After the recent struggle session which resulted in
CW: It’s pretty self indulgent considering the gravity of the actual situation.
I am left disquieted due to various people who represented zionists positions directly or held space for these. Particularly (but not only) those who are admins and mods. People who think the above image is a “holocaust flag”. And otherwise seem to have conjured a fictious form of anti semitism, just for deploying here.
Well OK maybe it is allowed to give people a week or a month to mull things over and reconsider their positions. But do we come back to it? Or should I just seethe with resentment, hold a grudge, and snipe about other things going forward?
On the other hand, the majority & plurality were on the correct side of things. So that’s good. I just… Idk I don’t expect hegemony but this is literally such a simple issue. I don’t know how anyone who feels different could feel comfortable on this site. it’s like learning mods/admins are triggered by a guillotine.
In some ways it could be “the fighting is so fierce because the stakes are so low”. (The stakes = emojis)
But on the other hand, the stakes are so huge and this is just the scale of fighting that’s near at hand.
Nobody ever accused me of being perfect and well behaved so maybe I’m just throwing stones from a glass house. I explicitly must consent to whatever critique in that regard.
I would like to suggest that on the new user signup page the question be changed to read
What are your views on GSM / LGBTQ rights, racial justice, animal liberation,
Although I have no idea what sort of answers people make to these. So maybe it’s stupid.
Fucking shit. People are fucking being fucking murdered right at this fucking moment.
We are going to let this post become the meta discussion post for this topic. Please do not make comments or posts discussing this elsewhere.
I am asking for specific actions to take and to please give us time to respond and to act as we have a mod team across diverse time zones.
Top level comments that are vague or hostile may be removed.
Suggestion: What if we move on from talking about emojis and have a more productive discussion about ways we could oppose Zionism that might have some kind of actual real world impact (however small)? Personally, I feel totally powerless to do anything to stop what’s happening right now. I’m guessing others feel the same, and maybe that explains some of the frustration going on. Maybe if it would help if we had better ways to direct that. I don’t know, just thought I’d throw that out there.
I think that is a great idea and agree with the explaination for the frustration, I think that we will lock this post and make a meta-post on the deeper issue mentioned here about the response and some of the problems with the mod/admin team during the week.
I think you should remove this comment and remake this intended meta post as a proper stickied post so there is actual proper visibility instead of being buried as a comment on a post that is reaching the end of its engagement.
And this needs to be remade during the weekday since weekends are less active.
Really? I thought it was the opposite, though maybe it’s a timezone related thing.
We discussed doing that but didn’t want it to seem like we were stifling the discussion so it could be done right but I’m happy to do so, including what AssortedBiscuits said about posting and pinning during the weekdays
Suggestion: ban everyone who upvoted the “holocaust emoji” comments made by prof owl or made similar.
We had committed in the past to not using upvotes as the sole metric to ban people. Should we move away from that commitment?
No, absolutely not. Having no real stake in this whole argument I do not want it to start catching strays from people who simply thought in the moment, “Hmmmm good point” and upvoted and moved on with their day. So silly to start axing people who aren’t instigating bullshit.
Personally as gross as I find it that anyone’s upvoting that kind of rhetoric I really don’t like seeing upvotes as part of any kind of mod action. It’s (1) easy to fatfinger an upvote and (2) a kind of overly close scrutiny that I’m not convinced is productive or even appropriate. It also feels like something that would be very, very easy to either selectively enforce, or to just apply haphazardly in a way that looks selective, because who is taking the time to make sure everyone who upvoted a shitty take is banned?
One important lesson in ethics is that while the most important thing is to behave ethically it is also extremely important that one’s behaviours appear ethical - ethical behaviour that looks unethical undermines trust just as much as actual unethical behaviour. It’s why transparency matters.
If nothing else, those who expressed such sentiments in a comment. It wasn’t just owl, yet owl is the only who has gotten a deserved consequence so far.
Furthermore, some people have been banned on mere suspicion using AI tools that indicate they may be an alt, it’s a laugh to claim any standard.
We didn’t use AI tools, I went and looked at hundreds of posts and comments individually to determine that Zposter has had around 15 alts over the years that have been used for upvote manipulation and sockpuppet comments/posting/DMs to further engage in bad faith with the site
I was going to type a genuine suggestion, comedically framed as being a “Down to the countryside” sort of labor program for PMC (Posting Managerial Class) parasites to develop the correct class character, but I’m not gonna leave it to anyone’s terrible reading comprehension to interpret correctly.
Since the common reaction to being caught enforcing a bad take is “mhmm, maybe, but who cares? there’s important stuff to be done” you should put them to work doing that important stuff. (punitively) make them do book reports, research, reflections on IRL organizing and maybe that can remind them the difference between cultivating cutesy posts on an account that makes you feel respected and important, and actually participating in the struggle for socialism.
I don’t understand what you are suggesting, is it that anyone that makes a mistake on a mod action needs to write a book report, research effort post, or something to that effect?
In my opinion those, like self-crit posts, should just be made on their own without having the punitive aspect attached to it, in addition a mod/admin posting about irl organizing is exposing them to the doxxing/death threats we received before.
no- well yes, but also anyone who doesn’t make mistakes should also write a book report. everyone writes a book report. or they write about something else, if they’re smart enough to do it without doxxing themselves.
I agree we could use more effort-posting, I have a lot of respect for the people leading and participating in the book clubs.