selfcrit

I was part of the group that got banned yesterday, and I need to apologize to you all.

I have seen people mention previously that sometimes mods take upvotes for agreement, but I haven't trained myself to stop the reddit habit of voting on "food for thought" things, useful-addition-to-the-conversation-but-not-my-pov posts, and placemarkers in active threads, and there aren't downvotes here to easily mark the shitty stuff I want to come back to and learn from. I should always be opening things in new tabs instead.

I foolishly upvoted this comment as a "food for thought" comment and planned to come back to the thread yesterday evening to find it and read the responses and learn from them. instead my upvote counted as agreement and got me banned, which I know is my fault for not adapting to site culture and not foreseeing how that would be interpreted.

I totally understand, feel like the worst kind of fool, and spent my ban time thinking about what a piece of shit I am. far worse than that is the thought that any of you might think I agree with that comment, so I am posting here to apologize profusely and publicly for my upvote. I'm really, truly, terribly sorry, and idk what to do to about it except fuck off and try not to be such a fuckhead in the future.

you didn't know that was why I upvoted it, it just looked to you like a bunch of your alleged comrades liked that post, and I was one of them. I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if it made you think differently about me. I get it, and I'm just really, really sorry.

as soon as I figured out that I was banned and why, I sent a version of this via DM from my old account to an em_poc user who is very near and dear to my heart, but I don't feel right only apologizing to one person when so many of you could have been hurt by my upvote, hence this post. I'm sorry that my apology to the rest of you wasn't that immediate, but I was worried that posting it from my old account would be seen as ban evasion and make my contrition seem insincere.

I appreciate very much the kindness and compassion so many of you have shown me, and it is devastating to know that I have repaid it in this way.

I'm very, very, very sorry.

please heap your scorn and excoriation here.

My previous stance on veganism was completely incorrect, and I didn't allow it to change for so long due to personal gripes with a few users on a niche internet forum.

I wish to apologize to any vegans or veganism supporters if any of my previous statements offended them or made them uncomfortable.

Looking back, many of my arguments were reactionary nonsense, and I had almost a nonsensical derangement syndrome about the whole thing. Getting into repeated fights with users even mentioning it, and generally being an asshole. I caused lots of unnecessary trouble with dear friends and comrades, who had to deal with the effects of my deeply unserious obsession with fighting specific users.

I let my personal feelings get in the way of a nuanced evaluation, which is very unmarxist of me. My issue with singular people turned into something that warped my common sense.

Although I recognize that I still have many brainworms about it, I want to remove them, and not let pettiness control my thoughts and actions.

A big part of me unlearning was reading through many of Angel's great posts, accidentally happening across some of the old threads (cringing extremely hard over them), and close friends calling me out leading to self evaluation.

I came to this opinion weeks ago, but only now I've publically renounced my previous position to my friends and hexbear.

Hello all,

Since @[email protected] has done me the courtesy of reversing my temp ban, I am taking @[email protected] up on her invitation to self criticize (although we now know this comm is NOT for inviting others to self crit).

In short, I was BIG MAD because some of the statements put out by the mod team during the tank comm debacle hit way too close to home for reasons I won't get into here, and I took them extremely personally. In the midst of posting furiously about this, I repeatedly misgendered CARCOSA (I've now edited what I can of this, but the modlog contains a record for anyone who would care to see). I assumed that I knew their pronouns, when I should have checked if I wasn't sure, because I was focused on posting and my own outrage. This is bitterly ironic, because I was angry in particular at what I felt were invalidating statements from the mod team regarding my own gender and sexuality, and yet this led me to invalidate the identity of someone else. In doing this I failed in a basic courtesy that I owe to people in general, and the other members of this site in particular. I would like to therefore apologize to CARCOSA and anyone else who was harmed by witnessing the misgendering. I further regret that I was unable to make this apology in a more timely fashion due to being temp banned.

I promise to do my utmost to do better in the future and hope that everyone here will continue to hold me accountable.

Hey everybody!

The site has been on fire for a few days now in the aftermath of the dunk/dredge changes. While I was not deeply involved in the process of that decision, I will admit that I was one of the moderators that signed off on that decision in the end, with my belief, or hope, being that it would foster a healthier site culture. I was ultimately neutral on whether a third comm alongside c/gossip and c/counterpropaganda should be created, as I wanted to see how the situation would develop and whether it would be ultimately necessary. 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. I am being purposefully vague about this in order to maintain their anonymity and prevent any brigading.

I regret several of the actions that took place after I posted my approval for the idea.

Firstly, and most obviously, there should have been some kind of democratic input. Even merely asking the community what they thought of the issue and whether there were other potential avenues to fixing the problems should have been what happened, rather than immediately jumping to locking down two highly popular comms and then making a post about whether you all think it's a good idea. I should have spoke up about this prior to it going out. Carcosa saying that the decision was not merely an admin decree is entirely true, there was moderator input.

Secondly, we should have more closely vetted and better communicated the statements made, both those made by us through Carcosa, and also my own. I wrote a comment in the original announcement post that sought to explain the situation, and a user brought up my wording around the use of "gossip" as a comm name. I apologize, as I depicted the arguments as to why it was chosen (and again, I did not suggest "gossip" originally) as if I thought that gossip was a) feminine and b) therefore frivolous. I did not intend to portray it this way and don't believe that at all - in fact, users in the mod chat have pointed out that "gossip", far from being frivolous, can be a way for people dismissed by systems of power to protect each other.

Thirdly, the whole business with the bans and tempbans was entirely unnecessary in 99% of cases and was immature and vindictive, and just spread further confusion in an already confusing time. And Alaskaball banning themself didn't really help. As a moderator and not an admin, I was not part of the decision for this part at all, but I still feel like addressing it.

For those who may be worried, I can confirm that the Hexbear moderator chat is not a place dominated by a clique of hostile authoritarian mods or anything like that. It is made up of largely LGBTQIA+ people who want to make the site a better place. I do hope that improvements can be made to the process to further formalize it and entrench more democratic decision-making, but it is also true that Hexbear is a relatively small online forum and that the moderators are volunteers, and so it can be difficult to properly coordinate things in a timely manner. Things sometimes get rushed through, unfortunately.

I get that there is considerable frustration about the lack of real specifics of what we were even complaining about and that many people just want a straight answer, but as I said before, I will maintain vagueness on this point because their anonymity is not mine to take away and I greatly respect them. I hope there is more transparency on the whole issue from this point onwards, but I cannot be the one to grant it.

I do not plan to leave the site. I will - if the admins and moderators allow it - keep posting the news megathreads and generally being a presence on here.

Semper post,

72T

(as of posting this, I am going to sleep, so I won't be around to respond for a while)

I think that this would be the perfect post to get this community going.

Under my direction as admin of Hexbear I restructured the internal admin/moderator order. A large part of this restructure was to shift the majority of the site decisions to a larger collective of people dedicated to the site.

At the time I also reorganized the new moderator protocol to make it easier for new mods to be added and for those mods to have the power to appoint mods at will based on a vouching system. Only moderators who submitted an application were invited to an off-site moderation discussion room.

This room is where the proposals for the site were made, discussed, and voted upon. After a proposal was finished I would often write up a statement and post it for feedback and approval so that the entire process from proposal to post had as many opportunities as possible for the moderators to give input or present changes.

In light of the most recent decision I am taking responsibility as I established this decision-making process, I drafted the announcement post, I collected and edited the followup statement.

It is clear to me that I was mistaken in the effectiveness of this approach and that a more transparent approach is needed. As well as, creating more opportunities for user input need to be added.

I am more than happy to return to the admin team if the users want me to do so, but I am stepping away from all decision-making at an admin level. I will continue to be involved with Hexbear in any capacity I can and will not be leaving as a user.

Chapo.chat/Hexbear was never my project nor did I ever intend to take it over. My hope was to keep it going another day so the people that spent hours developing, coordinating, organizing, and educating on this platform could continue to do so. Everyone that has donated to mutual aid, organized fundraisers, wrote effort posts, and bad posts have done just as much if not more than I have.

I have faith in all the other admins both new and old to keep this place going and while I am happy to give my thoughts on any aspect of the site I think the best way to self-crit is to accept my mistakes and to let the other admins take the lead.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me kind comments and to those that continuously strive to make this place better.