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.
Yall don’t like my posts enough
suggestion: bi-monthly open floor post, keep it open across a weekend or something each time (close it after 4 days or so)
i’m sure the next one will be much quieter and will be more about future improvements, given we should hopefully have less to get out of our system
I actually have had no issues with the administration of this site at any point, only problems I’ve had are a couple comment removals where my tone, intended to be playful, has been a bit too vague and came across harshly. I think that’s fair and as much on me as anything else.
My biggest issues remains with a small section of users, those who are obsessed with ‘dunking’ on users who say anything they perceive to be bad. Both libs who wander in here, and Hexbear users who are just trying to speak honestly. I speak of users who are more interested in getting upbears by calling someone an injoke word in pursuit of “winning” the argument, rather than actually having a genuine conversation. These people really, intensely detract from the ‘community’ feel and are happy to destroy any good vibes of the site in pursuit of a moment of a fleeting “haha”.
Some years ago, we used to far more closely observe the “assume good faith” rule, and I think we should massively return to enforcing that and pushing it as a good attitude - Like 80% of arguments I see on this site were totally unnecessary and stem from people immediately taking negative interpretation and trying to one-up it.
That is what has stopped me wanting to interact on Hexbear much at all in the past months, I’ve done it a bit but honestly most times I comment feels like lapsing back into a bad addiction, I wish I didn’t. I would happily forever
, but for me personally, this site is unusable when Slop and Badposting aren’t blocked from one’s feed.I don’t know if this is a grievance or what tbh. I’ve been on here since basically inception and generally, I think I’ve lost interest.
I don’t know if it’s a case of too many corners being rounded off or what, but in recent times when I’d log on, I’d see at least 3-4 posts on the front page just running an inside joke into the ground, 7 pinned threads, and basically crumbs for activity outside of that.
I guess over time this site has formed to fit the needs of its dedicated users and lost a bit of the charm it had post subreddit. I just feel like I’ve walked into a friend group’s discord server as opposed to a forum, and it sorta bums me out. There’s a lot of really cool people on here but it feels like the site is losing wind and I don’t know where the fault lies.
I think the obsession with individual users and entire struggle sessions over one user’s behavior, to be re-litigated multiple times over, is a net negative on the site. If you scroll here, there’s multiple comment threads about specific users with citations about behavior and I don’t know what there is to do about that. Like one user not disclosing being a vet, like I thought the point was anonymous leftist escape from the chud filled real world? Just argue with him ffs and send ppb if he gets too annoying.
Every time I get on there’s some new struggle session about some user that everyone seems to know about. Either we need less banning, or more banning, but either way I think it’s cancerous to a site’s user base for every ban to be litigated for sport. It genuinely feels like we’re in the hold of some psy-op meant to stop any productive conversation. It’s just non-stop bike shedding over and over and fucking over it’s exhausting.
I really miss coming to this site and hanging out, I don’t expect it to change for just me though.
does anybody else feel like they maybe just fundamentally do not understand the Code of Conduct, or is it just me?
I know the subject of updating it has come up in this thread. this is not about updates; this is about my comprehension of the current content.
highlights I feel like I must be misreading:
- Please “remember the human” and be kind to your fellow leftists.
- Respect that people have differences of opinion and that every leftist has a place in our community. Discussing differences in theory is fine and encouraged, just don’t make it personal. Remember: Sectarianism is liberalism.
- We will ban you if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behavior. This is distinctly different than ribbing or grilling someone.
being unkind, making things personal, insulting and demeaning each other – these behaviors are common here.
- Private harassment is also unacceptable. No matter who you are, if you feel you have been or are being harassed or made uncomfortable by a community member, please contact one of the comm mod’s or any of the sitemod team immediately. Whether you’re a regular user or a newcomer, we care about making this community a safe place for you and we’ve got your back.
emphasis mine. this might be true for DM harassment, but is blatantly untrue in public. account age definitely affects moderation decisions, and it probably should?
- Likewise any spamming, trolling, flaming, baiting or other attention-stealing behavior is not welcome and will be banned.
… flaming? will be banned?
- We are a platform that welcomes anyone who wants to be here in good faith. With that said, we are also an intentionally leftist platform; conservative and reactionary ideologies will not be tolerated here.
emphasis mine. I wish it were more clear if this goes for the admin/mod team or the community at large, but regardless, in practice, this doesn’t seem to be true, but maybe there are judgements being made about sincerity/good-faith that are not expressed explicitly enough for me to pick up on it.
Be aware of your own enjoyment of the site.
- If you find yourself no longer having fun, do something else. There are many different comms on Hexbear, and many different ways to shitpost and have fun.
- If the site as a whole is just not cutting it for you, take a break. We’ll still be here when you get back. Nothing should compel you to stay.
- The site is deliberately designed to be a relaxing sort of fun rather than an addictive one. We do not want you to remain on Hexbear if remaining on the site is no longer fun for you.
this is all advice I have taken before when I have gotten too down about the social dynamics here, and I will again, but it seems like some people do feel compelled to stay here, to their own detriment. idk what to do about that, or if anything should be done at all; it is just a thing that I have noticed.
- If we ultimately determine that a user has become toxic and is fixated on complaining about the site, we will ban them. We are always open to feedback and suggestions, but if we notice someone that constantly posts / comments about how much they dislike everything then it’s probably better for them to find somewhere else to spend their time. The rest of the community has a right to a positive environment.
this does not seem to be true, and again, idk that it should be. if an otherwise good user is focused on complaining about actual problems, should they really be banned? if so, why didn’t frauddogg get banned?
I’m not saying null should have been banned. I am using a recent example to clarify the question. I understood that many others agreed with frauddogg’s behavior, and that has made me want to understand it and square it with everything else I’ve learned about the community so I could contribute positively and avoid hurting anyone.
again, I’m not suggesting changes; I am expressing confusion about these statements that don’t seem to align with the realities of this community. I feel like I don’t get it or I am missing something or just misreading these things.
Wait, what did I miss?
General notice: We’ll be wrapping this whole thing up by around about Monday.
No grievance really, but can we change the featured posts into something like an iframe situation where they could be scrolled through and appear separate from the rest of the post feed? Are iframes even a thing anymore? I’m dating the fuck out of myself with my archaic geocities coding knowledge. Just kinda spitballing here, as I’ve seen multiple posts about how there are so many megathreads things seem to get muddled. I feel like maybe that could tidy things up a bit, if it’s even possible
heavily edited bc my original comment was an adhd hasty braindump, just like most of my posts
I think y’all are way too comfortable with banning a comrade in otherwise good standing from the site for all time based on a single day’s series of interactions where they said something wrong or got heated or defensive. I think the same goes for removing comments or temp bans when someone says something a particular mod disagrees with.
We all have bad days, we all make mistakes, we all have bad takes, and not everything requires mod action.
The attitude I see mods repeatedly voice to justify banning a comrade for all time is that they can just make an alt so w/e. Can you imagine a community you get significant psychic peace from all telling you they never want to see or talk to you ever again and your first response is to go buy a disguise so you can go join the group again?
(I also think requiring temp bans to post in c/selfcrit is psychotic. Being banned or even just being flamed on the boards is humiliating enough, and people learn from those experiences. Forcing the users to engage in this humiliating public process feels like an abuse of power.)
I just wish y’all were more comfortable doing nothing sometimes.
I just want more empathy.
Reading through this thread I see a lot of people with a lot of problems in their lives who use this site at least in part as an emotional safety blanket, who really need it to stay that way.
What this functionally means is that drama is kept to a minimum, and that behaviour where some people take a situation from 0-100 instead of talking, assuming good faith and coming to understanding is discouraged or actively fought as it’s a corrosive behaviour that I do not think has ever led to anything good on this site ever.
Lastly I’ve already mentioned, but vibes-based moderation must be avoided such that a moderation action can be described to neurodiverse members of the site in an explicitly understandable and non-vague way so that person can actionably change that behaviour.
Was making an official mod statement about the correct way to post about luigi really necessary?
It’s also not entirely clear to me if posting about Luigi is still banned on c/cth or not
Im gonna come out and say it. There are to many beanis posts
Please ban animated avatar images. They drive me fucking nuts. Its so so obnoxious. Every post that has one is inherently annoying and makes me dislike the accounts/people associated with them. Its so rude.
The site has been enveloped in multiple debacles for multiple months now and I found the atmosphere to be terrible, I don’t know why exactly this was the case so I can’t comment on specifics. I find it concerning how it got so bad though. Tc69 moderated in a manner that a lot of the userbase felt inappropriate and she consequently deleted her account. Then afterwards a different admin banned multiple users for one upvote and another admin explicitly said they were against this. Why did this happen, what was achieved? This can be interpreted as at least one admin having contempt or animosity towards the userbase.
For a while it also seemed like there was a disconnect in how most users approach the site versus how some users on the mod/admin team view it. The impression I’ve gotten is that most people use this place as a lighthearted place to socialize free of the worst right wing radiation that permeates society and additionally to essentially commiserate. I don’t think most users come here with an abundance of energy and an overdrive to learn unfortunately.
What’s the current status of moderation rule 6?
If the user comes back under a new account and continues to make trouble, they will be banned.
From my reading, banned users are explicitly allowed back if they don’t repeat the behavior (and I know this was definitely the policy in the early days). Catradora_Stalininsm was site-banned for “sustained anti-veganism after repeated warnings and a previous ban” (I can’t find the previous ban, maybe another account?), was unbanned, was banned again for “Violating the terms of previous unbanning (ie. not engaging in antivegan argumentation)”
From rule 7, it seems like this should be permanent:
Moderators may choose at their discretion to un-ban the user if it was a first offense and they offer the offended party a genuine apology.
Instead she came back as HelltakerHomosexual. She was banned for ban evasion, then unbanned, so admins knew who she was. Also Lyudmilla is all but explicit about it here. She had 14 comments removed for hostility, and multiple for anti-veganism, before getting site banned again.
So would she be welcome back again? Would a ban for “ban evasion” get reversed again?
It’s probably a similar situation for dsplayer -> melina -> beluga -> waterbottle (actually banned for ban evasion) but I’m not going to dig through the modlog for that right now.
