So, long story short: In some recent conversations, a couple of things became really clear. The first is that Alix said, in her own words, that she's doing a lot better at not fighting, not harassing, and so on, everywhere except here. This place is somehow triggering for her, and she doesn't want to be here, but she can't give up because if she gives up "you" win. (I never figured out who "you" is.) The second is that her reality-editing has gotten to be a lot worse, and I'm no longer finding it possible to successfully communicate specific claims or criticisms to her and confirm that she's reacting to the things actually said, as opposed to other things. She stated that she's going to be like this until at least September, when she is expected to somehow end up on the mainland at a college that isn't near her shitty parents, and that there's nothing she can do to stop being abusive while she's in that environment. So I have temp-banned her, except "temp" in this case does not have a specific expiration time, it's just "until I have some reason to think that things might have actually improved". I'm not particularly happy with this, but I've gotten really burned out on the recurring theme of Alix working herself up into a tizzy and justifying how mad she is and making excuses for atrocious behavior. It's not working, and at this point, either she's completely lying about how much better things go elsewhere, or she really is doing a lot better except when she's around here. Either way, this seems like a good experiment to try.
i think you clung to the “we don’t ban people for being mentally ill” policy waaaay too long on this one. i’m saying that here because i think it matters for people to know the mods aren’t a unified front, even the ones who are married to each other. i think we should be willing to proper ban people when it’s clear they’re making an effort not to improve.
My approximate boundary remains "do I think there is actual communication happening". But she's gradually been escalating on just plain not processing what people say at all, or editing it into completely different things before responding, and it just ain't happening. The specific assertion that she's doing fine everywhere else, it's just here that it's bad, was pretty compelling.
i dig why that’s your boundary, and agree that she hit it like a truck. but i think the boundary should be different. i think it should be “no intent or effort to stop misbehavior”.
I don't really think it's fair to entirely blame Alix for the communication issues :\ She frequently had several people messaging huge walls of text at her at once, and personally I already find it kind of difficult to follow what seebs is saying over a long period of time as is. I don't even bother trying to read half the stuff I get mentioned and quoted for at this point, and I have faaaarrr more energy for this sort of thing than Alix does nowadays. If she's doing fine everywhere else, but it's here that she has a failure to communicate with people, why is there no suggestion of "Maybe Kintsugi and the way it's users interact with her makes it difficult for her to communicate properly?"
Then the solution is still 'she should consider leaving instead of staying out of spite' for her own damn health
Does it matter? If she's here, they happen, and we can't make them stop happening. Mostly because it doesn't matter, but also because I know at least a half dozen people who have been talking to her for multiple years who are all reporting that she's become harder to communicate with and has started reality-editing more and more.
It does matter because understanding how and why a thing happens is how you prevent it. Like, idk, mandating that Alix doesn't have arguments in her vent thread and only let things like that happen in places like TCHGB where it can be made sure that everyone is on the same page instead of letting communication issues spiral out of control. In general it might just have been better to let Alix's vent thread be Alix's vent thread instead of the proving ground for massive forum-wide arguments
I personally offered to move arguments out of Alix's vent thread multiple times. I was under the impression that she didn't care. I do not believe that she did not know that it was 1) a question she could ask or 2) a request that would very likely get approved. So, no. If Alix didn't want the arguments in her thread she should have said so. That type of request is honored like 99% of the time as part of the culture around vent threads. That's not on anyone but Alix (even assuming Alix actually has/had an issue with this). So thanks, but no thanks, on this point.
Yes, I'm aware that Alix apparently isn't capable of not engaging in arguments even when she knows they're going to be upsetting and frustrating to her, which is why I suggested that it be mandated that she couldn't get into those arguments outside of a place they could be properly supervised if at all. I've railed against most of her tempbans up to this point, but in general she seems to be receptive to them after the fact? Going forward it seems to be clear that preventing her from engaging in things that she doesn't have the self control to avoid herself has been a positive thing.
well, mission accomplished. why are you still here, anyway? you don’t like the forum or anyone on it. you have no interest in anything or anyone here. you’ve only ever come here to stan for alix. now she’s gone, so why haven’t you gone too?
that doesn't make it the mods' job to make her not engage. before the ban, they actually couldn't do that for more than 24 hours or so, all they could do is keep her engagement with any argument off the public parts of the forum but even if it were possible to make her not engage with arguments that would end in a rage spiral or meltdown, I'm not sure that it's actually appropriate for the mods to do any more than they've been doing the past few years. and doing as much as they have been has taken a huge toll on both mods and users of the forums and discords. she was on post mod, and presumably will be on it again if the ban is lifted, tho that isn't to say she might not earn enough trust someday to be off post mod. she can't get into those arguments w/o them going through the mods in the first place, and that still hasn't been enough. and part of the reason it hasn't been enough is bc when told she can't have this argument on the forum or even that she can't be a raging bag of dicks about how she engages with an argument, she goes and she takes that argument elsewhere, usually discord. source: she's done this to me, dming me out of nowhere to argue with me on discord over something I posted on the forum. are you arguing for or against this temp-ish ban? bc that's essentially what this temp ban is doing. she's all but said that the forum is a trigger for her. well, now she has a few months where she can't interact with the trigger. hopefully that will be good for her mental health. and the ban also sparing the mods from further abuse from Alix, and she's said she's going to be more likely to have meltdowns and rage spirals for the next few months. she's been known to send the mods some vile messages when she's in a rage spiral or meltdown. which is an important thing to remember, bc the mods are people, and they don't deserve to be abused
So, I made this point in her thread, but. Her home is bad for her and she doesn't think she can recover until she's out of the house. She also thinks that being on the site is bad for her and makes her act worse than she does anywhere else, and presumably leaving this site would help her recovery in the same way that leaving her mom's house would. But she flat-out point-blank refuses to leave. These two points go together. See those parallels? Those are significant parallels. And here, despite arguing all day about how this is super unjustified and mean and the wrong decision etc etc etc, you're saying that yeah, this is overall a strategy that seems to work and which Alix is fine with. Alix making the point herself about how being gone from the site would be better for her (but she won't leave on her own) was the last datapoint, among many, many other existing datapoints suggesting that being on the site is bad for everyone, including her, and things are getting worse, and she was banned. And please note there were later words, straight from the horse's mouth, which you read, where she agrees the site is bad for her but is "just sorta fucking with them at this point" Now. You've spent the day arguing about this ban. You've spent the day arguing about the ban after seeing Alix saying that she's "just sorta fucking with them at this point." Are you still seriously trying to argue that we should pour even more work into trying to find an even more nuanced, involved way to regulate Alix's participation because we haven't been gentle enough with her? We haven't put enough work into trying to accommodate her? Frankly, there's a lot more users than you who are angry the mod team was so gentle with Alix for so long, and defended her, which felt like it was at the expense of the many, many people she's deliberately hurt. There's a number of users who resent how people (me included, you might not have read the history but I am there) poured PILES of effort into helping Alix improve, where the people she hurt felt ignored and neglected in comparison, even when over time it became clear that she was continuing to hurt people and find new reasons to hurt people. The degree to which you assume we haven't tried hard enough to help her is... mind-blowing. You're invested, I get it. But also you saw her say she's "just sorta fucking with them at this point" and came over here and told us to try harder. Spoiler: image
Jesse, can I formally request that you stop interacting with me? Almost all of the things that you know about me are wrong, and I'm getting kind of tired of getting these pings because I literally can't ignore you bc you're a mod.
i’ll think about this. it seems like one hell of a disingenuous request considering you feel free to slag on me and on my mod decisions and on the mods as a group. my instinct is to tell you no, you don’t get to trash me until it stops being fun and then declare i’m not allowed to talk back. but im very sick and on the good drugs so i’m aware i could be thinking stupid things. i’ll revisit this tomorrow.
This doesn't address anything in my post. If fact, if I were to try to manage conversations the way you do sometimes, I'd call this wildly off topic. My main point is: do not blame us for Alix's underutalization of tools at her disposal. Full stop. She did not ask for anything to be moved from her vent thread, or say she wanted it when offers to do so were made. Alix is responsible for her own actions or lack there of. Fucking miss me with this blame bullshit. I do not accept responsibility for anything Alix does or doesn't do.
I didn't blame anyone for Alix's actions? All I did was suggest a way for the situation to be improved.
You're saying that we should have done X. Implies responsibility to do X. Therefore failing to X means that we're in the wrong. X is something that would have been done if Alix had asked for it or said yes when it was offered. I am in the wrong for not doing X + X happening depended on Alix doing something -> I am in the wrong for Alix's inaction. QED So yes, I resent the implication that I'm in the wrong for not doing X when Alix is the one who controlled whether X was done. Especially because I offered to do X multiple times and Alix said "nah, thanks anyway".
(Separate point separate post) You didn't "just suggest" a thing. You tried to reprimand us for not doing a thing. Also, like. What is the fucking point of "suggesting" that something have been done in the past other than blaming people for not doing it??
I was speaking of things to potentially do going forward were alix to be allowed back in order to ameliorate the communication issues, not as an attempt to somehow scapegoat you or anyone else for her actions.
