I know there was some schism and moving of instances, but beyond that I can’t deduce what happened/is happening.
Back in December, the instance hosting 196 (lemmy.blahaj.zone) announced that, as part of its mission as a trans-friendly space, harassment based on gender or neopronouns would remain prohibited—even if the user in question was suspected of being a troll. Users were asked to disengage, block, and report suspected trolling behavior rather than bring harassment into a community already vulnerable to that kind of bullying.
There was a small backlash to the policy from some users. This led to a number of “toe the line” posts that weren’t outright gender-based harassment but strongly signaled an intent to misgender or harass in the future. Blahaj admins promptly removed all offending comments during this wave of dissent.
Important to note: The majority of the Blahaj and 196 users supported the policy, upvoting and praising the admins for creating a safe space for trans individuals.
By January, the backlash had mostly subsided, and the trolls causing issues had moved on. However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy. They cited “personal differences” and felt Blahaj admins had overstepped by removing comments themselves rather than allowing 196 mods to address users who openly expressed intent to harass others.
Yesterday, @moss and the 196 moderation team enacted a major decision without consulting the community. They locked [email protected] and instructed users to move to [email protected].
This move was extremely unpopular. Many users strongly dislike lemmy.world for various reasons (a complicated topic better unpacked elsewhere). The announcement post was met with widespread backlash, and @moss eventually locked it. In response, a few users created a new community on Blahaj: [email protected]. The new community quickly grew in size and activity, with most users opting to stay on Blahaj rather than migrate to lemmy.world.
It’s clear @moss and the 196 moderators underestimated the community’s attachment to its home on Blahaj. By attempting to uproot the group without input, they alienated much of the community. As a result, most users have moved to the new Blahaj-hosted community, which has already become the more active space.
TL;DR:
@Moss and the 196 mod team tried to move the community to lemmy.world without consulting anyone. The decision was extremely unpopular, leading to backlash and the creation of a new Blahaj-hosted community that most users now prefer.Great write-up, thanks. I love a good shit-show. 🍿
Sounds to me like the OG mods could have said “we don’t like how the admin runs things here, we are leaving as mods and starting a new 196 on .world with hookers and blackjack, you guys do what you want here.”
I genuinely would have had no problem with that, and I think most others would agree with me.
Which everyone would think is fine, but that would mean they’d be mods of an empty community, and thus have no power, and that of course made them upset.
This comment would probably make for a good crosspost to [email protected]
on it!
edit: https://lemmy.cafe/post/12094663 thanks again for the suggestion
Oof. Rookie mistake. Even if people aren’t against a move most people won’t follow you to the new site simply because of laziness. It kills communities.
There really should be a life shattering reason to move a community to a new site.
Yup. Clearly, “the admin is going to generally protect trans identities on her instance” didn’t ring as “life shattering” to too many. 😸
They stated pretty directly it wasn’t about the Dragonfucker incident, nor did it involve policies on neopronouns. Drag wasn’t even banned for anything to do with neopronouns.
I think the move to lemmy.world was a mistake, but I believe them when they say it has nothing to do with the neopronouns policy.
Correct. Nevertheless the neopronouns incident was something of a catalyst; all the “differences” had to do with trans issues in some way, and it would be amiss of me not to point out the biggest moment that made 196 come out in support of Ada and Blahaj.
Their other “differences” are also bogus in my opinion.
Yeah I think the above comment is inappropriately tying the issue to a topic they specifically said wasn’t the motivation
It’s the prevailing narrative though, so I guess it may as well be the truth.
“the misinformation is popular, despite those involved disregarding it. so I shall believe it.”
?
I wonder if Blahaj admins will kick out all the mods who locked 196 and replace them with the mods who created oneninetysix.
No and no. Ada stated that she will not oust the mod team, and she is currently the mod of onehundredninetysix, though is trying to find someone else to take it over as she has no interest in being mod.
Semi-related question: What the fuck is 196? I’ve never understood what it was, just that it was a carry-over from Reddit. Me browsing it is like Homer Simpson reading a Far Side calendar: “I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it. LOL…I don’t get it.”
Some guy made a subreddit called 195 (named after their dorm room number IIRC) where the only rule was that you had to post something before leaving. They later closed the subreddit because it had gotten too large to operate by one person. 196 was created by the community as a successor with the same one rule. Just post. Simple as.
Missing a real chance to continue adding up here. The current one should be 198
The continuation of /r/196.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=r%2F196
r/196
A subreddit that gained popularity due to only having one rule, which is to post before leaving. The sub started after it’s predecessor, r/195, was shut down by the moderators.
The really quick summary is that the mods of the 196 community on blahaj.zone wanted to move the community to lemmy.world, but did not announce it publicly to the users or seek their input, and so when the announcement came out, users of the instance felt blindsided by the announcement, and that lemmy.world was a fairly unpopular choice of instance. The resulting discussion from the thread largely did not dissuade skeptical users and contributed to the feelings that the mods were making a unilateral decision based on their desire and ignoring what the users of 196 wanted, and the decision to keep the original community on lemmy.blahaj.zone locked meant that users who did not want to post on lemmy.world were losing out their community.
This resulted in another 196 clone being created on blahaj, the original 196 becoming unlocked, and so now there are 3 196 communities. The newest one, [email protected], has a particularly high posting rate right now, as users are attempting to assert that community’s support as opposed to the ones run by the mods of the original and the lemmy.world communities.
The mod team tried to move everything to .world. No one liked that and now there’s [email protected] [email protected] and [email protected] the top two are run by the old mod team, the last one is ran by a new mod team. Blahaj zone and onehundresninetysix are active. (Rip 196.world, gone and certainly forgotten.) The mod team and admin had a drama over heavy handed admin over reach on bans in 196blahaj.
I block most meme based communities because they overpower the rest of what I like, but I’ve been picking up bits of the events from context.
Does this center around the one individual using, shall we say, a very distinct set of pronouns that a lot of people took issue with?
I kind of enjoyed that person in a social commentary way, but I can see why people more directly effected by pronoun usage may have taken issue and blahaj changing their rules due to it, but if that is what is causing this big schism, that’s a pretty wild thing that all is this is the result. I’m interested in the opinions on both sides, but it’s one of these things I’m afraid to ask due to polarization like this. I have genuine curiosity but I can totally see how someone could trollishly go after the same info.
It’s a broader disagreement that’s been simmering for a while. The 196 mods say that the Drag controversy is unrelated, as Dragonfucker had been banned from 196 long before for unrelated reasons.
The 196 mods say that the Drag controversy is unrelated, as Dragonfucker had been banned from 196 long before for unrelated reasons.
Although…this is some sort of spat relating to pronouns, and as I recall, isn’t that guy’s thing referring to himself using the third person?
The spat is unrelated to pronouns or neopronouns, according to the 196 mods. It has to do with the Blahaj admins and the 196 mods disagreeing on moderation behavior for the community, and the 196 mods not wanting to have their own moderation decisions reversed or second-guessed by admins if there wasn’t a rule violation in how the 196 mods handled moderation.
Why are you being so vague about what the disagreement was?
As I understand it, it wasn’t a singular disagreement, but a number of incidents in which, as I said, the 196 mods didn’t want to have their own moderation decisions reversed or second-guessed if 196’s ruleset was in compliance with the requirements of the instance.
Ah. Well, that seems like a shitty excuse. They’re public servants, they chose this role, they should just be made to deal with that. If they don’t want to have to deal with rules preventing them from abusing their fellow users, they shouldn’t be mods and should just spend their free time playing video games instead. They remind me of cop characters on police procedural tv shows that are mad that liberal politicians won’t let them commit brutality against and trample all over the civil rights of the citizens they’re supposed to be protecting
I’m also going to be completely blunt, I don’t believe you that having to respect the choice of pronouns of transgender users isn’t the issue for them. I think you’re lying through your teeth to cover for them.
If they don’t want to have to deal with rules preventing them from abusing their fellow users
That’s… not at all what I said.
I’m also going to be completely blunt, I don’t believe you that having to respect the choice of pronouns of transgender users isn’t the issue. I think you’re lying to cover for them.
I’m lying to cover for the trans folk on the mod team saying that they will continue to respect neopronouns and enforce rules against misgendering on the .world comm.
Uh.
Okay.
Imagine an apartment building. The landlord decides the local city council is too overbearing, and decides to move to a different city. They expect the tenants to move with them.
Problem 1: The local city is known for inclusivity, and the new city is known for being overpopulated and having an overbearing city council. Either the landlord has sinister motives or didn’t do their research.
Problem 2: The tenants weren’t told of the move before the moving van came, and were given no opportunity to weigh in on the decision. The landlord was calling all the shots.
Problem 3: The landlord sealed the building as they moved, making it impossible for someone else to take over as landlord and keep the building running. There was really no reason to do that.
This went about as smoothly as you’d expect. While the landlords did eventually unseal the building, a lot of people completely lost faith in them and moved into a new apartment building in the same city, but with a new landlord ( [email protected] ).
