“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!
I’ll be honest having my upvotes monitored by secret committee has always made me very uncomfortable and I do not like this as an approach to push the site into whatever the mods want to unilaterally create. I genuinely thought that ended after that giant purge in the first year I didn’t know mods still did that.
This is not to say I’m against any of the reasons mods want to moderate upbears. I just don’t like feeling like I’m under a microscope even if Ihave nothing to hide. I know it’s not popular to say, but I know I’m not just talking for myself here.
Traffic has seemed way down since the comm struggle session and I worry mods underestimate the chilling effect that unapologetic, undemocratic, heavy-handed moderation has an an ultimately delicate community.
When I am tired at the end of the day I often upvote comments and posts without thinking. I’m sure lots of people are like this
Admittedly same, though I don’t need to be tired to do it. And sometimes I upvote comments of conflicting opinions (both even) after reading them over too tbh. Not to excuse things like this, but rather it’s definitely good we’re having this discussion.
When 2 Hexbear users are in disagreement, I will often find that they both make points that I find compelling and thought provoking and I’ll end up upbearing the whole discussion thread.
I will upvote bad posts if I think it makes people more likely to see good posts down the chain (obviously within reason). Especially now with federation.
Lol I just did that without thinking about it.
Same!
This is also true for me when I am tired at the end of the day. And at the middle of the day. And the beginning of the day.
I’m just tired.
This isn’t a constant thing, the process is someone says: “Hey this really reactionary comment got a lot of upvotes can you check that?”
A user that shows up on a few of these requests are going to get closer attention, this is what we mean by upvotes are used along with modlog and post/comment history when determining the appropriate mod action to take against someone.
As per the previous struggle session, we have changed the way that site changes are discussed and enacted to give more transparency/user interaction.
We still have hundreds of daily active users, more than we had months ago, that being said this site has never prioritized growth or user count. What we have prioritized is making this as protected of a space possible for our marginalized comrades.
These comrades have asked for the recent changes, and without a doubt I could have communicated better. To that end we seek to improve the transparency process and allow more user engagement with said process
Thank you for your response. I do think it’s one thing to look into upvotes to check if it’s just new accounts that are upvoting something reactionary, but quite another to be disciplining users in otherwise good standing for an upbear. I think it’s better to just delete the post and accept without policing that some people upvoted it.
I would add that adding transparency is good, but quite different from a democratic process. For example with this decision to be monitoring people’s voting behavior, in other comments you have been quite transparent about your intention to continue doing so which doesn’t really feel much better than you doing it in private - either way it seems like you have already made up your minds to continue doing it. Being transparent and permitting discussion without any sense that you might ever alter behavior based on user feedback doesn’t feel like much an improvement to me but I guess that’s just me this isn’t a hill I’m interested in dying on.
I’d also want to remind you that the mod team is not the site. That may indeed be true for the mod team, but I’ve been here since day one and there are many users on the site who do indeed prioritize growth, myself included. That doesn’t mean I prioritize it above anything else, but I do think this is a good positive community and want to to thrive and at least have a consistent replacement of good comrades as people naturally move on.
GOOD POST
Especially about transparency not being the same as democracy and creating a “free speech zone” not being the same thing as actually taking community opinion in to account when making important changes.
Personal opinion, but I think a lot of people (as well as this site in general) need to expand beyond this site- as in, this would go regardless, no one (not even the mods/etc) should have this as their one source of socializing/human interaction (probably).
I don’t think I’d say I prioritize growth, but I think it would be nice if this site could be a space from which people could expand outwards and develop their own circles (which if it fit their priorities/preferences, would prioritize growth). Things like the recent webfishing groups, tracha, hexcraft (still need to check it out myself), the movie-watching stuff, etc. all would be such examples. The world is big enough for infinite social circles that harmonize with one another (ideally, realistically this doesn’t always happen but it absolutely can and usually does, people just don’t look at the successes which are a daily part of life for pretty much almost everyone).
Not entirely sure where I’m going from this, but having a discussion about what Hexbear’s priorities are would probably be a good idea. And then also having a discussion about how to create- if not on Hexbear, adjacent to and maybe mutually benefiting from it- other spaces with other priorities would probably also be cool.
I think whether the site withers of flourishes is completely orthogonal to the question of having diverse social circles.
I organize in real life with real people, and I have a rich, diverse and nourishing social circle. That has literally nothing to do with whether it’s good that this site gets more engaged and active users.
Agreed, though FWIW flourishing is also a matter of preference. Quality vs. quantity and all that. Not sure if I’d say the site has the best mix of it now or not, but it’s probably better than anywhere else other than Lemmygrad in my opinion, while also having the added benefit of being more active/shitposty/etc than the grad.
Do we want more engaged and active users if they’re coming from- I dunno, lemm.ee, or lemmy.world, for instance? I don’t think anyone here would want that, or rather there’s a reason we’re all on here. It’s something to be discussed, definitely, but whatever it is will have to be a balancing act of such conflicting interests, sadly.
(looking even just briefly at your profile) not you, you’re one of the good ones…
we love you.
You’re an honorary or a full (certainly in spirit) Hexbearer or Lemmygradian IMO.
I dont think Lemmygrad is better. Too slow to be as entertaining, and not enough effort posts to bridge that gap. Engagement matters, but we also don’t have to follow to VC capital oriented norm of fostering engagement.
A huge part of what makes Hexbear work is the very high level of engagement from users. We didn’t have VC funding, we had an ethos of “ALL POSTING IS GOOD POSTING” that strongly encouraged users to set aside ideas of “good posts” vs “bad posts” and just post. A lot of people don’t interact on internet forums because they’re afraid of judgement, insults, or harassment. The “all posting is good posting” thing promoted just posting whatever inane shit knowing that it would get upvotes no matter what, which greatly reduced the barrier to participation. And that directly lead to the enormous posting power that made us an annoyance for reddit and led to this place having more posting power than the rest of the Lemmyverse combined.
I hadn’t really thought about this in years, but all those “DAE piss and fard?!” posts are a legacy of “all posting is good posting” and encouraging members to just post something rather than restrict themselves to effort posts, or even being on topic. It keeps things moving and staves off the fatal stagnation that can set in to small insular communities over time as power posters drop off and are not replaced.
No one should but many of us live in places where we cannot talk openly about our beliefs, and many of us have to very carefully hide our identities to avoid violence. This is an almost uniquely safe space on the internet. I’m not aware of any other spaces like it.
In this case, did a moderator request it? In another comment you said:
but afaik mods can’t see votes, only admins. Did an admin relay this info to a mod? Did a mod request the users be banned and an admin carried it out? Or did an admin initiate this? (Or am I wrong and mods can see votes in their comms?)
More than one person requested the admin vote audit, both mods and users.
Only admins can see votes, we are seeing if we can change that setting so all users can.
For site moderation issues, yes a mod often says “I banned this user from the community and think they need a site action”
This is a horrible idea. Seems like a perfect util for feds to use to deanonymize users by looking for usage and voting patterns. If this happens, I will probably only use Hexbear while logged out, and I suspect others will too, killing engagement.
we would definitely put this to a vote before implementing, just investigating if it is even possible.
I’ve said it before, but the amount of drama that public upvotes would generate would be so apocalyptic that I almost want to see it happen
Agreed. The outcome I see would be users interpreting upbears on a post based on how they use upbears. Given that different posters use them in different ways they’ll almost certainly be at cross purposes with the people who did upvote.
It also makes it much easier for cliques to form as upbears go from being a general marker of engagement with a post to support from specific users. Now if two posts have 20 upvotes each all we really know is that people engaged with them. If we can see upvotes and know that each of those posts has upvotes from different sets of users we’ve not got factions. Instead of two posts with equal user engagement it’s two speakers and their supporters. I see absolutely nothing good coming from that. It’ll promote the formation of cliques and factions. It’d be much better to remove upbears entirely if they cannot be left alone as they are.
There is such a thing as too much accountability and anonymity does have a purpose. If someone wants to support an unpopular post, or raise a bad post to greater attention, or upbear a post to mark it as read that action would be subject to judgement by a public who does not know why the user chose to upbear or for what purpose. This is just awful all around. It’s straight up a theory of mind problem; People trying to judge the intent of others with insufficient information, which isn’t going to lead to accurate estimations of other people’s goals or purpose.
Guangxu clique except it is 25 people from the Trans mega fighting ten people from the news mega and three guys in the middle who hate Iran because it clamped down on a niche Communist movement during the 80s.
This would make me feel less safe. Do not think the vote opinion of user should be public. Vulnerable user more unsafe.
Removed by mod
oh my god, what kind of spambot runs right up to an admin and does its thing.
edit: I know it’s a bot and can’t really strategize, but I literally watched this live going “hold up what the devil is this? Clicks account to see who/what this is Oh wait it’s already banned lmao owned”
I can respect the ambition of a bot that shoots their shot like that
Are admins able to see how often someone upvotes posts?
Like, if a user who doesn’t upvote very often has upvoted a lot of banned comments, that might be indicative of their opinions, but someone who upvotes everything isn’t necessarily endorsing those comments.
No we are only able to see votes on a specific post/comment
No, same, I really dislike the idea of a secret clique policing arcane user actions using secret metrics. It leads to a strong chilling effect. If there are to be rules and punishments the expectations for appropriate and inappropriate behavior should be clearly stated. I’m all for arbitrary and cruel use of power, but to keep a community functional people need to know where the limits are especially when we’re getting to something as arcane as upvotes where different people view them in radically different ways.
Removed by mod
Shut the fuck up loser
I don’t believe you “think” at all.
Lmao when you get all your knowledge of communism from 80s red scare movies
Thank you for giving us a moment of user-mod unity by appearing here just to be dunked on, fuck off now