VehudurToday at 8:21 PM
Simple fact is, the laws JB's organization has pushed for make the life of any LGBT server member way harder in real and quantifiable ways, and yes, simply having people like that around makes me feel less safe.

jamesa7171Today at 8:25 PM
i empathize with that a lot. i agree with your assessment of his organization, i'm sad to know he works there too, and you completely 100% have the right to feel unsafe. however, i am still not sure exactly what you are proposing should be done. i would like to know exactly what you would (and would have) done if you were part of the mod team, because i don't want to straw-man you

VehudurToday at 8:28 PM
Honestly I don't know. Stop treating me like a perpetrator for saying "yo this causes harm y u do this?" When I'm not even the one who initially brought it up, for starts.

Stop equating defending yourself with attacks, like IHNN is.

jamesa7171Today at 8:29 PM
it seems to me like there are two issues here. the first is whether any mod action should be taken against JB himself (or others in similar situations), and the second is whether criticism of JB (or others in similar situations) should be allowed and in what form

jamesa7171Today at 8:39 PM
sorry, i'm taking my time writing this message. almost done

VehudurToday at 8:45 PM
Keep in mind the 2k character limit.
Also IHNN has been straight up saying 'you're the problem for calling it out and standing by your views.'

And that's the trouble with centrists, "argue but not like this" is always a moving target.

jamesa7171Today at 8:48 PM
i don't see how the first of those two issues can be reasonably done. i empathize with how you feel unsafe with him in the server, but the only thing we can do to prevent that is to ban him (which seems exceptionally unreasonable, though if you would like us to ban him i would be willing to hear your reasoning). discord does allow you to block him so you don't have to see any of his messages, i don't know if that would help.

the second issue is much more complicated. my instinct throughout this entire situation has been that this topic is much better suited for a private conversation rather than the server itself. however, i do recognize that you have a point - sometimes the rest of the community can and should know about the character of its members if it's important. i think the difficulty of this situation comes from two things. 1) the situation is political in nature with a wide range of varying opinions. if JB was a white supremacist or something this would be much more black and white, but the reality is that many people disagree with your opinion on the subject. this is not automatically a reason to dismiss anything you've said, but it does mean we need to be applying the same standard to everyone - imagine if somebody felt unsafe because another member was an outspoken antifa member, evaluating that claim would require political judgement by the mods which is automatically a very sketchy area.
2) regardless of the morality of JB's organization, him working there is just an everyday ordinary part of his personal life. i appreciate that you don't like this being dismissed as "indirect", but there is really a difference. not only is it setting a dangerous precedent to make such things conversation topics, but ultimately the issue boils down to irreconcilable differences between his life and how you would like him to live his life, and...i mean i guess this relates to the first part of this, i'm not sure what can be done about that.

also, i recognize that you are defending yourself in the face of not only feeling unsafe viz a viz JB but also perceived bad moderation in various ways. however, the rest of the mod team (probably exaggerated by the fact that nobody is really sure what exactly you want) feels like you are fighting us, and not in a good way. also totally agreed on centrists but that's beside the point lol

VehudurToday at 8:49 PM
To be clear I don't want him banned and I don't know what to do because discord's tool suite is so limited.
Also "if JB was a white supremacist" I wish we lived in a time where that actually was universally hated.

jamesa7171Today at 8:50 PM
yeah, true =\

VehudurToday at 8:53 PM
I also think there's a huge difference between what you're saying in point 2 and the reality. That'd be a good point if he, say, worked for an insurance company that opposes medicare for all, but he doesn't. He works for an organization explicitly created, funded and with explicit goals of limiting other's rights.
Also I have the view that people pushing harmful shit Should be called out, but clearly you all will Never agree with that.
Also side note: Antifa is "we oppose facists and want to stop them" and I don't get why they're so hated. Because they get in fights with nazis, people who literally want to commit genocide?
Also it's not an organization lol, it's just something people are.
Help I keep thinking of more shit to add.

jamesa7171Today at 9:02 PM
i agree with that interpretation of antifa (in the middle of a proper response, but want to get this out of the way lol) and i think right-wing propaganda has a lot to do with it. a lot of people just don't know who antifa really are. however, the analogy is still valid. in the case of someone complaining that an antifa member made them feel unsafe, if a mod said "well antifa is legit so this complaint has no merit" then that is essentially a political judgement guiding the decision, for better or for worse, because if the mod team had different political views then maybe the complaint would have been acted on instead. it is imperative that we avoid that kind of situation
in any case, i respect where that view comes from, and i recognize the drawbacks of potentially sheltering people from certain types of criticism. but if calling out people in that manner is to be allowed, then it needs to be positive for the server in some way. you could argue that it is positive for everyone to know about e.g. JB's job and what it means, but that positive has to outweigh all the negatives. because of the nature of the situation (political, he wasn't even there, part of his life) you can see how the drama basically exploded instantly, and is still going. compared to messaging people in private (either JB to disagree with him personally, or people like naemuti who would prefer to know) is that better? it's hard to say, but the large majority opinion seems to think it's not

VehudurToday at 9:07 PM
Honestly I thought we were on track to have a productive and mostly civil conversation about hate groups and how people in them should be treated (which was and is a big part of my intent) until Dave derailed it with baiting.
But because that happened and made it hostile, I guess the whole subject is banned now I guess. :\
If you look at what I actually said, you'll notice I aimed to steer it away from JB personally and more about the organization. Which makes it really fucking confusing to me when half of you are saying "StOp AtTaCkInG jB" (which is what it felt like bigtime, and considering I feel attacked her in the first place, this feels like colossal favoratism leaning to JB) when that's not what I was fucking doing in the first place. Attacking his organization is not attacking him, unless you think that attacking someone's organization MUST be attacking him, in which case, the argument that him and his actions are separate from his organization also die.

jamesa7171Today at 9:14 PM
well, the dave trolling was indeed also out of line and any future behaviour like that will be instantly moderated. also, it should be said that #serious-discussions is already controversial in itself, so the politics of whether that channel should exist or not tend to automatically exaggerate conflicts that occur there. (for example, in the abortion conversation, the architect personally did not feel threatened by you but yet outside observers were scared that it was going too far and that the channel should have topic limits, etc.)

in any case, i can only speak for my own personal opinion here as far as what i felt was out of line. for me, publicly saying stuff like "i just completely lost all respect for him" (or whatever was precisely said, by multiple people) is crossing a line. criticizing the organization is 100% acceptable, but IMO the moment the conversation turns to whether JB deserves respect or not that is an attack.

VehudurToday at 9:16 PM
I mean, saying I don't have respect for him is expressing my thoughts about myself and him, not what I think other people should think.

jamesa7171Today at 9:16 PM
(gonna go refresh myself with exactly what was said, hold on)

VehudurToday at 9:18 PM
Honestly, I think I may have been a little too harsh to him. But only a little. More like, I was trying to avoid spicing it up with prettyness and code words, as that just adds to confusion.

There were so many things said by so many people it's hard to keep track what I said and what I agreed with.

jamesa7171Today at 9:19 PM
so, i think the biggest thing (for me personally) was the following series of messages:

Invalid TileLast Tuesday at 4:32 PM
...oh
i've never had my respect for someone shattered so quickly

geodaveLast Tuesday at 4:35 PM
That really should NOT change your respect for him you realize

Invalid TileLast Tuesday at 4:35 PM
no, it abslutely does
and i won't apologize for that

at that point the conversation topic was literally about whether JB deserved respect or not, which seemed highly inappropriate

VehudurToday at 9:20 PM
Didn't I try to shift it more to back onto the organization a little later, after saying basically "I already knew but don't disagree with Invalid Tile"? It's hard to remember because the conversation moved so fast.

jamesa7171Today at 9:22 PM
me shutting the conversation down was in no way an accusation of misconduct towards you specifically - there was the JB thing, but there was also the dave/naemuti trolling/conflict, and the whole atmosphere seemed to be getting heated. there had been discussion in the mod chat in the preceding minutes about whether we should step in or not, and it seemed like one of those moments where if the fire wasn't put out it had the potential to explode

VehudurToday at 9:25 PM
I don't entirely disagree with shutting the conversation down, I just think it was handled really badly in doing it itself, also both too early and too late - too late to say, honestly, "This is a flame war and needs to end Now" and too early to say "Lets stop this before it gets heated" and I'm a mod myself in several places and that's always a shitty place to be.

So I get all of your perspectives, I just don't agree fully. What I HAVE been irritated about is being treated like a supervillian for sticking to my guns.
If it had been me, after Dave's troll comments and a few heated responses, I'd have set the channel in slow mode with 1 minute responses, left a message to chill things out and think about what you say before you say it and remember everyone here is a person, and if it stayed heated then locked the channel for, like, 10 mins before trying again. People dragging drama out of channels get muted.

My intent in #meta was to criticize the moderation of it and the policies themselves, which I think were... handled badly... but it was impossible to separate that from JB I guess.
In hindsight, a much more reasonable thing (if I had been a mod) would have been to say "I'm too invested in this, but considered X Y and Z actions, someone else do it." in mod chat.
Turns out it's really hard to have a conversation without talking about why you're having it, and if the why means someone gets hurt, it's never an easy conversation.

VehudurToday at 9:48 PM
And Ajm missing the point completely (honestly, I don't think they Want to see the points i have ot make)

jamesa7171Today at 10:00 PM
the slow mode idea is good and i will pass that on to the moderation team for discussion on how to properly intervene in future similar situations. i also respect that it feels like you've been treated like a supervillain, but it has often felt like you think we are supervillains too, and just like you have been defensive, so have we. after the conversation was shutdown (which i agree could have been handled/explained better) the ensuing #meta discussion involved accusing us of preferential treatment towards JB, of avoiding accountability, and various other things. while i respect your criticism of the way things were handled and also respect that you may have had valid reasons to suspect those additional accusations were true, it always felt like you were assuming bad faith on our part. this fact, combined with the seemingly hostile tone of your messages, caused all 7 of us on the mod team to unanimously feel treated poorly and that we felt absolutely no respect coming from you (and if you did respect us, thank you, but please appreciate that we never felt it. i'm not intending to get into an argument about whether you did or didn't, i'm just saying how we felt.) for the record, when JB posted his big response and you were timed out, cowman pointed out that it was not fair to let him grandstand like that, and we have done our best to be as impartial as possible.
in any case, the way the #meta discussions have gone down cannot happen going forward. #meta is probably the most toxic and complained-about channel in the entire discord, which is saying something. i absolutely do not want server moderation to be a disallowed topic of discussion because i don't want us to be immune from criticism, but just like #serious-discussions, if it negatively affects the server it will have to go. in the future please take conscious effort to 1) state your criticisms and intentions clearly (everyone in the mod chat and even a non-mod via pm are asking me "what does lessinath even want?", which is a massive problem when that kind of discussion is taking place) and 2) please take conscious effort to keep the discussion neutral in tone. (if you can promise us this, we can promise you the same.) the fact that we are even allowing criticism in #meta and taking time out of our day to e.g. have private conversations about this kind of thing is a privilege not found in many other servers, but arguments there destroy the mood of the server and drain all of us and nobody wins.
anyway i have to go eat, i'll be back later

VehudurToday at 10:01 PM
Enjoy your food
it always felt like you were assuming bad faith on our part Honestly, I was, because that's the norm on the internet and what I'm used to dealing with.

I do have respect for you all, and I could have done a better job being less harsh, but at the same time it's so hard to convey things like that with text I'm not suprised it got lost either.

if you can promise us this, we can promise you the same. I can say I'll put a good effort in that direction, for sure.

I feel like this is the kind of conversation that really suffers from text and would have been 10x shorter, 100x smother and far easier in person, where things like tone of voice, body language and expressions make a huge difference.

VehudurToday at 10:13 PM
Ultimately to TL;DR "What does lessinath even want", bearing in mind these are ALL reductions and oversimplifications and I know that, the things I want are...

-improvements in moderating, because I feel it could have been a productive discussion before it got trolled into hostility
-improvements in policy because this really did a good job showing the weakness of the policies in place (I didn't start here, but this has become apparent)
-admitting that yes, in fact, actions outside the server do impact the server, because they just simply do, and even if none of us can come up with a good solution now (or potentially ever) the first step to solving a problem is admitting there is one, and this is a big one, because it really felt like a whole lot of everyone just dismissing this and its impacts completely just because it doesn't happen on the server.
-I didn't want anyone to leave. Because that sucks. And I'm extremely disappointed in, well, all aspects of this that JB took that route.
-improve communication vs mods-not mods, because prior to this, expecially with the Josh stuff, it felt really arbitrary and obtuse and hostile, and honestly, you in particular have taken Massive steps to fixing this issue and I want to state I think it makes a big difference.