I hope we can all agree that wherever we were at during this debacle, that we wish things had gone differently and never gotten this far

Here's my super serious thoughts and my attempt at effort posting. I have fibrofog pretty bad right now so apologies if I ramble or make shit points.

I think one of the big lessons here is to avoid having power-users. The initial, relatively small, issue was quickly blasted out of proportion when it could have been stopped by a simple "We're sorry, while we didn't intend to say those things, our intent is irrelevant in the face of our actions. We'll work on it and get back to you." along with unlocking the comms and involving users more in the process if the issues with the comms are really so severe. I still think the tanks should be unlocked until a choice is made, as a show of good faith. It'll do a lot to assuage fears that they don't care, and show that the top down community defining isn't going to be how things are done in future.

The second big lesson is that moderators and admins need to be vigilant of resentment toward users building up. I've been a moderator for a very active community before, and it sucks. You do see the worst of the community and that can lead to resentment and cliquishness. The other mods understand, the users don't. It makes it easy to mentally create an in group and out group, we're all humans, and the human brain sucks ass at most things. Perhaps moderators and admins should be strongly suggested to take time off and be a regular user on occasion to prevent this? Obviously there are privacy concerns, and the admins need to protect themselves from doxing, so I'm unsure how to implement this.

I think that overall this might have been a good thing. It's clear to me that there were tensions bubbling below the surface just waiting for this to happen, and now that it has we can identify and rectify those tensions better. A learning experience is always a good thing, even if they rarely feel good in the moment. In fact, they usually feel absolutely terrible in the moment.

AlaskaBall banning themself as a bit and then accidentally misgendering themself is funny in retrospect, but seemed to confirm the idea that there was a shadowy take-over of transphobic mods. Very poor timing as a thing to do, but great comedic timing. People are already looking back and laughing on it, so I don't think that'll be anything long term.

The cult of personality being character assassinated is a good thing in terms of my anti-power-users stance, but a bad thing in that TC69 did stumble face first into this, and didn't instigate it(though she clearly made it worse). She obviously did some great things for the site before my time, and the outcome of her actions is part of what drew me here. It's a space that isn't shit, and she helped build that and should be recognized for that. She shouldn't have returned from such a long break and been given admin straight away. Admins should be people who are currently active in the community, not niche internet celebrities. The fact that she was given admin right away strongly supports the idea of adminship being a big club that you ain't in, which I'm sure the admins don't want.

I'd say there's no hard feelings, but there are a few. I'm willing to try and work through them though. I can't speak for others who are less willing to, and I know I wasn't hurt as much as the others were. I'd have preferred an apology from her directly, but if deleting and purging her account was the choice she made, then I respect that and wish her well. But as said, I can't speak for others.

As others have said, there's also the issue of assuming all he/hims are A: white, B: cis, C: het, D: men, and E: wrong for having those pronouns. This loops back to the resentment thing I mentioned earlier I think. Brainworms are part of the human condition in our world today, it's not your fault for having them, but you do need to put effort into removing them. This is a very hard process that feels shitty in the moment, because you have to catch yourself and stop yourself. Telling your own brain that it's wrong is difficult. Self improvement feels like shit a lot of the time.

Large amounts of users also cited the demographic surveys that show Hexbear to be very white, and seemed to use that to excuse the assumptions, which was clearly quite hurtful to our POC comrades. I'm white, and thus not very qualified to talk on this issue, but I felt it was very worth noting that harm so that it isn't forgotten and can be worked on.

From what I've seen, Lyudmila and CARCOSA have been handling the aftermath quite well I feel. Putting yourself as the face of an unpopular group is very difficult and I'm sorry for the stress you've likely felt.

That's my wall of text. I hope we can all move forward together as better people, better comrades, and better posters to build a better community and world(eventually.)

After seventy two trillions resignation, i think its important that you distinguish between a decision making moderator and a clean up moderator. STT is resigning on the basis of making a bad decision or whatever, but him having the ability to clean up the megathread from wreckers is still important (unless he really doesnt want to be an internet janitor anymore) I dont know if this would have to be implemented at the lemmy level but i still think its an important idea

If you can be banned for a bit, or for expressing reasonable dissent, why would we put effort into anything more than shitposting on this site?

Likewise if decisions are made on a whim from the admin/mod team, it is reasonable for the users to feel and act like they are just along for the ride.

I don't like the implication that some of the admins apparently check every time you say something that annoys them what your pronouns are and tick a running tally until their grudge gets big enough to do something unpopular. Is this the sort of thing people brought up as concerns when they didn't want pronouns to be mandatory? back then it was [none/use name]s who "weren't beating the allegations". I really don't like puppygirl stuff. Do you think it would be productive to take that as an excuse to have a discussion about whether we blame [she/her]s or the [she/they]s as the source of more inappropriate kink comments?

This is my thoughts that I have transpired:

1. This drama has resolved two pressing contradictions: whether Hexbear should be a shit-posting site or a more serious and political site and whether Hexbear should be a space for dunks or a comfy space. From this point forward, Hexbear will be a shitposting site and Hexbear will be a space for dunks. You can't have pretensions about Hexbear being serious and have some incognito admin create an admin account and ban their mod account. This is shitposting territory. It's shitposting par excellence. And as for the contradiction between a space for dunks or a comfy space, the space for dunks has won out. The people want their dunk tank back and in a poor attempt to argue otherwise, the admins more or less misgendered and done the racial equivalent of misgendering many people. Is this not an admission that Hexbear is not going to be a comfy space but a space for dunks? The admins dunked on the users for being cringey cishet white dudes and the users dunked back at the admins for being wildly out of touch dipshits with their heads up their collective asses.

2. The megathreadization of Hexbear will accelerate. Throughout this dumpster fire, I lurked at the various megathreads up (news, trans, disabled, em_poc, general) and the drama was almost completely absent. I feel very sorry for the trans users who have to put up with this shit because if they had just stayed at the trans mega, they wouldn't have seen any of this shit. Trans users who browse outside the trans mega got misgendered by the admins as cishet white dudes while trans users who stayed in the trans mega and mostly hang out at the trans matrix are blissfully unaware. What's going to happen to the behavior of trans people from this point forward? You can apply the same shit to all the megas. People are just going to migrate to the megas, and non-mega Hexbear will slide closer to closer to the character of the dunk tank. I suppose it's a bit of an open secret, but the various megas have been better than general Hexbear for a good while. Most seriousposting is done in the news and trans megas. Trans, em_poc, and disabled megas are good safe spaces. General Hexbear is just for cheap dunks where you'll occasionally catch strays, and if you don't have a thick enough skin, you'll eventually burn out. In this sense, the dunk tank perfectly encapsulates general Hexbear and to clamp on the dunk tank is to clamp on general Hexbear. The dunk tank is general Hexbear and general Hexbear is the dunk tank. Far from clamping down dunk tank culture, the poorly thought out actions of the admins have only accelerated the dunkification of Hexbear. Something something dialectics.

3. ~~Given that the completely deranged alts turn out to be done by Melina per the modlog, I don't see any possible justification for /c/fakenews, a comm that many people already dislike for various reasons, still existing. That comm is understood by this website's community to be the brainchild of Melina. The fact that one of the recent prolific posters turn out to be another one of fae's alts only reinforces this point, and I wouldn't be surprised if the mod team outside of Dirt_owl are alts as well. Here's my advice to the admins who have taken a tremendous hit in their credibility. You could start regaining that credibility by getting rid of /c/fakenews, a move that many people have been clamoring for months now. Melina wishing that aaaaaaadjsf would get murdered should be the time for fae's presence, including fae's comm, to be completely purged from Hexbear. Or is the shitposting nature of /c/fakenews a complete fit with Hexbear's shitposting culture, meaning that it will never be removed?~~ This is in dispute. See further comment.

I love my niche communist internet forum that avoids the pitfalls of niche internet forums and communist organisations

Which sock puppet admin account will TC be using, I wonder

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.

Why were we banned in the first place?

I'll try to keep this short, I think the more I talk the less people like me, and the more I shut the fuck up and listen the more people like me. Funny how that works lol, I think I'm just an annoying asshole that people secretly hate but that's a separate issue. Trying to do some self-crit on how I interact with others, I've been likely making others uncomfortable IMO so I'm gonna shut the fuck up and listen more. Anyways...

First of all, I love this site. I am new here, only half a year, but I truly love that I can shitpost with comrades without having liberals throw a fit. I love that I can dig into the News Mega and read good analysis from comrades like @Awoo@hexbear.net or @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net (please come back to admin!). I love that I can make an essay on some Fallout: New Vegas mod 3 people have played and have people take it seriously. I really love this site, and I think most of the users, mods, and admins do too. I want this comfort and safety to be felt by all users, not just me.

Second, I hope the claims of chauvanism and misogyny are not shelved, but investigated openly. I think a lot of the pushback against this was a lack of evidence presented, and the struggle around this aspect could have been lessened with a few examples. If we want this to be a safe space for marginalized comrades, marginalized comrades should have their voices respected when it comes to how they experience the site. I think the fact that these claims were discussed behind closed doors compounded the problems, and garnered undue pusback. I understand why these conversations weren't held publicly either, out of preventing harrassment and for safety, which is why I think having prepared examples and evidence under CWs would help prevent pushback. The fact that several trans members have expressed issue with [he/hims] should be taken seriously. Edit 2: Speaking of, if I have contributed to this as a [he/him] user or as a white person in general, please let me know, even in DMs with an alt if you want to remain anonymous. I'll make a selfcrit post and do better, I promise, I'm stupid so please have patience, I want everyone to feel safe here like I do. It's not on others to correct behavior but just in case.

~~Third, the user that keeps making accounts and attacking people needs to come forward and self-crit, or be removed. This is unacceptable. It's good that the transphobic statement was addressed, but as far as I know the harrassment is an open issue.~~ Edit 1: Looks like this was resolved! Thanks!

Fourth, the Admins. @CARCOSA@hexbear.net should not have been the shield taking the brunt of pushback, and should not step down. They were very level-headed. TransComrade69 should not have been handling everything alone either, which is how it appeared. Regardless of how ze was handling the situation, it was only magnified by having hir handle the sitiation seemingly alone. @Alaskaball@hexbear.net lol. Lmao, even. Honestly a good bit, but the timing could not have been better, or worse, I guess. Glad to see you stepping up to be an open face of the admin team, that should help repair user relations a bit. @Lyudmila@hexbear.net you're handling things very well, props!

To cap this all off, this all spiraled out of control because people here clearly care a lot about the site, outside of a few rogue elements the overwhelming majority stood by our trans comrades even at risk of being banned. Not everyone behaved well, I won't pretend that, but I do think the vast majority of users here are kind, considerate, and willing to discuss the actions taken to fix the problems that started this debaucle.

Love y'all, hope we can bounce back stronger as @Frank@hexbear.net said, and as @Awoo@hexbear.net said we may need to just slow our roll on posting a bit and not take every little thing as seriously as possible.

Edit 3: tried and failed to keep it short, lol

I'd like to add that a thing creeping into a lot of these discussions is the survey. the survey is not a representitive of all users, it is a self selecting group of people who took one to give us a sample of the userbase that we have extrapolated. the survey itself says around 600 people responded. a look at the side bar will show you the number of users a day/week/month regularly exceeds this. people in that thread of the survey results were debating about how many trans men and cis women were even on here because the data does not tell them this, so they invented readings from it.

furthermore, the survey does not say; are the 'he/him's cis, are the 'he/hims' white, are the 'he/hims' straight. you do not know who is behind the prounoun tag and username, do not invent a bogeyman out of users based on a survey. it is not empirical evidence. cis het jacketing he/hims is not useful, and can do a lot to hurt people in ways you do not know. I've seen this shit hurt trans men friends of mine so many times

While I shouldn't weigh in too much, especially post-hoc, I could've told you that having TC69 back as a mod or admin was a very bad idea.

As important TC69 was (and from a legacy perspective is) to creating an aggressively positive trans culture, she, for better and worse, acts incredibly narcissistically when she is placed into positions of power, and more importantly, in my opinion, she is/was ideologically incoherent as moderator. You cannot simultaneously say 'its just a website' while also banning people for small indiscretions or personal beef. After all, 'it's just a website' why should the moderators care that much? She tends to take so much shit that goes on here personally and yet expects nobody else to.

A poor decision unless you enjoy drama.

Now that I've had time to eat ten dumplings I think the small domino is that the statement from the mods was perceived as (by me and others)inherently being a misgendering. The claim that the culture behind it was inherently white, cis, and het seems to echo common transphobic ideas of male socialization, which, given the sites demographics, very quickly resulted in punches being thrown.

One of the middle dominos is the ban button, and the big one is Lemmygrad users looking over the fence with concern

Something 72T mentioned in their selfcrit

This was not just my own isolated belief - other moderators who pay closer attention to the broader site culture than I do (as I stay in the news mega 95% of the time) were adamant that these changes be made, as they have repeatedly said that comrades from certain minority groups have been turned off from joining or staying on the site due to the site culture.

How exactly do we know this about the joining part? And how much of “site culture” is being misconstrued by liberals on other parts of lemmy? It’s no secret that other lemmy instances lie like anything else about here.