I’m going through all the comms I moderate and asking for feedback from the different demographic groups.
I personally feel like we do a good job moderating hexbear in terms of blatant transphobia, there is a reason why the majority of our userbase is some flavor of gender-queer, and from a moderator perspective: this is the easiest comm to mod as it never seems to have any issues.
However, I would still like your feedback. Is there anything you feel like as a trans person that we could do better in regards to moderating both this community specifically, and hexbear in general?
I don’t do well with following megathreads, and unfortunately (for me, at least) it seems like it’s where most of the active people in the comm congregate. Maybe that’s just on me to fix, but I find myself looking elsewhere for discussions because it’s not a format I’ve managed to make work for me, and beyond the megathreads, most of the other content here is about mutual aid. It’s not like I’m contributing content myself though, so it doesn’t really feel like I have any right to complain.
I kinda treat the mega-thread as a place to just put some small little joys in your life, or a mini vent comment every now and then
Yeah, I get that the culture here is to put that all in the megathreads rather than into individual threads, and saying that the culture should change to better accommodate me is selfish, especially when I’m not putting in any work towards that, but I like seeing that type of content as individual threads, rather than tucking it away in a massive week-long thread that I know I’ll struggle to follow whenever I try.
On r/traa, it felt like those joys/vents would either get meme-ified, meme-accompanied, or basically just straight up posted, and there was a whole host of other subs that were more focused either on being tailored specifically towards that content and other discussions without memes, or ever more specific communities, and while there are comms like womenby/menby/transenby_liberation/nonbinary/anti_cishet_aktion/trans_synths I think the level of activity they get kinda demonstrates that creating more trans communities probably isn’t the right move without a much larger community to support them.
Again, it feels shitty to complain about when I’m not trying to “be the change” so maybe the real problem is that I need to do a better job of posting content I want to see instead of hoping others will make a more active community for me to comment on.
I’m inclined to agree generally. I love the megathread but I’ve also found myself missing the dedicated posts, and have been searching to excuses to make one the last few days. If my memory serves correctly, I think the mega was meant as a way to have a low barrier to making small posts and to try to bring us all together a bit more. But if it’s not accomplishing that or driving down activity in the comm then we probably need to re-think the way we’re doing this.
I tend to agree with this as well. I know the policy here is to allow non-meme posts, but maybe we could make that more official and explicitly encourage all types of posts related to the trans experience and maybe even off-topic posts by trans people. And maybe the mega is a good place for the off-topic stuff but idk, I’m just throwing ideas out there.
I wrote out a longer thought and am not thrilled with where it went. The gist of what I wanted to say though is: I think it does that for the people it works for and I don’t want to break that.
I dont think its terribly selfish to want that. And like, i really like having posts on the comm as well as the megathread.
why i use the mega and dont post
I tend to only use the mega because it wont show up on peoples feeds on the main site, and also cause i dont have tons of things to say that deserve a post. But even when i do, i generally put them in the mega so that others dont stumble across them on the main feed. Also cause who wants a 5 paragraph crashout post lol, that shit belongs in a heavily spoilered mega comment. Theres also an aspect of taking up space. If i post in the mega, its often spoilered and people can choose whether to engage with it. I also dont want cis people to read/comment on what i have to say a lot of the time, and posts feel more public and feel like its more likely for that to happen.
It also feels like theres just fewer users in the trans threads and less engagement overall. We had big 2000+ comment megas at one point, which were overwhelming but also very fun. I see fewer regular names now, and thats normal and to be expected, but also is maybe part of why theres fewer posts and comments in various trans comms?
Its not shitty to want things to change and complain about how they are. Like, theres a balance to be sure, but its not bad to say “i wish things were this way”