Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
TC69 returned but this time banned herself instead of the pronoun-less masses
QuillQuote is back! What's up?!
I've never really actually left, I've been posting on an alt for years I just thought I'd post on my old main a bit since I saw the other day someone said they were bummed I was gone :)
Im doin good! I'd have updated my pronouns but it won't save my changes and won't let me add the she/her
SHE'S BACK AND SHE'S NEVER BEEN GONE BUT SHE'S ALSO BACK
We love our quillquote folks
I was one of those people that was bummed. Glad you're still here and doing well! We need you to have correct pronouns, Admins get on this lol
It's good to see you! Thanks for thinking of me it means a lot you cared <3
I set them and hit save and nothing happens I don't know why
I remember from the beginning you were an extremely thoughtful and kind person. It was refreshing and always shined through.
Wording it like this makes it sound poetic, like the end of ~~history~~ an era or something.
It definitely feels like the end of an era to me, can hardly believe it's been so long in fact haha
idk who any of these people are, but maybe that is for the best?
Just someone who used to be on the site and then stopped being on the site.
If you're on a small forum long enough, you start building up (para)social relations to certain users, and then one day they'll just be gone. Sometimes a goodbyepost, but most often not. They moved on with their lives and stopped posting one day.
You'll still check in once in a while - not for them, but because you enjoy the forum, but you'll think about them sometimes. Wonder where they're at. What're they doing? You'll hope they're doing well.
And then one day you see their name pop up after it being gone for a year or so, and you'll be happy to see an old... I don't think there's a word for it yet, it's a relation of sorts, but I dunno. You weren't friends or acquiantances, you didn't know anything about them beyond their goofy posting and maybe some weird hobby they shared some stuff about, but you felt like they were still some tiny part of you. And now they're back and that makes you happy. Happy to see they're doing good.
Deffo, live your life blissfully unaware :)