I can't feel comfortable trusting that a partial group in this matter's reading of the evidence is not without bias.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
It's Trans Awareness Week! (Nov 13th -19th)
- Thread starter Kyuuji
- Start date
I can't feel comfortable trusting that a partial group in this matter's reading of the evidence is not without bias.
lmao what. contacting a mod captain in private communication is transparent accountability? That leads me to seriously doubt you understand either of those concepts, sincerely. it's neither.
It's a good question to ask why this is important.
In this situation, the moderation team has to weigh what's more important to them - the protections and privileges that they grant themselves, or removing a strong pillar of the transEra community.
Mods had the right to ban Ket for her actions, but in doing so they have further damaged a community that was trying to speak out about concerns they have with how they are regarded and treated on this site. This is a situation where a strict adherence to the rules is actually damaging the site they're trying to uphold
It is based on context that the user in question mentioned vaguely and in passing a moderator who expressed a discriminatory viewpoint. This would qualify as a whistleblower.
This is such a weird stance to take given the context. Do you support Snowden being permanently barred from re-entering the U.S. because he ousted wrongdoing by the administration? It's obviously a much bigger situation but it shares many aspects. Don't punish whistleblowers.
How does that justify the ban, and how is this relevant? It's not.
You don't have any reason to doubt the moderation after the absolute shit show that has occurred over night? Okay.
A community is made up of its people. How popular or "essential" someone is to that community is very relevant to the question of whether to remove them.
Obviously you are thinking of this as if they committed a crime, which would make them a danger to the community. But that's not what this is, not even close.
Because there is no public forum for that, no means for a community to even reconcile these decisions. The private message just doesn't work.
Because when someone guns for your administration, the kneejerk reaction is to silence them and protect the people in your circle. It's wrong, but it isn't a new thing.
I think SweetNicole said it best: whether the ban was correct or not is now entirely besides the question at this point; the amount of hurt caused to the LGBT+ community here is overwhelming and obvious to even the most privileged among us. The path to restoring trust and accountability starts with unbanning that person and developing a more keen awareness that while off-site drama is looked down upon here, the standards for leadership in this community transcend that barrier. Frankly, the only thing the community here has when it comes to dealing with systemic issues originating in the leadership here is through their own connections and, as seen so evidently in this case, their friends here who are looking out for them. So as unfortunate as it is to have trust and an expectation of privacy violated, well, that road runs both ways, and for a long time there's been a lot more throughput on only one end.
And mind that that path is a start and not an end.
People act irrationally when they're scared and trying to get a situation under control.
I have a good impression of some mods, but that the activity of mods (and in fact the question of who even is a mod) is rather opaque, I'm not inclined to give them all the benefit of the doubt, when their claims are staked against a member I'd otherwise judge to have good character. I never interracted with Ketkat that much but she always seemed generous and level headed, whereas I have much less to say about my impression of the moderation staff in aggregate and that's clearly a consequence of their own design.
The problem is that this is already a conflicting mess of optics for them, regardless of if Ket stays banned or not.
In fact, I do feel that it would probably be beneficial to move the conversation forward if Ket does get unbanned, because that may accomplish a couple of things.
1. There will be less conversation about getting Ket unbanned
2. More time can be dedicated to discussing the topic, with Ket as a part of the discussion.
Whether or not Ket will want to talk about the ban, or to talk about the focal point of the topic at hands, we won't know until the unbanning happens.
Trying to save face at this point does a disservice to everybody involved, and we're well beyond this point.
It's about how to move forward right now, and we can't do this when there's this huge quagmire right impeding this progress.
The core of the issue is that she didn't get the ban as a sole result of her actions, but as a result of the staff not wanting to discuss the issue further, and in the end, did not even actually address the problem that was brought up because they banned all of the people involved who were bringing up the concerns.
It was clear, and transparent that there was no intention of actually addressing the issue, and the bans were as a result of silencing, and quieting down the topic in hopes of avoiding further accountability.
Ever since that ban from last week, there was no further addressing of the issue, those who were banned were in banned limbo, and those who had issue could only address it, but really, tip-toe around the topic in this thread, and it was not really productive as if we were actually talking about the biggest, and most important issue at its core.
At the end of the day, let's use a hypothetical.
Had Ket and others been banned, BUT the staff appropriately addressed the issue that were brought up, and were willingly transparent rather than hide it behind veiled statements of perceived privacy trusts that were broken, I don't feel at this point we would be in the place we are now, and those who were banned, may have even been unbanned by now since we would have had the opportunity to do so at this juncture.
It's not about whether or not someone is popular, the issue here was that the staff used their powers to silence someone they disagreed with, but did so in a way that hid their actions, rather than discuss them thoroughly.
Keeping these users banned on these false pretenses which we have already established quite clearly not in the best interest of actually discussing the importance of this topic.
I can't speak for Ket, nor any of the others who stood up in that original thread to speak their minds on the topic. However, if I were in their position, I would have been more than happy to take the ban, as long as the actual purpose of revealing those issues were then addressed, and discussed fully.
The staff has now shown they're willing to work with us on this issue, and for that, I commend them for reaching out and allowing this space to do so. However, instead of reaching out with a fist, they should be reaching out with an open hand, and dispel some of the perceived hesitation on their part previously in this whole situation as it has progressed.
We may not agree on this, but I do hope you can understand where I, and I assume, others are coming from on this topic.
Agreed! I was trying to respond from the point of view of what the mods would be having to consider at this moment, but my personal thoughts are outlined in the reply I just gave Onebadlion, and lines up with Nicole's call for action
A temporary ban lift would be a bit of a slap in the face of this issue, I would think, as much as I would like to hear from Ket
I can't help but feel that my trust in this website has been irrevocably shattered as a result of these actions. Does anyone know of other communities that are actually inclusive?
this is kind of my point. Whether we believe the ban should stand or not is based on emotion, or whether we believe the official line being trotted out by the mods. I do think this place gets a bit ban-happy at times, but I can usually see why the decision has been made, whether I agree with it or not. I don't think a ban like this would be made lightly.
I will actually give the woods credit as being one of the few mods on the site that at least acknowledged me in a way that wasnt immediately dismissive when I try to speak with the mods. This system is broken though, I have had multiple mods never bother to respond at all when I try to pm them. Thats not transparency and accountability, thats just rolling the dice that the mod you get actually bothers to take you seriously.
=\
If that's your takeaway from this thread you need to read it again.
I want to chime in on this too. I've been reading along and it's sad to learn that once again the moderation team is silencing criticism. What really sucks about this is the fact that despite regularly reading both gaming side and off-topic, it's only now that I'm learning of this. It took multiple threads being locked before one slipped through and alerted me, and that's just not okay for something so important. Could I have missed similar things in the past because the mod team intervened? I don't know, and that scares me. People should be able to voice their criticism and concerns of moderation without being banned, and part of our community shouldn't be gaslighted because they took issue with how moderation responded.
I don't feel that it's my place to take valuable space away from the voices that need to be heard, but I'm sure there are also plenty of others like me who care and are listening in.
Have you not ever in your life experienced the phenomenon of people doubling down on bad decisions? Because it's ridiculously common. The idea that they must have good reason because they refuse to back down makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Yep. I don't really understand the source of this intuition at all.
The problem is that there was a mention of "hacking" after the discussion they had about it, by one of the mods directly involved with the situation. Which to me says they have contradicting information, at the very least.
Her post kinda only says this about the chat to begin with:
Ketkat said:
Which, frankly, doesn't even mean she was the one who saw the Discord originally. "Chats that have been shown to people" can mean she's one of the people they were shown to! This was immediately taken as her having direct access to the chat, either by "abusing" her relationship with her girlfriend or by "hacking".
There was also the bit about her knowing about staff policy wording, which like... I do not think it is that weird that someone close to (let alone dating) a mod would naturally learn about that stuff, when they are someone who has repeatedly had legitimate issues with the policies? I don't think it's a breach of trust to pick up on what they are over time; it's an ethical gray area but it does not seem that it was used for anything bad?
Her supposedly having mentioned things from the chat when talking to staff, if true, would be questionable and disturb their privacy - if anything, it was just a bad idea to not keep quiet if it was about their personal lives. But it remains unclear if that's a thing she even saw firsthand or was shared with her by someone else, unintentionally or otherwise.
EDIT: Hit post without finishing, oops. Basically, at the most generous reading (and I am not inclined to give this right now), it feels like they saw that offhand mention and went "WE GOT HER!" after these supposed previous interactions/questions they had. That's not necessarily nefarious, if it's someone who really was doing something sketchy, and they were waiting for them to give more details that would unintentionally help the staff figure out what happened. But here it feels like there was barely anything to indicate that at all, and she seemed to be trying to help others through her actions. And then the immediate action against her, regardless of any context or how it would impact the thread or communities involved, or how it would come across when the discussion was already about the staff's failings, was ridiculous. I've said it before, but it's not the first time I've seen someone bring up moderation concerns in a post with legitimately valuable and thought out criticism, and be smacked with a ban for daring to question how the staff handled something.
Last edited:
More importantly WHY ON EARTH should "staffy policy wording" be something that needs to be kept secret to begin with? How is this some breach of confidence? We should know exactly what staff policy is and how they came to formulate it, because we're the ones who have to abide by that policy.
1. When is KetKat being reinstated?
Also:
2. When is the other offending staff member being discharged from their office?
And a lot of people are probably balancing their day job right now too.
I've been saying that about the 'review thread' for about a year now.
Outside of being a proud ally (and questioning pansexuality though that's a journey that I have yet to take), I have no presence in the greater LGBTQIA+ community on the site. Perhaps it's for that reason that I feel like it's important to speak out as perhaps the stance of someone outside of this subset of our community will help clarify something for those supporting the decisions made by the moderators here...
Ket needs to unbanned immediately, the moderators responsible for the acephobic comments AND Ket's ban should have no place here and a serious overhaul of the moderation policies needs to happen to rectify this. One of the most vulnerable minority groups has been neglected and punished on a website that is often touted as a safe space from that sort of persecution and intolerance. A wonderful relationship was conflated with abuse, a frankly sickening and shocking label to affix to a relationship over nothing more than a situation that a handful of moderators found personally uncomfortable. This has all been farcical to say the very least and this needs to be rectified swiftly.
Free Ket. Stand by all LGBTQIA+ identities. Fuck acephobia. Happy trans awareness week.
Ket needs to unbanned immediately, the moderators responsible for the acephobic comments AND Ket's ban should have no place here and a serious overhaul of the moderation policies needs to happen to rectify this. One of the most vulnerable minority groups has been neglected and punished on a website that is often touted as a safe space from that sort of persecution and intolerance. A wonderful relationship was conflated with abuse, a frankly sickening and shocking label to affix to a relationship over nothing more than a situation that a handful of moderators found personally uncomfortable. This has all been farcical to say the very least and this needs to be rectified swiftly.
Free Ket. Stand by all LGBTQIA+ identities. Fuck acephobia. Happy trans awareness week.
Part of the problem is that moderation's explanation for why she was banned was vague-to-inconsistent at first, and while the claims as given later in the thread may justify a permanent ban (I'm not entirely convinced of this) there has been no evidence of the acts claimed and, again, a general lack of concrete and coherent messaging from the moderation/administration staff, and what is there contradicts with statements from other people familiar with Ketkat, including former staff.
Pairing this to the fact that people in these threads are getting comparatively minor punishments for repeated transphobic statements to what she got, and the fact that the moderation is not holding themselves accountable regarding the leaked chat discussion, and it feels like there are either greater issues of dysfunction in moderation right now and/or that trans people are being actively disrespected by site staff.
So I do think there's some potential value to staff having some internal policies/guidelines that are not entirely publicly available, as long as they're based on the publicly available rules. I can understand not wanting the exact way things are handled to be known to people who would use that knowledge to game the system, because keeping that secret prevents them from knowing the exact lines they can't cross (assuming they even understand those lines to begin with) to be punished to harsher degrees.
But given that people are seemingly able to do that anyway, getting away with small bans for posting gross shit repeatedly, that's probably not enough of a concern to matter at this point!
I hope you can understand that these aren't questions that I can answer.
Roy, can you at least let us know that a staff announcement of some kind if being prepared and that something constructive is happening behind the scenes right now? Everyone is in the dark it feels like.
Perhaps not, but there are others on staff who can. Anyone of them want to chime in here?
Thank you. Is there a ballpark for when this statement might be made?
Additionally, the idea that alluding to something that was said in a semi-but-not-really-private Discord server is a major breach of privacy sounds kind of heinously ridiculous to me. Like I can see the argument but it's really mental gymnastics. In context of Kat being who she is, it's pretty egregious.
Hopefully in a few hours? Still waiting for some parties to provide some info.
I also do want to say in regards to pm-ing mods to appeal, its a massive power imbalance and hidden away in back channels. I dont see that as transparent and being held accountable.
Thank you for coming into this thread to give us an update on an official staff statement on this situation.
I am in full support of the TransERA community and it has really angered me that moderation has clearly been lacking in trans-related threads on this forum.
I hope that KetKat can be unbanned since she's been such a significant pillar for the entire ERA community especially with regards to mental health and trans-related threads on here. I've personally seen her helping others and being a significant support person for many ERA members and I don't want to see this support go away if she remains permabanned.
Things seriously needs to get better quickly or there's the significant risk of losing an entire community from ERA and I don't want to see that happen.
It's more of an emotional response to having something you thought was said in confidence getting put out there, I think
Bad emotional response lead to bad decision
Thanks. Hopefully, it's a good answer and a good start towards a new path. Every member of the LGBT+ community here on Era needs it after yesterday's events.
I hope the time you're taking to issue this response indicates that is a considered, conciliatory one.