I recently made an account on Beehaw because I’ve been having pleasant interactions with the instance from my lemm.ee account. Some good threads, seemed like a progressive space. So I went back to the philosophy documents and read them again, liked most of what I saw (again) and signed up for an account today. Decided to break in my new account by browsing the top posts of the last month. Several of them were threads I recognised and had commented in, and felt like revisiting. Except my comments weren’t there. When I got to a comment I very specifically remember replying to (someone asked what’s up with HBomber and James Somerton), and couldn’t find my comment, I decided to check the modlog.
I’m banned. I’ve been talking into an empty void for 4 months. I was banned for being in bad faith. And one of my comments was removed by an admin, because I told people to assume good faith and apparently that’s not nice.
This doesn’t align at all with the documents I’ve been reading today. The ones about assuming good faith, and about giving people chances to clarify, and about how banning is a last resort only for obvious trolls. When I came to this community 4 months ago to make a post about fediverse drama, I wasn’t interested in active participation in the community, and I didn’t make that post with that in mind. I understand how that might not fit the desires of the community here. But I didn’t make that post in bad faith. I, and whoever wrote those pages on the philosophy of Beehaw, wanted the same thing back then. To create a corner of the internet free of hate speech and full of kindness. Now? I’m jaded and beaten. I don’t want to create a kind community anymore, I want to find one. I’ve given up on that ambition. So that’s why I reread the updated documents with hope. Why I created an account. And why I want to know whether beehaw.org is actually the website I read about in those documents. Because those modlogs say the opposite of what those documents said. If I don’t fit in here, if the ideals I thought I saw aren’t present, I’d like to find out quickly.
Should I still hope?
Axolotling misunderstood me because they made a mistake. There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, they don’t make you any worse as a person. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes mistakes can lead to hurt feelings, but knowing about them is necessary to solve problems. Axolotling told me that they were having trouble understanding me because I didn’t explain things fully, and they asked me to be more thorough in my explanations.
Do you think nice behaviour is helping people who ask for help in the way they ask for help, changing my behaviour when they ask me to, and being honest and gentle with them about how they can accomplish the goals they want to accomplish? Or do you think nice behaviour is ignoring people who ask for help, refusing to change my behaviour when others ask me to change it, and ignoring problems that other people want solved?
I will follow the rules either way. If you tell me not to tell people they’ve made mistakes, I’ll listen to you. If someone asks for help understanding me again, I’ll explain to them why I can’t help, provided I have your agreement that this is what you want me to do.