crosswind

I'm really not clear on what the intended usage of each community is, so I can't comment.

My main issue was that people's concerns about renaming a community to a term that "was used as a misogynist, oppressive tool against women" were being dismissed. I hope these concerns are taken more seriously.

I've had plenty of issues with how things have been handled, but I think the situation is trending in a better direction. Best of luck in finding the best course of action and in communicating your decisions clearly.

Nobody's been happy with counterpropaganda, and we've heard you loud and clear.

El Chisme continues to remain the new space for posts that would have been at home in The Dunk Tank.

Your description is definitely not the way it's being presented in this announcement post. Maybe having gossip as a new community instead of a renaming an old one would be a good idea. That would allow much more room to explore what the liberatory aspects of the act off gossiping would look like, instead of being the place where people are looking for the twitter drama they're used to.

As your sources say gossip as a tool can protect women. Gossip as a term, or potentially as the name for a community, can be used to oppress women. While it would be great for this site to play a role in strengthening the tool and weakening the term, it shouldn't be taken as a given that the users who are affected by this are comfortable taking on the fight of reclaiming the word, or that they think this change is effective in doing so.

I appreciate how seriously you are taking the harm of the racist term. I don't appreciate how, at least from the outside, it looks like the position you are in of needing to defend the mods has led you to downplay the potential harm of misogyny to create a comparison.

Through all that's happened, I've been repeatedly encouraged by how quickly and nearly unanimously the whole community agreed that the tank names needed to be changed. The dunk tank had been around for years, but once the harm was pointed out, it was time to for it to go.

Seeing the staunch defense of the name "gossip" when quite a few people immediately say they find it offensive makes me think that was a special case, and not the sign of the strength of the community I had hoped it was.

It's fine for some decisions to be made by mods only, but keeping it quiet and rolling the changes out all at once when the decision is final seems to cause nothing but problems. It means the mods and admins are caught off guard when the users have strong objections, and have to scramble and backtrack to deal with the backlash. A heads-up about what changes were being discussed would have let the mods be aware of what complaints would be made while they were still in the decision making process. Then when the changes are made, they could already have measures ready to address the concerns, or at least consistent explanations of why the changes where necessary. Instead they had to quickly throw out multiple conflicting justifications, and added to the confusion.

If you're surprised the users saw this as more than a tiny change, an announcement that a discussion was happening could have given a warning of what to expect.

When this was announced, they were arguing that closing the comms wasn't a problem because people could just post on similar communities in other instances. But that was after they tried to get those other communities shut down too?

I think that's my mistake. I had assumed they understood that tool was only for white people to lecture other white people into voting for genocide. I shouldn't be surprised when some of them actually use it to feel morally superior to people who are directly affected.

That part makes enough sense to me on its own, but what do they mean by not caring about “fellow Muslims”, and what connection are they trying to make between those ideas? It’s clear enough that it’s some racist bullshit, but I’m trying to figure out what it’s supposed to mean to other liberals, and it still just sounds like stringing words together. Maybe I’m expecting too much from liberals but I figured there would be something specific that prompted this.

I seriously can't understand what the quoted tweet is supposed to mean. It seems like they're just randomly mashing ideas together? I tried to read the article, but the tweet was deleted, and the account you can see in the screenshot is a content firehose, so I couldn't find what this is about. Are they actually trying to apply the "Trump would kill n+1 Gazans" argument as a way to shame muslims, and then pinning that on homophobia based on nothing? Even for racist scratched liberals, this seems like incoherent nonsense. Am I missing something, or are they already panicking that badly

I'm glad Mr. Sanders understands that getting on a bus is like voting. You absolutely need to get on the bus that's doing a little less genocide. If you get turned around, you can always tell which bus that is because it's the one with Dick Cheney on it.

If you're trying to flip it instead of pick it up, you only have to lift half the weight, so maybe a strong one could, if the forks could handle all the weight being on the end. Sawed off forklift maybe?

"I was not in my uniform, and at no point in my interaction with the staff did I identify myself as a member of the law enforcement community," Sheriff Owens said. "At no point did I indicate my position, nor did I ask the responders to do anything that they would not, had not, or have not done for anyone else who makes a business dispute call."

I don't even know if he believes this or not. I would have assumed he was getting off on bringing the force of the state down on a service worker who dared cross him, but can severe cop-brain really make you think this is a normal and reasonable thing everyone does when their order is wrong? Is it both?