Drewfro [he/him,they/them]
✅ If only for my own selfish reasons: My main Lemmy account is on Lemmgrad (I honestly haven’t posted here in a year), so as long as you federate with Lemmygrad it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. If you want access to the entire Fediverse and Hexbear, just make a Lemmygrad account and you’ll be able to post on Hexbear (because it’s federated with Lemmygrad) and the rest of the Fediverse (since most are federated with Lemmygrad as well), but people from other places in the Fediverse won’t be able to post on Hexbear (preserving it for people who want the safe space).
/u/CARCOSA I’ve gone ahead and reposted the thread, ty for letting me know (and sorry I never got around to it yesterday!)
I run DnD 3.5e games in a West Marches server that gets most of its membership from Chapo-adjacent communities. Anyone is welcome to join.
We roll with it as part of the fun - the level of an adventure is posted beforehand, and there’s enough people that there’s always enough players available for a given adventure who are around appropriate. Part of the fun of a West Marches game is having players of slightly varying levels; 3.5e in particular is not really balanced in such a way that characters of the same level are always intended to be of equivalent power.
Personally, I think it’s unfair to the moderators to expect anything more from them than issuing bans for outright rules violations and warnings for less clearly infringing behavior. Part of this “siege mentality” I think comes from the people who constantly barrage the moderators to do more and more to fix what are ultimately minor problems with the site. Upvotes were removed, mass bannings happened, but the mods are still overworked, the struggle sessions are still ongoing, and the people who these policies were implemented to protect still aren’t happy - I administer a DnD community that primarily recruits on this site, and I know more trans people who were banned from this site or think the new policies are hurting the community overall than those who are happy with the changes or feel safer/more comfortable here. I don’t claim the moderators have bad intentions, just that whatever they’re doing now clearly isn’t working.
Points 1, 2.0, 4, 5, 6? Great stuff. Agreed completely. A community cannot remain healthy with a staff vs. userbase mentality.
But while you might have some points in your other suggestions, I cannot say I am as wholly in support of those. In some ways, I agree that less transparency can be good - and by that I mean, I really think that the moderators should save their smug, personalized, gloating “congrats on your ban” replies for actual chuds and not just - as you point out in point 1 - people who the mods assume are not acting in good faith but whose posts are within the realm of acceptable discourse.
On your “stop struggle sessions before they start” point, I think the most impactful policy the moderators could enforce in this regard is removing “Goodbye Chapo” posts (at least, those that are primarily whining; “college is starting, not going to be posting as often, love you guys” posts are fine of course). It’s my belief that a lot of the current struggle sessions can ultimately be derived from drama surrounding this genre of post (a kind that was rarely seen on the original subreddit) and the best way to handle it is to immediately remove any such post and grant their wish with a swift and immediate ban.
Amber
They didn’t “insult” Brooke’s post, and the poster, Terk, is a trans woman herself (and yes, I know this for certain, we play DnD together every week and I can be pretty sure she’s not a secret fascist or a “wrecker” or whatever they’re calling people these days). And the “Oh, she’s ND, it was just a mistake” shit is a bad take. Agree or disagree, what Terk said was entirely within the bounds of acceptable dialogue. Were I in Terk’s position, I would have been far less kind.
She expressed mild criticism of posting mindless “I <3 my trans comrades” posts every single day that she thought felt rote and ingenuine. Brooke blew this into some sort of world-ending personal attack and made a self-absorbed, borderline narcissistic “Goodbye ChapoChat” post and the mods, ever eager to signal virtue without using their eyes nor brains, banned Terk before stating that she “won’t be unbanned” (LMAO) and profusely apologizing to Brooke (despite the fact that no real assault was committed against her) and calling terk, who is a trans woman, “terfrockerfeller”.
It’s just the last in a long line of incidents and decisions regarding the lemmy where the penalty for a bad take (or any criticism of the moderators or their favorite users) is turning from downvotes and warnings to permanent bans for the pettiest bullshit.
