hexbear

Im gonna come out and say it. There are to many beanis posts

In discussions like this I think multi-posting should be encouraged. Posters who have several points to make which are not directly interrelated should be encouraged to break them up into different replies. This makes conversations much easier to follow, clearer, and more direct, as well as making upbears directly count agreement with the specific idea being discussed (Not to imply we should care about/continue to have a points system, but since we have them we might as well).

It would be a good idea to have something like a hexbear ambassador account on a more "big tent" instance like lemmy.ml. This account would post tailored responses specifically to posts and answer questions in other instances which have to do with hexbear. It would also in a very neutral and un-bannable, but firm tone correct posts in other instances which promote obvious and provable misinformation about our community.

This account would "explain, while not necessarily promoting, the hexbear line" and flatly refuse to engage in any form of "debate" as being "out of scope for this account". This would get it past liberal tone-policing moderation, which silences hexbear voices and leaves "civil-toned" lies and implications.

I nominate @Civility@hexbear.net to run this account (/j)
I actually propose an @bureaucrat-type account run by a small number of hexbears.

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.

My only current complaint is that there's so many things pinned to the front page, it's like nothing's pinned, and announcements and events get lost in the soup.

Is there some way to give the megathreads their own dedicated space?

Wish the site would get a Patreon, the liberapay thing weirds me out plus I am lacking in executive function so signing up for something else is a challenge. If the site had a Patreon I would happily kick in 5-10 bucks a month and others would as well, I am sure.

I have asked about this in the past and never got an answer. Hopefully the donations are enough right now to offset the hosting costs. I will say I have noticed more stability related issues in the last month or two.

On the drama piece I have no idea what you're talking about and am here for at least an hour every day. Probably means I blocked the drama stirring users a while ago

I'm going to vent about site culture for a moment, feel free to ignore.

I think there is a contradiction in the hexbear culture, where we talk about being comrades, but users dont bother offering some grace to users when they accidentally say something offensive. Conversely, users aren't humble and don't question their own chauvinism until they get temp banned then they finally posting on c/selfcrit. Obviously, the latter scenario is worse (JUST ACCEPT THAT YOU WERE OFFENSIVE AND APOLOGIZE, DAMN!) but the former is still corrosive to the site experience and it upsets me especially when mods do it. Like, either be chill or ban, set a good example.

I don't think this is something admins can fix, necessarily, but it makes this place feel like Reddit and it pisses me off sometimes. God damn, most of the time even if I want to fight about something I give up halfway through typing my diatribe, how people can get through several comments of being in the wrong/being an asshole to a supposed 'comrade' without taking a breath and reassessing what has been said, I will never understand.

Edit: Genuinely, I think the song How to Save a Life by The Frey (CW: the song is about an intervention) is a decent guide of what I mean by handling call outs with grace.

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.

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.

There has been a lot of talk about potential changes to how we feature/site-pin posts.

Basically there are two sides, one that says use the +/- icon on the bottom right of the featured posts to hide them and pin as many posts as we want.

The other side has proposed on having a single "portal" post featured, and within that post all top level comments must be a megathread, event (hextube/reading group), or fundraiser. In the event of a meta-post it will be featured along-side the portal which will be updated as new megathreads/events/fundraisers are commented