Reporting the mods

She has explained before. They all have. They all have explained that they have been trying to help in the wiggler, that there are over three hundred posts in the wiggler trying to help. Given how rough the stuff they've been letting through is, like.

Nobody has to put up with abuse. Nobody has to just Take It and accept it's a consequence.

Yeah this might make athol feel bad to read - and I'm sorry if it does! Someone doesn't deserve to suffer just because they're echoing narcissist behaviours or maybe is one.

But nothing is changing. Go back and read over any of the existing threads. They all start this way, they all continue this way, they end with just a handful of people being willing to engage. Any time there's even a hint of a difference, it's walked back on within two pages.

Imagine if I'd spent all that time talking with you the other night and in return you spent the next couple of weeks telling me how abusive I was actually, that by telling you that you were doing something wrong that should be worked on I deserved whatever you hurled at me by way of retribution.

Everyone can improve, anyone can get better, but there needs to be a fundamental shift in approach to do so. For me, that means I'm not going to put my feelings on the backburner anymore, because I'm just doing what I had been for all my life with my mother. Minimizing her pain as she says shit that deeply hurts me just on the off-chance I might be able to make her stop hurting me for a day. Having to prepare a full fuckin' debate just to get a basic apology for hurting me.

Being told you are being abusive, sucks. It really does, it feels shitty to hear and it makes you feel bad but the correct answer is not "well fuck you I'll just stay this way if I'm just so bad", it's addressing the abusive behaviours, apologizing, and asking for help.

I offered, twice, a thing that I firmly believe would super help athol in levelling the playing field and ensuring that nobody is actually mean to her while talking through shit. This was ignored, twice.

She's been explaining. She has reached her limit because it is utterly thankless and has only been met with vitriol just in public spaces.

"Why are you making me hurt you like this" should not be something that is indulged. It should be cut off, every time.

 

In my personal experience this is a forum geared around giant gay space robot roleplaying and I firmly believe every moderator is obligated to have an opinion on Decepticons vs Autobots and whether Dratchet or Drodimus is the better ship.

(this is a joke)

 

That depends, what is your opinion on...
-flips through notebook, marks down notes.-
Robot mpreg?

 

No. Listen, this has been going for pretty long now, always coming back to the same "she doesn't get better" argument. But that's just plain false.
I have access to Athol's account, and to her wiggled posts. I'm not gonna lie, they're bad. Really fucking bad in some cases. Except they've been getting steadily better in the last few weeks - some would be, I'll be honest, not even wiggle-worthy if the extra baggage of her previous posts weren't there. I guess it hasn't visibly hit the published posts yet - but it's completely inaccurate to say there's no progress at all.

 

So did Rewind and Brainstorm! Judicial reviews all over this canon.

 

I pretty much am coming back from a months-long break from the forum, at least from anything more drama-prone than out of context quotes or fanfic gripes. Certainly I haven't been anywhere I would see moderation in action for about that long. I was a little confused just reading the most recent posts, but the thread as a whole seems like a perfectly consistent expression of the forum culture. When I was last engaged in reading threads like this it wouldn't have taken five days for a mod to finally lose patience.

The purpose of this forum was never recovery, though obviously that's a major interest of a lot of people here. The purpose of this forum is to be a place to exist even if one is ill. And since that involves bringing together vulnerable people and people likely to lash out, especially since those are often the same people, there has always been some serious friction. The only changes I'm seeing are slight improvements.

 

Why... do you have access to her account?

 

emotional labor requires reciprocity, and moderation is a lopsided relationship. as a result, emotional labor is performed by the mods as acquaintances of greallan, and is not moderator action.

 

She gave me her login credential so I could take a look at her wiggled posts.

 

Yeah to come back to this, about a year ago when the forum was having a similar conversation about what exactly this place is for, Azurite (I think? but I might be misremembering) classified Kintsugi as " "a social forum for mentally ill people."

At the time, I was trying to figure out exactly what I was doing here, and if it was even a good place to spend my time. I (obviously) decided that it was, as long as I kept in mind that this isn't a group therapy session, it's a forum. It's a social space. ETA: One where there is more space to be struggling or ill or fucked-up or angry or sad or processing or wherever you're at, but a social space all the same

Group therapy sessions have moderators who are a) getting paid and b) trained therapists, and c) have back-up when people start throwing chairs. We can't treat this place like group therapy, because it doesn't have the infrastructure of group therapy.

 

Ah. Thanks for the clarification, that threw me for a loop for a moment.

Alix, I think contextualizing current posts by past posts is not a bad thing. Something that might not be wiggle-able by a blank slate might be wiggle-able coming from Athol, because the mods are deciding based on splash harm potential.

 

Unlike you, for some reason, I can only go on what I can see. I read over the fatlogic derail again last night. 40 pages later and stuff that was explained in the first 5 is being explained again, having to be cited again, having to deal with the same sort of arguments and explanations. So it rings a little false. I'm glad there's an overall trend of less abusive stuff, that's good! Doesn't make the stuff that gets through less abusive in itself.

Like after a certain point, if you're actually going to help, you can't tip toe around saying "Stop it, you're being abusive. You are behaving in a manner consistent with malignant narcissistic abuse. I am not going to engage with you if you continue being abusive." I have tried gently hinting that apologies are appropriate, I've tried directly telling her to apologize. So now I'm just going to be direct about it and list some stuff.

@Athol Magarac here is a thing that I, Kathy, would personally like an apology for:

- Pinging me when I told you not to ping me

Here's some things I firmly believe you owe apologies for. These things, exactly as written. No subtext nothing different, these things:

- Behaving abusively toward spock via gaslighting, insulting, demeaning and cruel behaviour.
- Threatening and coercive behavior, such as the implication that if members of the forum do not fit your standards for communication they will deserve it when you attack them and they will have Made You Do It. This is never an appropriate thing.
- Gaslighting. If you are confused about the order of events in a thread, go back and read over the thread, please. A lot of us have had to deal with people doing what you are on purpose. It is intensely, viscerally upsetting. It makes me question my perception of reality, my own memory and the actually written record of events until I go back and read over it.

Here's a thing I will apologize for:

- Losing my temper. While I did not say anything untrue, and I stand by a refusal to engage in further debugging without you acknowledging that how you have behaved to spock is abusive and apologizing for it, it was not my intent to hurt you and I apologize if I did.

That all said and done:

The way you have been behaving is abusive. It is consistent with the patterns of malignant narcissistic abuse.

- It is not appropriate to blame forum members for your own choices.

- It is not appropriate to imply that we made you act this way by not anticipating your needs better and that we deserve any abuse you put onto us as a result.

- You have the power to change this. I believe that you are trying.

-I will reiterate for a third time, my suggestion that you make a That Could Have Gone Better thread explicitly for debugging things that have been poorly received, so any responses will have to be moderated, ensuring an even playing field where you can be sure that everyone is getting the same standards applied to them that you are.

 

There seems to be some confusion. What I'm complaining about isn't the general concept of "doing emotional labor"- it's specifically justifying decisions such as making a post like the one I was complaining about, when you know being a mod gives you a form of power over other forum members. This could be a significant problem for people with some kinds of abuse trauma.

 

where's the line where Mod stops meaning Also A Human Being With Their Own Needs And Limitations though