"Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and uproot from our land but from our minds as well." - Frantz Fanon
Hello users of Hexbear, the intent of this announcement is two-fold the first is that we would like to do another community moderator drive, if you have a community idea or want to help an existing one then please send an application either through hexbear or matrix direct message.
The call for new mods is crucial to our efforts to reduce racism and misogyny on the site, we need users to report and enough mods to be able to quickly act on the reports throughout the day and night. Also, CW or content warnings are essential to the safe browsing of Hexbear.
In addition, comments or posts removed for racist or misogyny will also be accompanied by escalating temporary bans. Upvotes will not be the single reason for a ban, however they may be used in conjunction with other posts/comments/upvotes. Consider this post the warning, however, mods are encouraged to reach out to hexbear users before a long duration ban.
The second is to increase transparency with regard to the site while not repeating the mistakes of previous attempts that were ultimately counterproductive, in part due to wreckers.
Previous attempts to increase site transparency and user participation were targeted by wreckers through increasing the intensity and frequency of struggle session drama.
Using matrix's increased level of user permissions as an anti-wrecking measure while having an increased barrier to sending messages with a clear process to gaining the ability to send messages, we hope to mitigate wrecking attempts.
Leading to the creation of the Hexbear Proposals chapo.chat matrix room.
This will be a place for site proposals and discussion before implementation on the site.
Every proposal will also be mirrored into a pinned post on the hexbear community. Any other ideas for helping to integrate the two spaces are welcome to be commented here or messaged to me directly.
Within Hexbear Proposals you can see the history of all site proposals and react to them, indicating a vote for or against a proposal.
Sending messages will be restricted to verified and active hexbear accounts older than 1 month with their matrix id in their hexbear user profile.
All top level messages within the channel must be a Proposals (idea for changing the site), Feedback (regarding non-technical aspects of the site, for technical please use https://hexbear.net/c/feedback), or Appeals (regarding admin/moderator actions).
Discussion regarding these will be within nested threads under the post.
To gain matrix verification, all you need to do is navigate to my hexbear userprofile and click the send a secure private message including your hexbear username.
In closing, I want to state that this site would not exist without the volunteer labor of the moderators, who I am deeply grateful for.
I would also like to take this moment to remind people that lemmy direct messages are not encrypted, and finally please use this post to discuss these changes, share community ideas, or express interest in moderation.
Application
What is your Hexbear username?
Do you have any preferred pronouns?
What are your thoughts on capitalism?
What are your thoughts on imperialism?
What are your thoughts on trans rights?
What are your thoughts on racial justice?
What do think about current and previous protests around the world?
What are your thoughts on Veganism and Animal Liberation?
Do you have any experience with other leftist online communities?
What did those experiences teach you?
What is your approach to moderation, and how do you work with teams?
How do you deal with online drama and people who try to start things for the sake of it?
What current comms would you be interested in moderating?
Do you have any ideas for community engagement?
What is your general time availability? (Time zone, amounts, common browsing times, etc)
Element information
Element is a messaging app that lets you talk to people over the Matrix
protocol.
To get started, check out this link, where you can choose to either download Element for your platform or, if on a computer, open it in a browser.
The instructions that follow are for the desktop application and the web application, but the process is similar on all apps:
Press "Create Account"
We host our own Matrix server, so if you want you can change matrix.org to chapo.chat.
This is completely optional; users who sign up with a matrix.org username can still talk to people with chapo.chat username.
(Note: It is chapo.chat, not hexbear.net. Also, registrations aren't always open on chapo.chat; if they're not, just create an account on matrix.org)
Fill in a username and password
Hit register, and you're done!
We currently have no real method with which to increase our user base reliably. We’ve stagnated. Our daily user count has been dropping slowly since then and, without users coming in, it will slowly die. It’s also easy to say that all of this drama as of late is driving people off. All these factors taken into account and we will eventually die. User retention is extremely important when you’re not sitting on a major website.
Also, federation was a couple years ago at this point. It did do us well, but any influx of users we would’ve seen from it has long passed.
I ***try *** to stay out of these damned things myself, but somehow after being on this site for over four years and avoiding it entirely, I’ve managed to get caught up in the last two. It’s incredibly stressful, but sometimes it’s for a good cause.
I am pretty sure this site is now wholly dependent on the news mega and the Trans mega. Punishing upvotes will weaken them too.
Does the site publish DAU stats? Coming from niche forums, I don't think growth is particularly important. You have to hit critical mass to become a stable community, but at a certain point you don't have to grow to stay alive. Having more people on here would be cool, but I've been taking "the site is dying" comments fully as a joke. Do people really think hexbear is literally (literally) doomed?
We have the sidebar statistics, which I look at semi-regularly. Why? I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Hexbear has a shelf life like most websites that make up the internet. We’re not large by any stretch of the imagination. Slowly over time, without pause intervention, we’ll slowly bleed users until there are few of us. That’s just the simple nature of things. I’ve lived through the lives of quite a few message boards in my time and almost all of them are down to a dozen or less users now from twenty years ago.
Sure, the shelf life may be ten or even twenty years. No one really knows. But making extremely poor decisions like our admin staff have been making lately cause that clock to tick more quickly. It might erase minutes, days, or even years. No one can really tell. But it does take time off of it.
I use the site less and less. The vibes are off. This bit account has extended usage, but this is the first time I'm on here in days. Wait there's a new strugglesession about upvotes now?
The site has been noticeably worse recently, even if you aren't super involved in the drama
I mainly go here for the news mega these days. I'm so tired of the weird mods. I feel like I'm back in school interacting with a bunch of crybullies again.
Hexbear DAU is heavily tied to current events, we are currently having a higher DAU than we did for months before the united states election. We have undoubtedly trended towards growth when looking at hexbear's numbers over the past years.
You are correct that all websites have shelf life and am grateful for anyone choosing to spread word about hexbear but I've been clear for years that I don't particularly care about growth/numbers with regard to site priorities.
The site always has a period of doomer vibes after a struggle session, and then the site pops off when a news event happens. Im hoping the changes we are making can ensure the health of the site for as long as it exists.
We were the fourth most active site during the election (.world, nsfw, .ee) when we have been the fifth for most of this year (.world, nsfw, .ee, sh.it)
Ultimately, these statistics aren’t why I do what I do. While I don’t want to see the site die like I’ve seen many times in the past, I just want it to be a safe space for all my comrades. That’s literally it. I don’t particularly like struggle sessions. It sucks seeing the aftermath of one. There’s just nothing pleasant about them.
But if it means that my LGBTQ+ comrades, ND comrades, or POC comrades can feel safer about being themselves here, then I will wade into the trenches every gods damned day of the week.
I agree with you 100%, and I am truly sorry that you got caught in them. One of my goal with these changes is to work towards stopping struggle sessions from occurring.
huh, yeah I'm just coming from a completely different frame of reference then ig. That sounds like a pretty good page. I'm actually pretty happy with admin, so maybe we just don't see eye to eye at all lmao
Likely, which is fine. Not like this is a crucial opinion difference so it doesn’t matter at the end of the day.
Also, when I say dozen, I mean that’s the most. Several are actually just dead with zero users and my favorite has five users. Not sure why we haven’t just gone off to a discord at this point. I guess BBCode is just so much fun.
There is a discord, at least there was. Isn't that where we migrated from? Frankly though, I hate discord and I don't know how people enjoy it. I guess I am an oldhead, though.
It's run by different people. I'm still on it, but I haven't sent a message there in about 4 years.