For the “bee nice” ethos of Beehaw to mean anything, the expectations have to be the same for everyone, regardless of what position of power they might hold. That unfortunately does not seem to be happening in this case. I am pretty certain that if that conversation had been between two regular users, an admin or mod would have stepped in after the first or second exchanges and encouraged them both to disengage because the conversation wasn’t productive, as I’ve seen happen here numerous times. Instead, it dragged on for several comments, getting increasingly personal and vitriolic, and was ultimately not addressed until now in a different thread. It’s hard to see that as anything other than a double standard, and your comment here appealing to the difficulty of the subject, while true, glosses over the fact that the argument on one side immediately escalated to personal attacks which were totally unnecessary to the point being made. Saying “your logic unfortunately could be used to justify much worse things you shouldn’t want to support” is one thing; saying “you would be first in line to defend mass murder” Is quite different, and diametrically opposed to any interpretation of “bee nice” I can imagine. If Beehaw wants users to always assume good faith, having an admin rapidly escalate a disagreement with a user based on an extremely bad faith interpretation of their stated position and ultimately face no consequences is not really conducive to that. While this is a different subject than the OP initially raised, I think it’s important to consider the effect of these kinds of issues on building community here when you have multiple users in this thread expressing that seeing or participating in a discussion with particular individuals has encouraged them to avoid speaking their mind for fear of retribution.
I think a good start would be to have that public response from a mod or admin saying “this is not productive, please disengage” to shut down the thread regardless of who is involved. Of course, you all can’t be on 24/7 and that may not always happen immediately, but I would hope that the same standard which would lead someone to do that would apply regardless of the people involved in the disagreement. In another instance I recall of a disagreement between a different mod and a user, the user was told publicly to disengage but the mod was told privately; this resulted in the user thinking they were being singled out, and only once they protested was it said that the mod involved was also told to disengage in a different medium. These kinds of things undermine confidence among users that the same conduct standards are being applied to everyone. If something merits a public call out, then that is what should happen, regardless of the recipient.
If that happens and the issue continues to occur repeatedly, then the consequences of that are above my pay grade—you all would at that point have to contend with what it means to have an individual in a position of power who repeatedly behaves in a way which contradicts the expectations of conduct you have of your regular users.
I’ll be frank with you—this is really not as complicated as you are making it out to be, and I can only guess at this point that loyalty is preventing you from seeing this situation objectively.
Nothing you said in this comment is wrong; it just isn’t relevant to this particular situation, and feels like deflection as a result. The issue at hand here is that an admin behaved in a way that contradicts the philosophies this community was supposedly built on, and the firmest response to which you have committed is that you have “mixed feelings” and blame the subject matter in an abstract sense for the unhealthy exchange. Meanwhile, multiple users in this thread—which, mind you, is about broader concerns with the community which many users seem to share—have said the exchange made them uncomfortable. This seems like as clear an instance as any where a moderation-heavy (not said disparagingly; the moderation philosophy, at least when applied faithfully, is part of the reason I’m here) instance like Beehaw would step in, and yet for some reason you seem unwilling to even say that the conduct was objectionable, much less commit to any course of action in response to it.
This community is perhaps best known from the outside for requiring an application to sign up. In that sense, from the very first interaction, this community is built on drawing judgments about people based on small slices of information about them. Everything you’ve said here could verbatim be an argument on behalf of someone whose application you’ve rejected—are you considering their whole person? How much do you really know about them? Are you making disproportionate judgments based on single events or pieces of information? By implementing the application policy, Beehaw implicitly takes the position that the value of maintaining a safe and high quality community is worth the potential risk of jumping to conclusions about someone based on narrow information. And yet, in this situation, we are encouraged to disregard evidence of an individual’s conduct and instead have faith in their better nature because it is unfair to draw conclusions from limited information. I hope you can see the fundamental contradiction. Yes, it is true that a founding member of a community has a different level of investment in a community than someone just signing up for a new account, and taking action against the former is considerably thornier and more costly than just denying the application of the latter. That doesn’t change the fact that taking different actions in the two situations effects a double standard.
I am trying to assume good intent and appreciate the level of thought you put into your response, but I admit that your response here is frankly quite frustrating. We all know the high-minded ideals Beehaw is built on, and for many of us, they’re the reason we’re here. We are calling out a situation in which those ideals don’t seem to have been followed, and now find ourselves somehow accused of not following those ideals ourselves by daring to question or criticize the conduct of an admin. If there is to be a separate class of individuals to which they do not apply, then these principles lose all meaning and simply become a bludgeon to keep regular users in line. I would wager that many of us would not find such a community appealing.
Yeah, I think Memmy is also not handling the increasingly long threads particularly well—I had to switch to browser because it wouldn’t show this reply, and I think it was jumbling up or not showing some other replies too.
Anyway, I appreciate you hearing the concerns. I don’t think there’s much to be gained from dissecting this particular incident any further, so I’ll just hope that future incidents (which hopefully don’t occur, but stuff happens) are handled in a way that demonstrates this feedback was internalized.
I don’t like this any more than you, but that isn’t what they’re saying. “To the extent that there is any risk…” is not an admission that there is risk. It’s a CYA statement that means “even if there was a risk we haven’t mentioned/anticipated, it would be outweighed by these benefits.” “There is no substantial risk” is also not an admission of risk; it means they rule out any risk which is “substantial” (in their subjective assessment), but no competently made proposal like this would ever say “there is no risk whatsoever of any kind” because, again, CYA.
When things are going well, so many feel like the person avoiding or mitigating risk is silly and dramatic, and the person running headfirst into that risk is brave and rational. Then, when something awful like this happens, it’s always, “No one could have predicted this tragedy!” and they learn nothing.
The NY Post got their hands on some pretty damning text messages where this CEO was irresponsibly downplaying the risks and cutting the ticket price for a potential prospect. I know he’s dead now, but I hope some sort of regulations come out of this.
Beehaw lacks community
Apologies for the clickbaity title or for the messy wording to follow. I’m not great at articulating myself....
ESRB asks FTC to approve facial recognition age checker (www.gamesindustry.biz)
A friend said he warned Stockton Rush about possible defects on the Titan in 2019 after hearing 'cracking' noises (www.businessinsider.com)
Doomed Titanic sub CEO tried to sell cut-price tickets, saying it was ‘safer than crossing the street’ (nypost.com)
The NY Post got their hands on some pretty damning text messages where this CEO was irresponsibly downplaying the risks and cutting the ticket price for a potential prospect. I know he’s dead now, but I hope some sort of regulations come out of this.