Western intelligence has been hampered for decades by an obsession with more tech and more data, to the detriment of quality analysis. Just a bunch of spreadsheet nerds with no brain for context or application

Jeez, I was not aware that we were already at the “compulsory conscription of refugees” stage of collapse. Or maybe the s have been watching too much Attack on Titan??

And Italy will pay for it!

But aren’t those two reasons contradictory? It honestly just seems from the outside like “gossip” was chosen because the mods felt that tank posts about celebs were becoming frivolous rage bait, and wanted to give a dismissive label to that kind of content, didn’t foresee the misogyny issue, and are now taking the reclamation line because they refuse to admit they were wrong.

To be honest I have some sympathy for the stance that the million “Musk is stupid” posts per day were frivolous, but you need to realise that the majority of complaints are (and have been throughout this debacle) about

1. Poor communication of reasons behind decisions
2. Seemingly capricious, arbitrary, and impulsive mod actions
3. The perception that admins/mods want to impose changes to site culture based on personal preference and not the needs/wants of the user base

It’s about the way issues have been handled more than the content of the problem. The arguments about the content of the problem are easily comprehended and have been politely discussed by everyone. The continued insistence on imposing a generally unpopular decision is contributing to the impression of (3).

Having said all that I do want to say thank you to both admins in this thread for making massive improvements and an effort to communicate better. I think your most recent formulation of the intended content of the new comms works well and should be pinned somewhere more prominent than in Nth level replies.

There isn’t an elegant way of saying it but we use “people of marginalised genders” as an umbrella term. When talking about misogyny specifically I would probably say “femme people”.

Agreed (and I agree with your comment above as well), another reason why it’s just not a good name.

I have a speculative, probably bs theory that the rise of Abrahamic religions with their emphasis on patriarchy, erasure of female deities, and “man has dominion over the land and other species” is directly responsible for the way Western cultures have treated the planet and other civilisations

The mods of the dunk tank and dredge tank requested the name c/gossip. While there are some legitimate arguments being made relating to misogynistic societal perceptions of that word, the mods include women and enbies who disagree and specifically requested this name.

A few thoughts on this.

First of all, I don’t think this was intentional but using the phrase “women and enbies” in this context can come across as erasure of non-binary identity by implying that it’s akin to “woman lite” - I run a space for people of marginalised genders and this was one of the early lessons we learned, so just passing it on.

Secondly, that female and NB mods suggested a name does not absolve it of flaws or reduce the perception/propagation of misogynistic implications. The majority of people using or seeing the comm won’t know the backstory behind it, and valid concerns about how off-putting the name is shouldn’t be swept aside for these reasons.

It just doesn’t do a good job of describing the intended content of the comm. “Gossip” generally means interesting stories about celebrities’ lives, and isn’t really precise enough imo. Having a comm called “gossip” that is entirely full of dunks would probably contribute to the perception of a toxic site culture rather than detract.

Obviously there’s a lot to unpack here and it sounds like your issues go deeper than what internet discussions can fix, but I would recommend the following:

• stop making assumptions about people. Everything you’ve said suggests that you are making judgments about people’s entire world view and personality based on fleeting interactions. You don’t know shit about them.

• people are nuanced and contain multitudes of thoughts, opinions, behaviours, emotions, etc. their outward expression on any given day is dependent on a bunch of stuff like hunger, tiredness, stress level, etc.

• take a dialectical view. The whole point of leftist theory is that things, including people, can and do change. Implicit in your hatred is the assumption that negative things you observe are the natural or sole state of someone, which is contrary to leftist thought.

• actually make connections with people. Empathise with them. Think about why they are saying what they say. Think about how you would respond if you had the experiences that made up their life. And if the answer is “my life was similar but I made it out”, try to turn that into empathy and not condescension. Not everyone is as capable of throwing off the shackles they were born with by themselves.

This is incredibly sad to me.

If the reason you’re a leftist is that you want to win internet arguments, you will never actually organise or contribute to the cause. Then what is the point other than feeding your dopamine addiction?

Be useful.

Couldn’t agree more tbh. The self crit is great but it’s also disproportionate to jump straight to resignations. Sticking around and committing to doing better next time is far more valuable to the community.

This is the first sensible post to come out of the admin team since the start of this insanity.

Still a lot of room for improvement - not sure that “associating behavioural trends with pronoun tags” is a route we should ever go down, to be honest.

But after the past few days of being entirely baffled by whatever the hell was going on with the rest of the admins, this is a step in the right direction.

A million upbears. Spot on

Limiteddddddd. In particular I’m a big sealed apologist, each pool is like a mini puzzle to solve and it’s so skill intensive and rewarding.

I’m more into little mini engines and incremental value than combos, but I’m a big fan of aristocrats shenanigans eg Priest of the Forgotten Gods + unearth type effects and similar

Uncricketal support for the trans comrades involved in this action

Truly dystopian

I just read the thread and even though most comments are deleted you can get the flavour of what people were saying. The way that some people are almost gleeful about the prospect of a woman being physically endangered is gross.

I think there might be a difficult discussion to be had about whether there’s a link between some of the more general politically violent rhetoric / fantasising on here and an implication that any violence against perpetrators of perceived wrongs is justified. I would hope comrades are able to distinguish between supporting resistance movements and the violence that’s necessary for the overthrow of capitalism on the one hand, and violence against individuals perceived to have committed some personal moral infraction on the other. But Western and especially Anglo culture is extremely individualistic, and that has created the framework through which many users on this site see the world.

I’m not sure what solutions there are to this, but some self-reflection is likely the place to start.

I run an inclusive space for everyone who is not a cis man and we use the terminology “people of marginalised genders”. It’s clunky but it works. We started out with something similar to “womenby” but we got a lot of criticism for being exclusionary.

I guess I would tentatively suggest one group for all marginalised genders and a separate comm for discussion of masculinity.

A very faint green shimmer, more like wide hazy bands. I hate how much of the night sky light pollution robs from us. Give me back the stars of our birthright