Hello users of hexbear:
Due to recent meta posts in our mutual aid community we wanted to open up discussion about the community [email protected]
We will never require explanation or justification from a user asking for aid in the community, and the mod and admin team continue to commit to not featuring an individual’s mutual aid request to prevent unfair exposure.
In addition, we will maintain a strict “No critical comments or meta comments” on a mutual aid post.
This post is to discuss the mutual aid community’s rule of allowing meta posts: mutual aid as a community, those making posts in it and those commenting on posts.
We are considering removing the exception allowing meta posts but wanted to involve the userbase before committing to a change.
Please comment with any thoughts, feelings, or suggestions regarding this change.
Thank you
I feel like the current status quo of the comm is just demoralizing for all involved and I’m not really sure what could be done.
I can’t really speak for anyone seeking assistance, but as an outside observer it feels like people aren’t receiving as much help as they’d like or potentially could and I imagine it’s tiring having to make multiple posts a day with potentially little to show for it.
On the other end of things I think comrades looking to lend a hand can find it hard to know how best to do that. It’s hard to know sometimes who has already been helped and who is falling through the cracks. So I think it can be overwhelming for potential donators and unfortunately discourages people from doing so.
I can’t speak to the administrative or moderation side of things or what would be feasible, but I have some interest in trying to make the comm more effective for everyone involved.
Hopefully other people share their input in ways they think things could be improved.
Idk if that’s the point of this thread or it’s just about meta stuff or whatever…
It’s really the main issue with the internet, lack of transparency. Anyone can easily make multiple accounts and also there’s no way to verify anything about any of it really. At least when I do direct aid locally I can tell that the person is in a bad way pretty quickly. No one on the streets here is faking it and it’s just not the case on the internet. I’d love to direct my resources to leftists where possible but I haven’t got a lot to spare so I’m probably going to focus on local direct aid.
What specific changes would you make?
We already ask that posters include if they have had their request met to help communicate who has been helped already.
Having moderators decide who is or isn’t a scammer shifts responsibility from the user wanting to donate to the moderator team which at this point violates the spirit of the community in so far as we as a mod try not to influence individual fundraising efforts.