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

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)

  • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    77·
    13 days ago

    Closing the dunk/dredge tanks is a futile change. I understand that often times it didn’t exactly produce valuable discourse and I’m sure there were instances of reactionary posts, but “get a load of this lib/chud” is like 50% of hexbear. The dunk tank exists to contain those posts, closing that community will not make those posts go away, it will just make them clutter the other communities or the megathreads. So what if the posts on there are low effort? Who cares? If I want to read actual theory, I’ll pick up a book.

    To put it another way: Many of us go on hexbear because getting mad at the same thing together feels cathartic, especially when nobody in our physical surroundings shares our political opinions. We see a dumb tweet by some liberal and we wanna have like-minded folks agree with us that it’s dumb, so we go on hexbear to post it here. That’s what the dunk tank is for and while it’s not very productive and it’s not gonna bring about the revolution, trying to stop these kinds of posts is a losing battle.

    I mean, just look at how the dredge tank came to be: Mods didn’t want screenshots of tweets by random nobodies and so they implemented a rule about it, but people wouldn’t stop posting them so the dredge tank was eventually created as a compromise. Because although it might be low-effort and unproductive, dunking on dumb tweets is what the userbase wants and it’s what they’ll keep doing. !gossip@hexbear.net is just gonna become the new dunk tank.