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New discussion post coming soon re: Changes to Hexbear communities. mod statement in comment

Hello users of Hexbear, we wanted to inform you that we are going to be locking the_dunk_tank and dredge_tank communities. We have created two new communities /c/gossip and /c/counterpropaganda to serve a similar but clearly distinct purpose than the dunk/dredge tanks.

Not only is the dunk tank a term that has racist origins, but also many posts there were almost no effort and often times requiring later edits to show how they weren't reactionary, not useful with regard to developing rhetoric and furthering dialectical analysis of that which we dunk upon.

To that end, we wish posts of reactionaries to be placed in !counterpropaganda@hexbear.net along with an accompanying explanation (as simple or complex as desired) with the intent of countering the reactionary propaganda in the post body, as of now comments are not subject to the same rhetorical rigor rule.

For the posts that are not "low-hanging fruit' of notable people we ask that you use !gossip@hexbear.net .

These changes are mainly part of a continued effort to remove the racist and misogynistic elements from our community and grow.

Any moderators of the dunk tank or dredge tank that want to be a mod in the new communities let me know.

Any users with questions or comments please use this post, this change was made at the behest of the entire Hexbear mod and admin team. We will be looking for more moderators in an organized volunteer drive shortly, if you wish to submit an application you may send it to me via hexbear or matrix direct messages.

Use this post as a place for discussion to these changes. We will keep things as they are for 2 weeks and then reflect on the feedback, including this post: https://hexbear.net/post/3858346

As a personal addendum I am sorry if the closing of the tanks these changes removes a beloved space on the site and if you want to suggest a community to replace them you may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.

Sitewide or community changes come from proposals put forth from the mod team, discussed, and voted on by the mod team.

Any users wanting to suggest a community to replace the tanks, may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net current discussion is here https://hexbear.net/post/3858346 or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.

You may also consider using !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml as a substitute for dunk/dredge tank posts as well

The mod statement can be found here: https://hexbear.net/comment/5613033

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1.3K comments

  • Hello everyone, I want to personally apologize for how I handled this change.

    During my time as an admin I made the decision to shift decision-making from a group of admins admin to all the moderators. My reasoning is that the barrier to entry for a hexbear account to become a moderator was pretty low, and we have a 90% acceptance rate for applicants. Therefore, a mod collective is going to be the users most interested in shaping the site.

    The reason that I made this post and I edited down the discussion to the comment below is to protect any mods from harassment. Not everyone is open to defending their thoughts against the userbase and I didn't think they should have to as long as one of us was willing to engage with this post. I personally agreed with the mod sentiment that this change could be a chance to improve the site but did not mind the dunk/dredge tanks however it was a majority of mod team members that voted in favor of this change during the week+ that this change was discussed & voted on.

    I recognize I could have done multiple aspects of this better and I think it is clear from the discussion of this change that it was not the right approach.

    Another admin will be putting up a second discussion post for what we will do after some time with the current change. Closing the tanks will be permanent but the decision on if we will be opening a spiritual successor to exist alongside gossip and counterprop has not been made.

    The screenshot circulating in this thread of my statement in the lemmy instance admin chat was an attempt by me to get the drama communities on other instances closed, ultimately a failure on multiple counts.

    With all that being said, I would like to thank everyone for their input and state that I will be stepping down as admin as a result of my mistakes in facilitating the discussion, executing the change, and communicating with the userbase.

1270 comments