The Future of the Forums
And… we’re back? Has whatever the issue was been addressed to everyone’s satisfaction?
The admin role has been taken up by someone else, so those of us who could not agree on the situation could leave/hand off responsibility for the forums to those staying.
And … what was the situation?
Like, the messages have been somewhat cryptic and if it’s an issue that has a substation portion of admins quitting on the spot it’s probably something that would be of interest to users of said forum.
We have found an interim admin and are looking into future roles for the Forums. This was a surprise to just about everyone, so it will take a bit of time to figure out a permanent solution.
You might want to re-enable outgoing email, as without it it is impossible for people to reset their passwords or log in by link.
We’re working on re-enabling the outgoing email - as part of the transition, new credentials were required for the mailserver. That’s currently in-process and I’m hoping to have that resolved today.
edit: Also, if your avatar is now missing, please re-upload… we’ve had to migrate to a different storage solution as well and somehow it appears that some avatars didn’t make it over. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Outgoing emails are now re-enabled. I’ve tested with my own email address and I’m receiving emails, so I believe it should be working as expected - if anyone is having specific issues with it, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via PM.
Shane’s a pretty reasonable guy – well known for it, in point of fact.
He’s no slouch technically, either.
And he may be the most moral white guy I know. And a cool-ass anarcho-communist aware of the horrors of capitalism better than most of us.
So, we’ve got a supremely moral, level headed guy with unmatched technical ability who left. And, apparently, Gauntlet leadership is surprised and not expecting it?
Perhaps we should talk about that?
Typically, the Gauntlet community will not clarify what happened publicly what happened.
It’s not just the admins. Many people, especially those of marginalized identities, left the Gauntlet when it became apparent that the Code of Conduct is not applied equally to everybody, and a bad actor was returning. As is common in an organization that fosters a personality cult rather than a community, the well-being of the celebrity was valued more than those who had been impacted.
The organization decided it was OK with this, will wait for the exodus to end, and then continue on as if nothing had happened.
To be clear, I left the Gauntlet about a month ago, very dissatisfied with how events have unfolded. I’ve stayed on the forums because it was ostensibly not a formal part of the Gauntlet and there is a lot of great discussion here. I’m sad to see that @shane has left, because I know he put a lot into building the Gauntlet and these forums and really valued the people here, but I respect his decision.
After this post I may be banned from the forums because the Gauntlet had done that in the past. I do believe in openness and felt you, @minx, and others deserved an answer, and if I get banned I’ll just move on to something new and perhaps will see you around.
I’m sure this will all stabilize in a few days.
In the interests of transparency, the current state is that Shane and Joao are out as admins, while Cass and Yoshi have recently decided to step away from moderation.
I don’t agree with everything Christo said but he won’t be banned for his reply.
I’m closing this thread for now because while we want there to be open discussion about what happened with Shane locking the forum and his reasons for why he did it, the mod team is currently understaffed to properly moderate such a discussion. We will be discussing internally amongst the mods how to best have this discussion at some point in the near future.