Hello users of Hexbear, there have been many changes and some drama the past few months.
The recent changes we’ve been making have been an attempt to create a more safe and welcoming environment for many demographics that have been overlooked in the past.
For any of our comrades that have been unintentionally hurt in this process, we apologise and hope to find a solution that accommodates as many people as possible while still meeting the needs of the marginalised groups who need a space like this the most.
The intent of this post is to provide a space for all users to air grievances with regard to the site. As well as provide suggestions for specific things that could be changed to address your grievance. Comments insulting the mod team or those without a specific means to address your problem may be removed. No commenter will be sitebanned, unless it clearly breaks the code of conduct.
Won’t rehash what other people said, but yeah moderation needs to be impartial and consistent. I know coming up with procedure’s just encourages trolls to “game the system”, but purely vibes-based mod action without pointing out what was done wrong in detail or recourse to appeal isn’t working out (arguably it’s giving an opening to wrecker’s to take advantage of, because they can impersonate user’s/mod voices and exacerbate any perception of preferential treatment which in turn sours sentiment further… which is what I suspect happened)
I think trying to replicate the success of the zero-tolerance policy wrt transphobia with misogyny and racism might have been a mistake- our community was much better equipped to combat that particular -ism, probably due to its make-up. Differentiating micro-aggressions from outright bigotry seems important but was overlooked, and giving zero room for rehabilitation and education just seems to have cooled discourse and created a cycle that encourages weaponizing our identities to bludgeon other people with. I’m glad that right now we’re encouraging giving the benefit of the doubt to each other.
Just an observation, but maybe we have to shed the dirtbag leftist irony poisoning that characterized r/Chapo, cos most of you seem half my age now and are waaaaaaay too sincere and make me feel really really old
Personally, I had come to the conclusion a while ago that material conditions would dictate how the website is used, so I wasn’t ever really worried about whether the website was serious business or silly fun, because quite frankly that question is immaterial. However, I do think that we’re gonna have to decide what we want to prioritize as a community and start building out the infrastructure for what comes next; if we’re the posting vanguard we’re gonna need better outreach tools and agitprop, if we’re the life boat at the end of the world and the last safe space we’re going to need better mod tools and basic stuff like wiki’s, and procedure’s to ensure the safety of people using mutual aid, etc. Or maybe we decide to be something else entirely. But we can have that conversation a little later, I think.
Edit: Oh one point I kinda forgot about- the mega-threadification of hexbear means that we can’t really assume a uniform site culture anymore. I know we’ve done this to give more people safe spaces but imo it’s gotten kinda cliquey and I kinda feel like we’re 2 shitposts from (completely arbitrary and made up example) the News Mega launching a civil war against Badposting or something. Idk if it’s actually a problem or not tho
it is imo and i don’t really care to participate in them, even the ones explicitly formed around my identities. for me they become difficult to follow and, as you point out, cliquish in a way that i don’t personally love. megathreadification and the consequent reduction in discrete threads on this or that thing makes the site harder for me to engage with and imo encourages the internal perception that the site is down to beanisposting and slopposting or whatever (i don’t have a problem with either tbc). that’s just my take on it - i agree with your whole comment, that part just jumped out for me in particular.
I like the general thread so I can just post personal stuff and random comments that I dont deserve their own post, and engage with other people’s, like a chatroom. But more recently I noticed so so many more megathreads and it’s kinda overwhelming to me. Think it would be good to have more self contained posts for more robust discussion and diversity in content for sure. And this could maybe solve that issue of hexbear being a serious educational site vs a comfy shitposting site, more serious discussion can be separated into posts instead of buried in Megas with little engagement bc it’s easy to gloss over thoughtful subjects brought up in comments. Idk about the cliqueishness though, do yall mean like people kinda just “sticking to their own”, or the shit talking I see in some of those community megas?
Yeah it’s both, but also I don’t think that’s a problem in-and-of-itself? Like, I get it, sometimes we all need to vent after dealing with whatever particular set of brainworms set us off and it’s nice to commiserate with like-minded people. It’s just that I think it has contributed to developing an “us vs them” attitude that then kinda exacerbates whatever struggle session we’re having at the time?
(And to be clear I don’t have any problem with people using the mega’s like a microblog or chatroom)
Like, what happens when someone of a certain marginalized identity has a disagreement about something with someone of a different marginalized identity? Instead of trying to hash things out, it seems to me that we’ve been kinda quick to jump the gun straight to assuming the worst intentions of each other, when there’s more common ground to work with here than not. (Also, don’t get me wrong, just because someone might be from a marginalized identity it doesn’t mean they can’t carry harmful/reactionary brainworms). But then because we’re all split up into our own lanes we don’t actually try to address the problem and solve it long term, we just withdraw into our silos? If that makes sense. I hope this community level push to extend the benefit of the doubt is enough of a start, but it’s pretty clear to me that hexbear still has a lot of work to do on intersectionality
(but also, like, this shit is HARD to do in real life as well so… I don’t want to harp too much on something I don’t have a ready solution for either)
Ah got it, that makes sense. It’s gotta be hard since it’s an internet forum too. It’s much easier to be a dickhead and reactionary behind an anonymous username and super easy to take things out of context. There are also SO SO many people with different perspectives and walks of life interacting on here that would otherwise never engage eachother irl so I think it does take a certain level of emotional labor on everyone’s part to keep it a welcoming, healthy place to be. I see that as important work, like even though it’s “just a website”, trying to exercise those empathy and interpersonal communication skills could probably serve people in the real world, too. Obvs people coming from places of more privilege especially need to check themselves but all of us are capable of being shitty, as you said, and I can see the echo chambery-ness perpetuating bitterness
If a community’s moderators don’t want to use megathreads any longer to encourage community posting that is fine with me, but if a mod asks for a site pin we’ll do so.
As I said, I don’t know if it’s a problem with the site per-se or if it’s just a general human community building problem, just that maybe we (collectively as a community) need to work harder to ensure that everyone is on the same page. It’s also easy for me to yap about this as someone who, like, maybe makes a handful of posts every 2 weeks or so and doesn’t make any use out of the mega’s.
That said, the stuff I saw elsewhere about implementing a site portal sounds good.
I know this job has been pretty thankless, and people tend to forget that a lot of the time we’re all just trying to do what we can with what we have, so for my part lemme just say thanks for everything so far