"Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and uproot from our land but from our minds as well." - Frantz Fanon
Hello users of Hexbear, the intent of this announcement is two-fold the first is that we would like to do another community moderator drive, if you have a community idea or want to help an existing one then please send an application either through hexbear or matrix direct message.
The call for new mods is crucial to our efforts to reduce racism and misogyny on the site, we need users to report and enough mods to be able to quickly act on the reports throughout the day and night. Also, CW or content warnings are essential to the safe browsing of Hexbear.
In addition, comments or posts removed for racist or misogyny will also be accompanied by escalating temporary bans. Upvotes will not be the single reason for a ban, however they may be used in conjunction with other posts/comments/upvotes. Consider this post the warning, however, mods are encouraged to reach out to hexbear users before a long duration ban.
The second is to increase transparency with regard to the site while not repeating the mistakes of previous attempts that were ultimately counterproductive, in part due to wreckers.
Previous attempts to increase site transparency and user participation were targeted by wreckers through increasing the intensity and frequency of struggle session drama.
Using matrix's increased level of user permissions as an anti-wrecking measure while having an increased barrier to sending messages with a clear process to gaining the ability to send messages, we hope to mitigate wrecking attempts.
Leading to the creation of the Hexbear Proposals chapo.chat matrix room.
This will be a place for site proposals and discussion before implementation on the site.
Every proposal will also be mirrored into a pinned post on the hexbear community. Any other ideas for helping to integrate the two spaces are welcome to be commented here or messaged to me directly.
Within Hexbear Proposals you can see the history of all site proposals and react to them, indicating a vote for or against a proposal.
Sending messages will be restricted to verified and active hexbear accounts older than 1 month with their matrix id in their hexbear user profile.
All top level messages within the channel must be a Proposals (idea for changing the site), Feedback (regarding non-technical aspects of the site, for technical please use https://hexbear.net/c/feedback), or Appeals (regarding admin/moderator actions).
Discussion regarding these will be within nested threads under the post.
To gain matrix verification, all you need to do is navigate to my hexbear userprofile and click the send a secure private message including your hexbear username.
In closing, I want to state that this site would not exist without the volunteer labor of the moderators, who I am deeply grateful for.
I would also like to take this moment to remind people that lemmy direct messages are not encrypted, and finally please use this post to discuss these changes, share community ideas, or express interest in moderation.
Application
What is your Hexbear username?
Do you have any preferred pronouns?
What are your thoughts on capitalism?
What are your thoughts on imperialism?
What are your thoughts on trans rights?
What are your thoughts on racial justice?
What do think about current and previous protests around the world?
What are your thoughts on Veganism and Animal Liberation?
Do you have any experience with other leftist online communities?
What did those experiences teach you?
What is your approach to moderation, and how do you work with teams?
How do you deal with online drama and people who try to start things for the sake of it?
What current comms would you be interested in moderating?
Do you have any ideas for community engagement?
What is your general time availability? (Time zone, amounts, common browsing times, etc)
Element information
Element is a messaging app that lets you talk to people over the Matrix
protocol.
To get started, check out this link, where you can choose to either download Element for your platform or, if on a computer, open it in a browser.
The instructions that follow are for the desktop application and the web application, but the process is similar on all apps:
Press "Create Account"
We host our own Matrix server, so if you want you can change matrix.org to chapo.chat.
This is completely optional; users who sign up with a matrix.org username can still talk to people with chapo.chat username.
(Note: It is chapo.chat, not hexbear.net. Also, registrations aren't always open on chapo.chat; if they're not, just create an account on matrix.org)
Fill in a username and password
Hit register, and you're done!
We have in the past used upvote auditing to determine mod actions specifically to address the CoC clause you are quoting, and we will continue to do so in the future.
I recognize that many users upvote everything in a post to mark as read, as well as mistakenly upvote while scrolling on mobile which is why a single upvote will no longer be enough for a mod to act on, but it will continue to be used in conjunction with a user's voting patterns, mod-log, and post/comment history to make an appropriate action. Sadly, any feature request, like a way of marking a comment as read rather than voting on it, is not within our capabilities.
When multiple people of intersecting marginalized communities say to us "this comment that made me feel unsafe has a lot of upvotes, which make me feel worse, can something be done about this?" we acted. I'm sorry if those actions made the recipients feel unsafe, which is why we are asking mods to have more than a single upvote as evidence for an action.
For active hexbear users, we do encourage a mod sending a warning message, however that is not required. We frequently give 1 day temp bans without such a warning and while we do wish we had more mod tools available, we work with what we've got.
The previous struggle session was a result of the mod team wanting to uphold the code of conduct and received pushback for what was done. We have changed our site proposal process to give more transparency and opportunity for user interaction with the process.
If you have specific ways that we could improve, please comment here or use one of the other avenues provided.
Thank you for the comment, I won't be removing it.
There was a lot of angst thrown around on the last issue and the mod team acknowledged a need for transparency and this issue seems to be the same problem and now there is another indication that the mod team needs to be transparent and it's been maybe a week? I'd love to see some real recognition that the site rules are binding to the mods too not just a "oh we'll do better this time, really". I should know if my actions are ban worthy or problematic, and you should be following that same rule book.
If something falls outside of the rules but is a problem maybe my comment gets removed, maybe I get messaged but it shouldn't just be a ban cause some mod didn't like it but didn't have something grounding that decision.
edit: for what it's worth this is how I have been treated and I missed the "objectionable post", I just find the unilateral action & communication coming out after troubling
edit 2: I also notice that in both cases that the need for greater transparency was acknowledged it didn't change the mod team's actions or belief that they should have done anything different (comms were shut and we're still going to be banning people based on upvotes, unless there's several more days of struggle sessions I suppose)
I'm not opposed to it as a holistic measure in principle (e.g. if someone is clearly and consistently upvoting CoC violating content and not others), but are there specific criteria that you plan to use? This warning is quite vague, and carries the risk of being reinterpreted in the future to permit, say, banning people for commenting in opposition to a planned change in a struggle session, in conjunction with upvoting similar comments in that struggle session.
Thank you for sharing the admin team's thought process. I understand that it can be difficult in the moment to make administrative actions.
Nonetheless, I hope that admins have reached out to the affected users and acknowledge their feelings and the steps the admin team will take to ensure their concerns will not be an issue going forward.
I'm a little late to the party in terms of the struggle session — I only knew about it after this post had already been made, so I'm not intimately familiar with the specifics. I will also confess that I'm not intimately familiar with what correct moderation decisions should necessarily be, since I'm not a mod/admin.
That said, maybe if you had wanted to use the upbear list, messaging all users who upbeared it, good faith or not, with counterpropaganda would have been a good idea to make it a teaching moment for those who saw that comment and could potentially use a takedown even if they disagreed? Explain the difference between "working with fascists" and potentially converting them, or explain why even potentially converting them isn't worth trying, etc.
Thank you for responding to the comment.
I think the current admins have shown time and time again they aren’t going to act in a way like the TC69 debacle went down. Upvoting the reactionary shit that that comment was is different from good-faith dissent.
I definitely agree this is how it should have been handled initially, especially because several of the users are long time good users.
This is a good thing, but it is always possible the composition of the admin team could change, and it would be good to set the precedent right.
Honestly at this point people should just stop up voting stuff, if the mods think it is noteworthy they will tag it to the front page or something. I upvote people as a courtesy when they respond to me instead of doing name calling whenever we disagree, I guess I should stop doing that just in case.