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.
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.
i do feel like it's getting slower, which makes my ADHD-addled ass sad
I don't have an issue with community megathreads at all, but i think the frontpage only shows x amount of posts total no matter what, so when the frontpage is populated with 8 sitewide featured posts, the default sorting ('hot' for me) seems much less effective and doesn't show you a big range of content.
We almost need a top-of-page link/heading to "Featured", next to the "Communities" one, that has a seperate page of all current featured posts. seems like a bit of work or an upstream lemmy change for dessalines, though
I don't really have an issue with the community mega threads in general, I think I mentioned it because when I log on, it's basically half the front page which might be hiding activity overall. But yeah, there's ways I could improve my experience. I think I just don't stay on long enough to actually figure it out.
As someone who's also been here for many years over many alts, I do feel like I largely relate to your experience. Blocking some comms slowed my exposure to the dumb shit, but it grows and leaks into main ever more.