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.
Here a couple of thoughts.
If you’re an admin posting, don’t do bits. Have an alt and preferably recognisable as such.
Mod actions shouldn’t be anonymous. Own your shit.
Bits on admin/mod accounts have been banned and clearly stated as such. Sadly multiple mods were harassed for over a year before the actions were anonymous, including one that was doxxed, at the moment we are prioritizing their saftey but you are right some sort of oversight needs to happen. We will begin talking with people about what that should look like in the next few weeks.
i really appreciate the new stance on bits by admins and mods. my autism found it much more stressful than funny and i think most people felt the same.
thank you
You, and anyone else, can scold me for being an irreverent little shit if it helps.
Like imagine I’m one of those fuzzy cute animal toys with a squeaker inside that dogs love to go hog wild on, and proceed to bully away.
im imagining ur one of those toys where the eyes pop out when u squeeze it and im squeezing u super hard
Oh even better! Is it making classic squeaks or is it more of a rubber chicken screm?
more like a rubber chicken but it only makes the noises when u stop squeezing it and the eyes slowly move back into their sockets
i don’t want to scold or bully as it wasn’t just you individually, but overall i’m glad it’s recognized and that we can move forward together :cat-trans:
FWIW, I thought it was pretty clear that you getting banned was a bit, but I couldn’t say so because I was temp banned and lurking
I don’t think there’s a good way out of that. Keeping the admins and mods safe is paramount. I mean, I was going to suggest just having a single admin account and you all just rotate who gets to use it, but that’s no different than an anonymous action.