Man, so. My serious of thoughts rattling around in no particular order.
MSB staff can share whatever they want of their justification for my continued ban. I don’t care.
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BMD is not a protest of MSB. Nor was it made in response to the Hogpit on MSB being renamed and having a new Code of Conduct issued for the site. BMD was made before that happened. It was made because a bunch of folks were banned and a bunch of other folks lost confidence in MSB moderation, so they made a new community. At most you could call it a vote of no confidence in MSB. But the repeated idea that a bunch of people were just mad at MSB saying everyone has to be nicer, that all these people just wanted the ability to be cruel and so they left, is bullshit. The timeline doesn’t hold up. People left because…
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The social contract between administration and a large portion of the active userbase was broken. Pretty much every other time I can recall an MSB staffer asking folks to chill out, move threads, take a breath, etc., it’s been respected. Or if it hasn’t been, people haven’t been affronted at seeing others get warnings. So why was this instance different? The popular answer I see trotted out on MSB is that it was all about Derp’s appointment, that people couldn’t stop arguing about Derp. Except, if you go back and reread the actual thread, that’s not what happened. Sure, some people were making quiet exits, because they didn’t trust Derp in an administrative capacity. But the reason people started getting vocally angry was one single ban that appeared to be entirely without merit. Two users had what could at most be called a tiff over DMs, they yelled some Last Words at each other over their shoulders, and then one side – the one who opened and continually extended the conversation – decided to report this under the guise that it was some sort of harassment. So you had someone who, at most, got a bit snarky in their exit, now being presented as someone guilty of actual harassment, and the community takes harassment pretty seriously. A number of people, myself included, had access to the log of the conversation, and found it a wildly out of touch response on the part of staff. And, when frustrations were voiced, staff doubled down.
There’s a social contract in every community, and when one side is seen to break it, it has a destructive effect on the community at large. That is why you saw such a strong reaction from a lot of posters who have never caused issues before and who only engage in debate rarely on the board. (I’m not talking about me here, as I know I’m argumentative, but people like tsar, Third Eye, etc.) If you lose the confidence of your userbase as a staffer, if you are no longer trusted to treat people fairly, then it is no surprise when your requests for silence aren’t respected. When people are angry about staff misconduct, then requests to not speak about the staff misconduct will be taken as silencing tactics.
That is what happened.
Had that first ban not occurred, I do think you would have seen some people leaving MSB due to not trusting Derp in an administrative position, but I don’t think it would have shaken out the same way.
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People who don’t even know Mietze, who aren’t even friends with her, should stop using her name as some sort of tool or proof or justification. Her name isn’t a weapon for you to wield, and it makes it very clear you have no idea what’s going on there.
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It is very, very clear that the decisions of who to unban were not based in any reasonable justification. The reasoning for not sharing anything about why some people were unbanned while others weren’t – and no, a general “we made reasons based on things” is not a reason – is thin enough to be transparent. If Derp had shit on me, he’d share it. There’s been talk at other times about keeping out the “line-pushers” now that MSB has a new Code of Conduct, except you can’t possibly make that argument for the vast majority of those who remain banned.
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The fact that MSB staff openly asked people what they could do better and then disparaged the responses before eventually splitting the thread (fine, makes sense) and locking it (not fine) just makes a public declaration that offering criticism of MSB staff is unwelcome and will be treated with hostility. If you actually want to engender trust, you are doing the opposite.
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You have not managed to cultivate some safe, polite atmosphere. There’s open snark over there, most particularly from the mods. Some of the people talking about how safe they feel now do so because the people who will call out others when they do shitty, creepy things are now gone. VulgarKitten changed her username to Hella and slipped right back on the board. She had previously disappeared after it came to light how she had been lying about her identity on Arx for months, manipulating others, and engaging in romantic and sexual RP with players who had NCOs against her. The safety she praises you all for now is the safety of a predator who knows that a lot of the people who would publicly point out their egregious behavior are now gone, so she can pretend everything’s fine and slip back in (to eventually do it again).
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Refusing to talk about any of the offending DMs of the banned parties, but then sharing a random anonymous DM talking about not liking three people speaking up, and then acting like it’s not about the three people who had been talking critically about MSB that night is – wow. Hugely manipulative.
Moreover, as indicated in the above point, the people who might feel safer are those who would prefer an environment where they are not held accountable for their actions. This isn’t actually a healthy environment. It is a pretense at civility. It’s surface deep.
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Also, if you’re going to hold the position that you “can’t speak to” the idea that Derp is bad at “women’s issues” because you yourself are a man, maybe you should listen to the numerous women who have said it? Maybe?
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Finally, good lord, if you are going to repeatedly harp on the necessity of irrefutable evidence and the ability of people to doctor logs, you cannot also then be confused as to why ANYONE would EVER hesitate to report ANYTHING to staff, Jesus Christ, please use a modicum of logic.
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Okay. That’s it. I am done. I have just had all these thoughts writhing around in my brain since last night.