Hello, friends. I'm not the head mod and I'm often pretty invisible in here but I do most of the moderating day-to-day. I wanted to say a few things for the sake of the community here.
Recently a user posted some problematic writing in here which was followed by several other users creating posts in other subreddits that encouraged bullying of this individual. Bans have been issued on both sides of this interaction. Any attempts to out who any of these users are in this space will also be met with bans because we're done and moving on. But part of moving on is talking about the issues and so that is what this post aims to do for those interested.
1. Sometimes users will have problematic elements in their writing. We need to have certain understandings about how this is dealt with.
If you're a seasoned writer, you will probably note that most things posted here are not particularly refined. That's not a bug but a feature! We're here to help with writing and not show it off. Based purely on my anecdotal modding experience, I believe most posters here are also fairly young and tend to be beginners. Posting writing for public critique is actually a rather impressive act of vulnerability and demonstrates a starting point of humility in most cases. That is something to be celebrated.
A lot of people end up expressing concerning views or sentiments through their writing, as well as ignorance. We often have users critiqued on grounds of portrayal of racial and ethnic groups, of sex and gender, of mental states and conditions, and more. Sometimes users even come and ask about how to improve their representation of these things. Respectful representation is a writing skill and it is on-topic here. You can ask about it and you can also critique people on it, even if they did not ask for it. This should continue.
Most users, in my once-again anecdotal modding experience, actually respond fairly graciously to critiques of this kind. People are more often ignorant than malicious. If someone genuinely responds well to that sort of thing, great! Treat them as someone that you are helping to grow, not as an enemy. We've all been more ignorant and less articulate in the past. If someone responds with a prejudicial tirade, report the situation because they are in violation of the standards we set for this community. Remember also that sometimes "you should not portray this if you don't understand it" can be good writing advice.
If you are called out on poor representation, respond gracefully! Assume good intentions unless you have a reason not to. Writing is a skill that involves connecting with an audience and if someone is reading prejudice in your writing even if it was not the intent, that is most likely an indicator of an area of improvement.
The short conclusion is to say that you should expect some problematic aspects to exist in writing in this space sometimes but assume people are here to improve and that this is one area to do it in. We're not going to moderate away every bad example of men writing women or whatever because that would be antithetical to helping people learn where the issues lie. We will, however, absolutely moderate against people who show an active intention to further their prejudice or whose goals in writing are openly and intentionally harmful.
2. Bullying users is not to be tolerated, especially when it involves brigading.
As I mentioned, posting writing online is a vulnerable act. It is made all the more so by the modern internet being a frankly pretty hostile space. Sometimes people come looking to pick on people for entertainment and unfortunately in the past some people have brought that energy here. If you are looking to be mean, to tear users down with no meaningful helpful feedback, or to make a "lolcow" of someone, you are decidedly unwelcome here.
This extends especially strongly to linking posts here to external communities, which frequently drives crowds here with intentions other than helping people with writing. We have banned users over doing this with malintent and we've reached out to moderators of other communities to get users banned for doing it in those spaces too. We'll continue to do this if necessary because this sort of behavior does not actually solve writing issues but simply inflames issues.
It's also just mean. Good people decide not to do these sorts of things. Ragebaiting is not a healthy aspect of discourse and solves no social issues. If someone is being problematic, they are less likely to improve that if you make it a public show. In fact, they are likely to take the defensive position and make negative progress instead.
The short conclusion is that external bullying and links inviting raids or voyeurism towards users here will be met with permanent bans as well as reports to the moderators of communities being used to launch the raids.
Alrighty, guys. Have a lovely week.
--Iacobus
