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Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.

In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)

If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.

I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.

During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.

Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.

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  • Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.

    This really makes it impossible to build trust in the admins. The admins are vetted by who, other admins? They might be "in good standing" but there are users in this site who are in good standing who I wouldn't want in charge.

    Take SalvadorWALL_E for example. This account was sitting dormant for 2 years, got promoted to admin in the middle of a heated struggle session, pissed some people off, then was purged. Was this an existing admin who wanted deflect heat? A trusted user who got promoted, immediately fucked up and got demoted? A trusted user who got promoted, immediately fucked up, and is going to continue being an admin on another account?

    I understand that it's for opsec and I'm not telling you to stop using alts, but I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt to accounts with little-to-no history.

    • There are two categories of Admins, those that have been Admins for over a year and those that are new.

      The new ones were nominated by members of our marginalized communities to help diversify the admin team.

      The specific admin you mentioned was an old old admin, that had left and then returned. At this moment the team is the same it has been the past 2 years with the addition of the aforementioned new additions.

      Going forward any admin that stepped down, and has been inactive for over a year will not be permitted to return, and that any new admins will be those nominated by users and then thouroughly vetted and onboarded to prevent this situation from reoccuring

      • Completely unrelated to the struggle session and more of a curiosity: how are admins vetted? Is it like a lets-meet-in-person thing or its digital equivalent? How do you know that you really know who is behind the handle?

        • I can't be specific but it is 100% digital

        • We just send them down to the main office and let Mike from HR brief them on their extra responsibility. It's generally not a hassle, except some of the wfh guys who have to catch a plane out to Langley and then you gotta get into scheduling and it's a whole thing.

          edit: I've been informed that I should let you know I was doing a "bit" as we fellow leftists like to do. Josh around.. Unrelated, but do you know of any cool POC community organisers? I've got a business proposition for them. And uh down with the US, fight the power, screw the man!

693 comments