I have decided that new moderator (including a new head moderator) are needed for the future of this community. I will step back into the position of moderator that I had previously held. If enough people demand I will consider stepping down completely. I apologize for any harm that I have caused to this community.
Original comment behind spoiler tags
I wouldn’t want to be head mod because I don’t think I could commit the time a community like this deserves, but I would consider throwing my hat in the ring for a lesser mod position.
I’ve also never moderated a Lemmy community, so there may be some challenges there.
I think it’s important that any new mods understand Link’s vision for the community and what it means to create a space free of liberal/capitalist/colonialist apologia and talking points. It’s not easy to build up a community like this, but Link did an excellent job IMO of creating a space for discussion of complex topics without ever allowing the direction of conversation to be dictated by either bad faith actors or people ignorant of basic anarchic principles.
Copying a comment I made deeper in this thread here for visibility
Not sure why my other comment was removed after being up for several days, but this is clear evidence of a group of people organized on another platform to change this community. Grail and others have admitted as much in this thread and elsewhere.
I was willing to give kittenzrulz the benefit of the doubt on this, but silencing formerly active members of this community for calling out an obvious op in progress is a step too far. This is no longer a safe space for anarchists since it’s been infiltrated at the highest level by those that do not agree with the community’s guidelines or original intent.
To kittenzrulez - I know you reached out to Grail on discord in the immediate aftermath of Their original post on blahaj meta. Have you been colluding with Them since then or even before? No good faith uncompromised moderator of an anarchist space would silence discussion (including evidence) of an active op in progress. Any half well informed anarchist should be able to spot that shit from a mile away and an uncompromised moderator would shut down the offending accounts without prejudice. You chose to do the opposite and it tells me everything I need to know about the state of this community.
Edit: just checked the modlog and all comments critical of the Grail coalition have been removed from this thread for reason: “conspiracy”. Is it suddenly against the rules in an anarchist community to point out people actually conspiring against that community? Seriously kittenzrulez? Have you no historical context for this type of thing?
Yeah, this community’s carked it. Its ruler is just waiting another day or so to make sure it doesn’t get back up before issuing the death certificate and moving on. I wouldn’t have thought this would be so easy but Lemmy wasn’t made by nor for anarchists so I guess there wasn’t much we could’ve done but watch it happen and get banned/posts deleted for talking about it.
Lemmy was made by and for Marxist-Leninists but they’re very openly non-sectarian, meaning any leftist who doesn’t instigate in-fighting is welcome.
It’s really just blahaj that’s this way, I don’t know what ada has been doing but this is gonna keep happening until she gets it together.
My point was that a system not (as) dependent on hierarchy might’ve stood up better. It’s not “those icky tankies are so bad even software they wrote magically works against us” but “this software is built in a way that makes our Communities (the subreddit-like construct specific to Lemmy) depend entirely on like three people… when we’re lucky.” When one of the three gets bullied out of the community he made and the other two don’t have the community’s interests at heart, the community’s screwed unless some specific person steps up to be the authority for a new one.
…On the other paw, perhaps our failure to just go make a new, collaborative Liberty Hub reflects poorly on us. I don’t mind blaming the instance a bit, though. Dunno what I’d consider a safer, more sensible one at this point.
Ahh I see what you mean.
Honestly it comes down more to the fact that nobody else stepped up to mod before the drama.
A holdover from reddit culture is having a tight knit group of mods for each community, when it could very well be more open than that.
For example the /c/Trans comm here and /c/traa on hexbear.
/c/Trans here did open recruitment a while ago and pretty much anybody that was interested got added to the team and subsequently the matrix chat.
Hexbears /c/traa will add pretty much anyone that’s been active in the community and is trans in order to have moderation available around the clock. As a result any bad apples are culled asap, and the community is much better for it.
I do agree that there could be something that isn’t so top heavy though, but I’m not personally sure what such a system would look like.
Followup to my other comment, I remembered reading a comment chain earlier about this very issue
I have to disagree with that bottom critter: every decision gets made by one person. Maybe a ban can be reversed… later, by someone else. Maybe a post can be undeleted… later, by someone else. If the whole community votes for option B and the one mod chooses option A, option A is chosen. Any system built atop the in-code hierarchy is just a coat of paint, some lines on the road. The lines on the road don’t stop cars from hitting each other, if you get my meaning.
Now, obviously I’d prefer a “lines on the road” system where someone’s formally in charge but expected to do as the community wills, but I find myself excited about systems that build on other forms. Maybe collective ownership through voting, maybe a web of trust that can dynamically exclude people found to be harmful and maybe display a rating for whether someone’s a bullshitter or a pillar of the community. Kinda hard to keep that from just being karma but maybe it can be done! Maybe something super cool that I haven’t even seen yet. … Okay I’m kinda weird, honestly. This stuff’s neat to me 😅
tl;dr: Code is law and defines the forms authority over a shared resource can take. We should always try to make our systems (social and otherwise) better, not settle for assumptions (that mods/admins will cooperate) and just shrugging when things go wrong. Also there are neat things we can try <.<
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At this point im just trying to put out the fire but ive been doing a piss poor job, welcome to the mod team.
Good_Girl here, back from the dead to step up for this community and this community only. Proof is on my account over on hexbear
Edit: after seeing that my comments below got deleted, this instance can burn for all i give a shit. If you’re gonna bend the knee for obvious bad actors you can eat shit.
My gods, I clicked on your link and the instant transphobia on Hexbear hit Me like a brick in the face
transphobia
This link?
“instant” when You had to literally go look for something to get mad at.
That screenshot is in reply to the very first comment of yours that I clicked on. Did you report those people for their transphobia?
i’m not playing this game grail.
Hi kittenz, I can probably step up as a moderator; buuuut. I haven’t moderated any lemmy forums before
I’ve heard that there isn’t moderation tools on phones?
Welcome to the mod team
Please step down. I wish you the best, but please for the good of the community and yourself step down and step back.
That was my plan, I’ll step down tomorrow
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Hi, going to say that I would like You to not be a moderator please. The whole debacle ousting links (and completely stopping any sort of posting here) was kind of caused by You…
With the way a timeout or, timed ban (unsure of the terminology) caused the post You made in blahaj meta - I’m not confident that moderation will not be just like that.
You are not eligible to be the moderator of a major Blahaj community at this time. You approached the misgendering situation in a way that stirred up as much damage and harm to the community as possible. Whether or not that damage was intentional, it was and is real, and my belief is that, Your moderation style would continue to damage the community.
I would rather have left a comment or reported the comment, but I couldn’t because I was banned. I had to escalate My response. My response did not cause LOC to leave the mod team, they were already suffering from burnout and other issues with moderation. The change was already coming, and LOC decided to make it after they misgendered Me. I’ve been in this community since then trying to lower tensions by pointing out that the issue of division with Mindtraveller was solved, and I offered to mod in order to continue to undo the contributions My post made to the drama. I’ve been talking with kittenzrulz over Discord, and they say they have issues with communicating assertively. This has lead some users to feel that this community’s mod team is distant and uncommunicative, and this has lead to paranoia about their intentions. Having spoken with kittenzrulz, I can say that they wish only the best for this community and everyone involved in all this. They’re just nervous about saying the wrong thing and making the problem worse. They want to respect the community’s wishes as best they can. The only problem is that a lot of users want LOC back, and this is impossible because LOC doesn’t want to mod anymore. kittenzrulz doesn’t have LOC’s level of confidence which made a lot of the users here feel at ease.
Hi, I’m a member of The Outside. Vi- Grail’s moderation makes me feel safe. They are a great choice if queer acceptance and safety is a matter of concern.
i think the acceptance of grail as a mod would look on the whole inappropriate. how could the claims of a coup or an op be denied, if the person who instigated the bullying and departure of the previous head mod, became a mod in that mods place?
edit: Wrong person, sorry.
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Hexbear firmly believes Grail, Mindtraveler, DRONERIGHTS, PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES, and exocrinous are the same person or at least part of the same group.
Wow, I thought they’d love that concern trolling bullshit. Maybe I got a bad read on them, maybe I should join up, see if I can find a comfy niche or something. Might be better than depending on people who’ll defend 'til my death characters that are clearly here to cause problems. I didn’t actually think hexbears thought enough to be able to spot that sort of thing but yeah, that bunch are clearly playing incendiary games with our spaces. I refuse to feel embarrassed if they turn out to all be one person and not two with some (possibly unwitting, in some cases) support from a few others. There are definitely some alt games going on, though.
As someone who joined Hexbear from blahaj AFTER blahaj was defederated from them: Hexbear gets a really bad rap for a lot of reasons, some true and and most false, a lot of the reasons are heavily exaggerated because of how anti-communist the west has become.
A lot of their aggression is normally pointed at people who are actively being chuds or are in some way threatening the safety of trans people.
A lot of the times when it’s said hexbear is “brigading” is really just on a thread that got popular enough to show up on our All/Active page, and because the users there tend to be especially active, it looks like a concerted effort.
Usually ‘libs’ are only targeted when they actively side with bad actors or act in a way that’s anti-communist.
Join up or don’t, i’ve only had good experiences in their trans comm.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !dronerights@lemm.ee
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👍
Happy for You
or sad that happened
idk i aint reading all that
And would explain why one of the accounts now wanting to mod had no posts or comments until very recently
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Because I forgot lemmy was a thing and went back to reddit like some naïve child. Excuuuuse me for trying to be politically active. Who or what the fuck is mindgoblin?
Who or what the fuck is mindgoblin?
Mind goblin deez nuts
Not sure why my other comment was removed after being up for several days, but this is clear evidence of a group of people organized on another platform to change this community. Grail and others have admitted as much in this thread and elsewhere.
I was willing to give kittenzrulz the benefit of the doubt on this, but silencing formerly active members of this community for calling out an obvious op in progress is a step too far. This is no longer a safe space for anarchists since it’s been infiltrated at the highest level by those that do not agree with the community’s guidelines or original intent.
To kittenzrulez - I know you reached out to Grail on discord in the immediate aftermath of Their original post on blahaj meta. Have you been colluding with Them since then or even before? No good faith uncompromised moderator of an anarchist space would silence discussion (including evidence) of an active op in progress. Any half well informed anarchist should be able to spot that shit from a mile away and an uncompromised moderator would shut down the offending accounts without prejudice. You chose to do the opposite and it tells me everything I need to know about the state of this community.
Edit: just checked the modlog and all comments critical of the Grail coalition have been removed from this thread for reason: “conspiracy”. Is it suddenly against the rules in an anarchist community to point out people actually conspiring against that community? Seriously kittenzrulez? Have you no historical context for this type of thing?
