As a transwoman, I understand that feeling of acceptedness within the Chapo community and I can imagine the feeling of betrayal that they must be feeling. I joined about a year ago at one of the lowest and most pivotal points of my life and the community has helped me to grow as a person and to really turn my life around for the better. I'm personally trying my best to provide the same safe and protecting community for trans and non-binary people here that I saw in the subreddit that allowed me to blossom so heavily. However, a blank slate means you let go of the things that happened in the past and we all move forward on this new platform, where I have taken steps to ensure that trans people are more protected so situations like this do not arise. Spamming the Lemmy does not constitute a move forward.
Marie stated in one comment that, "I was, unfortunately, misgendered by someone on the discord (and had been multiple times by that point) and so I expressed my feelings that not enough was being done to protect trans comrades." If they looked at the trans and non-binary dedicated community, they would see several points where I have provided updates on the site-wide pronoun tags (entirely separate from community flair, I might add) that are coming down the pipeline of updates, which I strongly pushed for and had the pleasure of discussing and brainstorming with the developers to make a reality. I personally didn't think the Discord had the capability to fully prevent misgendering because it would require someone to click on another person's profile and self-investigate? So how could that be improved moving away from the Discord? On the Lemmy, pronouns will be immediately next to your name site-wide leaving no excuse for misgendering going forward.
Someone else stated that "it’s kind of depressing that lgbt spaces here are empty" and "it raises the issue of what the priority is in affirmatively making sure there is a space here in chapo for our queer comrades to have a home, vs being a home for cis comrades to affirm their own perceived tolerance." It's hard to pull people to Lemmy when there is no guarantee I can prevent things like misgendering otherwise I personally would be trying to pull all of my trans and non-binary comrades here. It's actually one of my biggest concerns and I have addressed this concern in our space. I'm hesitant to really do anything in the trans and non-binary community until I can guarantee that no one will face dysphoria on that front.
I have discussed at-length with other moderators that I (and I can't stress this enough) DO NOT want cis people on my moderator board, as our people do not need cis people dictating the manner in which we can converse with each other about our trials and tribulations. Marie stated they want "reform" and for the "mod team to not be shit"? Here I fucking am. They want mods to be "held accountable for their actions"? I will absolutely swing for the fences for our people. "Will this ever happen?" they asked. Yes.
UPDATE:
I have tried everything possible to make amends. Yesterday on the statement I made allowing for any good faith grievances to be discussed, I received countless comments telling me to “talk to the Shorks”. Getting specific names of people in the Shork server was no easy feat, but I did it. I ended up reaching out to Shorkena, one of the moderators on the Shork server that Marie was kind enough to put me in contact with, and tried to pull together a group chat to have a good faith conversation about how to move forward. I tried everything to reach some sort of agreement. They’ve been spamming demanding that their voices and grievances be heard since we opened the Lemmy and I have gaven them multiple spaces space to freely do that and openly discuss grievances and how to move forward in good faith and they shuttered.
I gave them every opportunity I could possibly think to give and they squandered it and even went as far as mocking me within their own server and digging up drunken shitpost Tweets to openly mock me about instead of discussing their actual grievances with me, which you can see in the Imgur directory below.
I remained hopeful throughout all of this that I could pull something off and end all of this, but I have concluded there is no good faith attempt here anymore.
For all of those interested, here is every interaction I’ve had with any of them involved: https://imgur.com/a/rfN6joQ
REMOVED IMGUR ALBUM SO THOSE INVOLVED WILL NOT BE DOXXED.
I just want to emphasize that Discord Bad and bringing bad discord blood to the subreddit/lemmy makes the subreddit/lemmy bad.
TLDR: Discord bad. Blank slate on Lemmy good. Leaving behind Discord bullshit biggggg good. Trans people feeling safe and welcome here like I'm working hard to do HUGE GOOOOOOOOD.
Mods/Admins have stated that "clean slate on lemmy" is out the window apparently? I don't really feel safe in a place where it feels like people get banned for just disagreeing :(
The clean slate on Lemmy is for those people who don't act in bad faith, brigade, and spam with others.
Marie has been involved in that since the initial dev instance prior to us going live, and then subsequently in several other brigades since then. Other users here who have been banned from discord have been allowed to create accounts here and post under the clean slate; the difference being that they have not acted as spammers, brigaders, and other wreckers have.
Leaving behind Discord bullshit biggggg good
I feel like that's been code for just ignoring the legitimate grievances raised. Telling the trans community to just get over it isn't going to make them feel comfortable returning to the greater chapo community.
Let's take a look at those two statements that you in particular made. 1)"it’s kind of depressing that lgbt spaces here are empty" 2) "it raises the issue of what the priority is in affirmatively making sure there is a space here in chapo for our queer comrades to have a home, vs being a home for cis comrades to affirm their own perceived tolerance."
I came in as a mod AFTER all of this blew up. I'm not saying to get over it. I'm saying that instead of making blanket statements that they're empty or not a priority, you could ask what could be done to help with the endeavors that I've been working my ass off to think of and plan out so trans and non-binary people in particular can feel safe, welcome, and comfortable here. I personally did not like the Discord and I've analyzed functions and flaws of the Discord that opened up my people to transphobia and mistreatment and tried to improve upon them here. I'm open to hearing out grievances so I can more properly and efficiently make adjustments as a community leader so that my people feel more welcome here. If there are grievances that I haven't addressed in this thicc statement, by all means, post them in the transenby_liberation community that is ran by trans/enby people and for trans/enby people.
Admins know what the grievances are. They can reach out to the greater trans community.
Can you stop speaking like you represent all trans people please? You don't. There are a lot of us here that don't agree with you. This splinter group looks like it's what? 10 people at most?
100+ trans comrades. and there seemed to be a positive response to my thread so at least a proportion of people agree with me.
X to doubt. The spam I've seen in new isn't anywhere remotely close to that lol, nor is the participation in any discussion on the topic.
That may be true, but I don't care what cis mods think, if I can be so frank. As a transwoman coming into moderating in the middle of all of this, the only thing I give a single fuck about is giving my people a home free from cis bullshit run by and for us. If you have additional grievances, post them in the transenby_liberation community.
I already posted my concerns and the thread got locked. Why should I have any confidence the community will be heard out in good faith when no actions have been taken to indicate that they will be. The issues are well known at this point. It's not an issue of stating them. it's an issue of them yet being addressed.
The thread was locked during a time when I was at work and unavailable. As I previously stated, I literally do not give a single bother what cis mods think. I am here now and I am very available to listen to grievances. I have no preconceived notions of what modding looks like as I've never moderated a Reddit, Discord, or Lemmy until now. I'm just someone with a vision of a healthy, safe community for my people. If you have legitimate grievances that I haven't addressed or suggestions on improvements to the community I'm working to build for my people, please tell me them now. Make your grievance known to me in particular and I will try work to improve upon them.
I think this is conflating a "truth and reconciliation committee" approach with a "blank slate" approach. With a blank slate approach, feedback and suggestions don't need to be couched in previous discord discord.
If there are concerns, they can absolutely be addressed and fixes implemented without re-litigating disputes form another platform.
Blank Slate Approach: I'm worried that the current structure is vulnerable to insert general concern and suggest corrective action to mitigate the risk of this occurring. ✅
Importing Discord Drama: I have been harmed by user X on different platform y and want to know what actions will be taken against them here. ❎
I don't see how classifying what's occurred recently as "drama" pertinent only to the Discord platform is productive to the conversation here. The factors that lead to this "drama" are inherent to both communities.
A "blank slate" policy in this context meant leniency towards people that had been targeted in recent banwaves on Discord, not a full dismissal of any conflict that had occurred on the platform.
The factors that brought this “drama” are inherent to both communities.
Strong disagree. I think the structure and format of Discords is a large driver of this sort of thing, because we never encountered anything like it moderating the very large subreddit.
If this place is going to go anywhere, there needs to be an influx of people from the subreddit who (like me) never went to any of the discords so that they can water down the two feuding communities until they are no long meaningfully distinct.
A "blank slate" means that I personally don't give a single bother about past conflicts, actions, brigading, or whatever so long as they're willing to exist peacefully within the community I'm trying to build up and will continue to build for and by my people. I'm new to modding, past conflicts are not my problem. What is my problem is that my people do not feel safe or welcome here and THAT is something I have a say in. THAT is something I can work with and make improvements upon as a community leader.
The problem was bringing Discord mods to be the mods here. It's such an inane decision considering they're the reason the Discord fucking sucks.
I don't think it's the only or even the primary reason the discord is bad, but ideally the subreddit style moderation/moderator waves will return as this community grows beyond the original nucleus of discord users.
the subreddit style moderation/moderator waves will return as this community grows
It will not though, the subreddit's mods were lax and Beatnik wasn't in charge. He is here and apparently has promoted only the most prudish people who want to impose moderation on everything or they don't feel like they're doing something, which is exactly what a new community does not need. Clearly this will only be realized once it's too late and this place is straight dead.
I pretty sure Beatnik was a subreddit mod in the Latter-days. Since he's the site owner and set up the lemmy's he's going to have initial control over things, and sure, there's going to be an initial clique of mods that he appoints from his social circle.
I'm not overly worried about that as a temporary reality though, unless they walk back their plan to have a subreddit style moderation selection process take over the reins.
yeah, Beatnik was the mod who used the vapourwave images on the megathreads
its just weird that this platform attracted the most drama-mongering people to whine and moan about the drama on the discord
If I could never hear about the discords every again that would be great.
im of the knowledge that you were free to shut up about them any time you had chosen
considering this whole post was created for people to whine and cry to their mommies about the discord, which is filled with people who werent flaccid reddit powermods, i think it's gonna be pretty hard for me to stem the tide
A lot of drama between a small group of people. Some of the drama was serious (pedo-defending mod who got axed) while some of it was less serious and made to seem like a bigger conflict than it actually was. Some of the conflicts were centred around people accidentally misgendering users, which is what this update is supposed to remedy.
I basically just checked the Discord to see when the Lemmy was done cooking
that's why pronoun tags are in the works. calling each other comrade is a roundabout way to make misgendering technically not a problem rather than addressing the root cause - the presumption that people are cis men (or trans women upon learning that someone is trans), i.e. cissexism.
this is insane, not using pronouns is clearly a reasonable way to not misgender people. how is that "a roundabout way to make it technically not a problem"? aren't gendered pronouns a weird and unnecessary holdover from a sexist language history? why not call everyone comrade?
my gender is part of my struggle to become myself. choosing not to recognize that takes something away from me just as much as forcing me into the wrong category. if the genderless form is right for you, that's great, but it's not mine. there's more to gender than the oppression of old hierarchies and eliminating them won't eliminate gender entirely, just the coercion and enforced categorization. I'm not arguing against a genderless or neuter gender default but rather the active refusal to recognize that I am a woman.
do we wanna talk about who the pedo-defending mod was defending?
I could be wrong but I thought they (the axed mod) were defending pedo shit (loli drawings), not a specific pedo person.
The conversation it happened in was centered around a particular person. And it wasn't the person who was banned.
The admin who was removed for defending loli was not doing so in defense of me, as there was no loli in any way, me being that other (ex)mod being mentioned. The allegations against me are baseless and it really hurts to see myself being called "the loli person"
Scared to even defend myself, but its just so draining. I've been getting harassed about this for weeks, I'm scared to even check here or discord for fear of seeing yet another shitstorm where people are calling me a pedophile. It's a waking nightmare and I'm afraid to even talk about it.
Also important to note that I was not removed: the team investigated it thoroughly, my whole online existence rooted through, even stuff from when I was in highschool was dug up, and nothing was found. Otherwise I would have been immediately banned. But then the rumors started spreading and got to the point that the rumors alone were damaging trust and making people feel unsafe, at that point being a mod was harming me and harming the community, so I stepped down voluntarily.
Sorry, this kind of turned into venting, my brain is foggy. hope it cleared some stuff up
Hey Quill, I've interacted with you a few times on the Discord. You come across like a very cool and inviting person! I'm sorry you've had to deal with all of this. I'm sure most of us libs trust you and the rest of the mod team here, solidarity forever :red-fist:
every time someone tries they get banned and deleted. Here's the full log between people that are concerned and beatnik and the owner of this site https://imgur.com/a/l7rCmKX
Ok well I clearly don't know the full story, then. Thanks for the info.
Also, I wasn't the one who downvoted you, btw.
Someone asked me to make this a top-level comment since it might get buried otherwise since it's nested deep in the thread here, so here's a very long response to the Imgur album of chat logs with the admins and all of the associated claims regarding the Discord server and its staff that's been circling around, which I hope can answer some questions: https://hexbear.net/post/3351/comment/23404
That link doesn't seem to direct me to any specific comment. Am I doin it wrong?
Weird, the link broke for me too. You should also be able to find it by Ctrl-F searching for "Looking through the log" on this page. You might have to scroll to the bottom to load older messages first.
this is what the mods say is chibi: https://i.imgur.com/jArJz56.jpeg
for real though they were defending this: https://i.imgur.com/QwjDtnb.png
You really should be putting NSFW warnings on stuff like this. It's not really allowed here anyways (hence why other mods have been removing it) but it's not going to go away so I'll address it further.
Basically everyone I've asked, including both furries and non-furries, just say that the characters in that image look chibi to them. Someone that was even detached from all this drama was saying this same thing in another thread, and you refused to just look up the countless other chibi furry images that have the same appearance and proportions as the characters here: https://hexbear.net/post/3809/comment/25656
Those are background characters that aren't the focus of the image, so they're styled differently and in more cartoony fashion. They're the adult fursonas of friends of the artist. Again, this wasn't even a commission from Quill, it was just something drawn by an artist friend using Quill's character.
But of course, it's entirely subjective and it's impossible for me to prove what something looks like. The only other thing I can say is that the site it was hosted on, e621, has a massive legal requirement when it comes to tagging and blacklisting underage content due to their agreement with Cloudflare. Because of this, they're incredibly rapid and strict with that kind of shit. In the tags, there was absolutely no suggestion that there were any underage characters in the image. If the ages were remotely ambiguous, it would've been tagged that way, but to virtually everyone that's seen it, the thought of it being underage hasn't even crossed their minds.
Whenever a different staff member on the Discord revealed themselves to be an apologist for loli shit, they were immediately banned. We don't take this kind of thing lightly. But this idea being pushed about Quill is just totally at odds with reality, and it makes all of the accusations being made seem progressively more bad-faith from my perspective.
Someone else stated that “it’s kind of depressing that lgbt spaces here are empty”
This is just a matter of posting. Make it a routine to post something every day and build a community. There might only be 5 people in it to begin with actively posting, but be consistent. YOU are this community -- the userbase -- make the space what you want it to be.
This is why I post so much in the megathreads. Its totally not because I am a loser with no life.
Not c/anime :3
I mean, in total comments sure but activity is good. It's a real community. Small but not too small to be essentially on life support.
Fuck. This thing is just going to be a bunch of boring infighting and mod drama isn't it? Damn, I had hopes for it.
Stop making posts about this shit and stop censoring people over every word that offends you then
Christ, this place is like 50% wokescolding
"Hopefully not" like, YOU'RE the Admin.
The weird censorship IIRC is a carry-over from Lemmy that they're working on improving.
Also, the admins are not gods, they're not responsible for all the ridiculous shit that's happened. The migration from Reddit > Disc > ChapoChat has been bumpy, as pretty much anyone could have foreseen. Give it time, the site's been up for less than a week.
Hey, can you ping me if/when @MrsPacMan comes back and starts posting furry porn again ? Preferably before you remove it all. It’s really important.
Thanks in advance.
👀
as she refuses to stop posting furry porn
what the fuck is happening here???? ok I'm noping out of this thread. this post is going in my collection of reasons why the discord should never be talked about on here ever again
(sincerely, a trans poster)
Surprised it took so long, that account was clearly stirring shit for the hell of it
refuses to stop posting furry porn,
Comrade after my own heart
Lol so you can just ban people when they provide you proof of bad behavior and them tarnish them with accusations of the same bad behavior on a pinned post so you can set the narrative so everyone can see. Fucking amazing.
There is literally furry porn on the page and you banned the ‘brigaders’ in the comments instead:
https://hexbear.net/post/3447
lmao you are so full of shit.
Edit: Holy shit guys these brigaders are full blown CHUDS spamming Nbombs and swastikas on this thread, we’ve banned the users everyones safe now you're welcome. lmao
EDIT2:Omg fuckwit just posted furry porn and sent me CP in the DMs and provided proof that he’s jeff epstein.
I'd go one step further and say it's LARPing fascists with an agenda to sow discord and division.
This is why FOSS platforms matter - you can add the features you need.
Discord and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Who would've thought that furry porn would be the death of Chapo
This update makes me sad. I don't understand how or why your messages to the shorks resulted in this escalation, everything you said seemed pretty calm and cool-headed
From the time I made this post last night until about 2 AM, I stayed here waiting for any kind of actual grievances to be discussed. I spent my entire Friday night after work here when I could've been doing so many other things. I left the thread open over night too. I woke up at noon today and there was still nothing constructive in this thread that wasn't "talk to the Shorks." They're acting like I'm in the wrong for giving them an hour to compile a group chat on Discord to hash things out like reasonable adults this afternoon when the reality is they had all yesterday evening and this morning/afternoon to make their voices heard like they've been demanding through the constant brigading and spamming.
To be fair, I don't think randomly DMing people and demanding that they arrange something within an hour is really the best way of going about things.
To be fair, I made my intentions clear early yesterday evening and they had plenty of time to reach out. The only response I received was "talk to the shorks."
That's true in isolation, but the "random DMing" happened after an entire day of this wild goose chase. I think, given the context, it's not unreasonable.
They don't have a concise plan of action for resolving their grievances, time to move on. One discord with a group that has a specific agenda is not representative of the whole LGBT or trans specific community. Can't win them all.
because they were unsolicited DMs with ultimatums to people who were literally asleep, and demanding they speak with her despite none of us asking.
She's been trying to get an answer to what the actual grievances are that everyone keeps mentioning but refuses to name, and the only hint of an answer has been "talk to the shorks". So when she tries to do just that, she's told that none of them want to speak to her. What a catch-22.
I really wish this wasn't the case, but the only conclusion I can draw from this is that there aren't any concrete grievances, and this is only being brought up again out of spite.
I've been myself trying to keep up with what's going on and what problems are being discussed and what has been resolved, and I honestly have no clue what the issue is at this point. I've read the original album of a chat with beatnik, but I can't make heads of tails of what is still being demanded. Apparently there is an updated version of "demands"? What are they? If there is any action the admins or the mods can take that would be regarded as a step in the right direction by you, can you tell us?
All I've seen is a link to a 32 page discord chat, the implication that cub=chibi and to talk to the shorks. It's ridiculous.
Its almost as if someone is leading you all along by the neck, I don't think anyone in the shork discord cares at this point though? I'd rather keep my transness in our own discord where I feel comfortable.
You all cared enough to openly mock my Twitter, my username, call me a cop and a traitor, and spam the Lemmy repeatedly. What are your grievances?
There's no evidence for shorks spamming the lemmy. You clearly have someone in the server, so if it were actually happening, surely it wouldn't be hard to screenshot some evidence.
That isn't evidence lol. It's evidence that at least one person has posted stuff, but it proves not who or how many people are involved.
Fair, I just thought you counting down to an hour was extremely funny and very normal behavior.
It's the behavior of someone who blew their entire Friday evening patiently waiting for constructive feedback and to hash out actual grievances and didn't receive a thing when there was more than enough time and space to do so.
I mean, that's rough now with context, but you gotta realize there was no consensus. Obviously nobody had any interest in speaking with you, and whoever asked you in the first place had no idea what they were talking about.
There's no proof there's any brigading from the shorks tho...
So a bunch of random alt accounts all spamming the same thing which was something the admitted shork members were trying to convince others of? I literally have a screenshot of a shork member admitting to spamming...
Look, there's clearly someone providing OP with screenshots from the Shork server. If there were anything really going on, don't you think screenshots of it would've been included?
It's what the mods accused people criticising them of.
I said it above and I'll say it here too:
From the time I made this post last night until about 2 AM, I stayed here waiting for any kind of actual grievances to be discussed. I spent my entire Friday night after work here when I could’ve been doing so many other things. I left the thread open over night too. I woke up at noon today and there was still nothing constructive in this thread that wasn’t “talk to the Shorks.” They’re acting like I’m in the wrong for giving them an hour to compile a group chat on Discord to hash things out like reasonable adults this afternoon when the reality is they had all yesterday evening and this morning/afternoon to make their voices heard like they’ve been demanding through the constant brigading and spamming.
Lmao all the people downvoting this. It's hardly reasonable to just randomly DM and demand that something be done within an hour.
It's unfortunate, there's some legitimate complaints about the modship and things that can be (and are) improved on but any discussion on this is getting drowned by people who have an axe to grind
I have given them a space to voice those concerns in good faith but spamming isn't the way to make those complaints. I can't control whether or not they get downvoted to oblivion and I don't care if they do. I'm still listening to anything that's not spamming furry porn.
I think this community is moving in the right direction and you're doing a lot of stuff that is good and generally seem to be acting in good faith. Because of that good faith, and since you're a new mod i would like to provide gentle feedback that your conversation with Marie was a lot more productive compared to the other people, and i don't think it's a coincidence if you compare how you opened that convo compared to the others. Messaging someone out of the blue for the first time to ask if they are doing shitty stuff or that they have exactly 1, chosen by you, hour to talk is not going to set up the conversation to be productive. Like if the mayor picks one or two black lives matters protesters out of a crowd and is like "hey is it you fuckers that are starting the fires?" and "you have exactly 1 hour to make your demands and then your window closes forever" it's just straight up not going to be a healthy conversation. I would also be defensive in their position:
- I have what i think is a genuine grievance with this place (and some of their grievances are genuine - you admitted Marie should not have been banned)
- I get messaged out of the blue asking if i'm responsible for some shitty stuff (and you admit later it appears to just be one spammy guy and not even related to this)
- Then i get an ultimatum that i must drop everything and become the spokesperson for an entire group of people's grievances, and must discuss it all immediately with you during, once again, our very fucking first conversation and i only have an hour to do so with no advance notice.
I'm sorry but those actions are not good faith steps to reconciliation or hearing their "side" out. Now, i am not trying to turn this into A Thing since i think you handled the convo with Marie well, like i mentioned earlier. I just think in the future you should learn from what did and didn't work with starting a productive conversation. And obviously i am making no excuses for the mean stuff people said to you either.
I think I'm gonna leave for a bit and come back when you guys have figured out what this community is.
Just my take, but I don’t remember seeing any of this drama on the subreddit and I think a lot of it has to do with size and small(er) group dynamics.
Like for all I know there was equivalent nonsense going on, but the scale of the sub and the amount of content basically meant that you did not have to engage in the drama.
