimize the surface area for you to find fault in, and because they are trying to respond quickly to a large volume of comments in a frantic effort to stop things spiraling out of control. Once it turns into a struggle session like that, the only productive thing we can do is try to slow it down until it's a discussion, kinda like how, in real life, once a crowd of people are shouting over each other, the only productive thing you can do is try to get them to stop and take turns.
Honestly? If a person can't tolerate any heat, maybe don't be the person that lights up the burn pit.
Okay, but regardless of who started it, we fed the other half of the feedback loop, and where did that lead? Big picture, are we better off for the experience?
People are cracking jokes to ease the tension, but underneath that? Most of the site hates struggle sessions. How many people leave and never come back every time we have one? How many people waded into that thread and formed lasting personal animosities with each other that will still spark conflict months or years from now, any time they see each other in a thread? Is the site any healthier overall now than it was before? What happens to the site culture over time if we drive away people who can't stand struggle sessions and retain people who can? Are we getting more and more terminally online every time we do this?
It's so simple to avoid. Our site has no meta-culture about how to handle large conflicts, which is a problem not only here but in any orgs we belong to, because it makes wrecking that much easier. Apparently, in this struggle session, there was some "debatebro" alt account stirring shit, and people thought the account belonged to an admin when it didn't. Is it really that easy to fuck with this site? All you have to do is make an alt account and fan the flames any time there's a conflict here?
To avoid this mess, all we had to do, as a community, in this struggle session and every other one, was slow down, try to understand each other, and avoid throwing personal attacks that push people to defend themselves with more personal attacks in an endless feedback loop. Like a slow driving zone around a school, we could have seen the struggle session coming, switched gears, and slowed everything down to avoid it. I guarantee we would be better off if we knew how to do that.
"Burn pit" is a great analogy, because this was more of a fire than a discussion, jumping from kindling to kindling. TC69 got overwhelmed, saw herself mutating in the eyes of the commenters with each passing minute, and started banning people as a firebreak, which only made it worse, until eventually she locked the thread. That's not a good result for anyone.
I don't know how to end this comment. I'm frustrated that this community tears itself apart so easily. It doesn't have to be like this.
I don't believe any of the people whose concerns were relayed by the admins have actually posted in relation to it, so it's not much of a conversation.
It could be buried in the 1300 comment thread though