Hello users of hexbear:
Due to recent meta posts in our mutual aid community we wanted to open up discussion about the community !mutual_aid@hexbear.net
We will never require explanation or justification from a user asking for aid in the community, and the mod and admin team continue to commit to not featuring an individual’s mutual aid request to prevent unfair exposure.
In addition, we will maintain a strict “No critical comments or meta comments” on a mutual aid post.
This post is to discuss the mutual aid community’s rule of allowing meta posts: mutual aid as a community, those making posts in it and those commenting on posts.
We are considering removing the exception allowing meta posts but wanted to involve the userbase before committing to a change.
Please comment with any thoughts, feelings, or suggestions regarding this change.
Thank you
I don’t see how it’s possible to run a mutual aid comm with anonymous people scattered all over the world. Mutual aid really requires a much closer knit network of people working together in tangible non-monetary ways. I’ve done a little mutual aid offline, and mostly it’s the combination of a plan and people giving the right aid and advice to advance that plan that really changes people’s situation.
What we have is a charity comm. If we’re going to run a charity comm some regulation would help.
Limiting posts to one per week, or month, per account to stop the competition for visibility and subsequent blocking of the comm by people overwhelmed by the number of similar or repeated posts. Hexbear is not a large community, and many people are now blocking the comm because it makes them feel uneasy.
Enforcing the use of an external tracking tool like GoFundMe so people can be confident when targets are or aren’t met for a given post. It also provides a little bit of legitimacy and makes donations easier for many people who would be considering it.
Allowing people to provide suggestions for local support such as specific food banks or shelters: things that may reduce weekly repeats on the charity comm. Allowing people to suggest alternative purchases or actions, such as a more cost efficient alternative could be useful.
Regardless of moral judgements, donators need confidence in the system for the comm to function. Otherwise it’s just a drama generator that fosters contempt and mistrust while also leaving people feeling abandoned. A couple of incidents have really blown peoples trust, and left them fatigued. The situation is not going to change unless adjustments are made. As for discussions about the validity of a users cause - evidently, even when discussion of causes is forbidden, people still seethe and it still seeps into and erupts throughout the whole instance. The amount of recurring drama from one incident alone that is taboo to talk about is enough indication that simply banning discussions isn’t actually helping much, if at all.
I fully agree with all of these ideas.
Lemmy is not the right platform to host something like this, especially in an instance that’s almost exclusively working class.
There are dedicated platforms for charity that do it better than this one ever will, the most Hexbear can do is to share each charity goal, especially in cases where someone needs immediate and urgent help.
Having a small posting limit shouldn’t hurt anyone that’s not spamming on purpose, you don’t need to be posting multiple times a day to get help, you are just overshadowing other people who also need help.
When I have the ability to give a bit of my money to someone here, it’s completely logical that I want that money to go the one that needs it most. Steps need to be taken to distribute our help better, that means we should know when a goal has been reached, and we should make sure that everyone is heard when they ask for that help.
The last point is also very important, there are several cases of people who obviously need guidance and other forms of help more urgently than they need financial help. That’s why helping someone find direct and real life help from organisations that exist for this reason can be life saving even.
All in all this community has achieved some great things over time, and some comrades can manage to get over rough patches and difficult situations partly thanks to it. It’s a good thing it exists despite the many difficulties of making such a thing work on a leftist anonymous site with people all around the world who don’t know one another at all. But it should be improved to try to overcome some of these challenges and make it more effective and impactful.
I’m OOL, what happened? Am I even allowed to ask? lol
Edit: nevermind I think I pieced it together
the inciting incident for this post was a meta-post recently but the history goes back years. its messy.