[mod post] Public Apology

[youkofujima.livejournal.com]

To the members of the Hetalia Community: Hello, I am the lesser-known moderator and creator of this community, Youko Fujima. Today I am here to say something very important to the community.

I am sorry.

As some of you are well aware, a few days ago one of my co-moderators, mumumugen, posted a new rules/mod post concerning three things, which he addressed specifically in sub sections. Usually, the procedure for mod posts are--the post is written in a draft format and then sent to the other mods for proof-reading. However, this process was skipped during mumumugen's recent mod post, causing for a lot of misunderstanding, which then led to arguments, bad feelings, etc.

For that, I am deeply sorry on behalf of not only the other mods, but also as the head moderator. This was a very big oversight of mine and an incident that could have been prevented with a bit of editing and better tact in terms of choosing the right words.

We never intended to single out certain government regimes. We never intended to single out members who seemed more talented/have done more research and put them on a pedestal.

I understand that mods are to be unbiased and neutral in their stances on things, but please also understand that we are human. It is no excuse for what had transpired, but we do hope that you will forgive us, the mods, for not catching this sooner.

In light of this incident, mumumugen will now voluntarily resign his position as my co-mod. Please find his letter of resignation as well as his apology here.

And to clarify any misunderstandings:

-We will not be banning people based on how much research/how offensive their posts look with just a blanket rule. We will look at things by a case-by-case incident and decide then. However, any post that goes against the former rules will still be dealt with accordingly.

-However, it would seem that the popular opinion is on the fence for how strict a mod should be, and so here is the direction we are asking the members their opinions for:

Would you like the community to go Laissez-Faire. As in, the mods will still look for posts that break the technicality of the original rules (mature posts, cuts, etc), but will leave it to the members to address and consider the contents of the posts in terms of offensiveness, sensitivity, etc. The mods will no longer intervene voluntarily. Should problems arise and things get out of hand, feel free to contact us. But we will no longer rake through comments to delete or screen them.

[Poll #1352582]

Also, on a more personal note, in order to separate our roles between a mod and a member better, I (youkofujima) as well as MB (midnightbanshee) will be going on a members-hiatus. We will only mod and not post anything pertaining to fanworks which includes but is not limited to fanart, fanfics, doujinshis, comments or replies.

Finally, please welcome a_liger as a new co-mod.

Comments

[juddpoynter.livejournal.com]

Ooh. I hope you guys are okay ♥

and welcome to the new co-mod! ^^

[tsuchinoko.livejournal.com]

Before you're a mod, you are first and foremost a member. Depriving you of the freedom to have say or opinion on anything, I think, is unfair on your part. I think, you should be welcome to post and comment on works and scanlations and such but should just refrain on using your position as a mod to um, alter anything? How do I say it.

But I liked it already the way it is. Things got extremely out of hand yes, but I think lessons have been learned.

I really feel bad about Mugen's resignation. I've always thought he had done a good job as being a mod; interacting, accomodating, and active. In fairness, compared to other fandoms, you three are amazing. Seriously, I want you all to know that.

Um, that's all I suppose. I hope this thing clears up and all shall be well. I truly love Hetalia and it's fandom, I would never want to see it fall apart.

EDIT;
Congratulations and welcome to the new co-mod. o7 *salutes*

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

I think going completely Laissez-Faire is a bad idea, actually. We've all, unfortunately, seen first hand what can happen when sensitive subjects are taken to heart, people get upset and sometimes downright hateful. Trying to keep that sort of thing out of our fandom, keeping it happy and fun...that was one of the best things you guys were doing. As far as I've been able to tell, all mod interference has been exceedingly positive and I think we may be opening Pandora's Box by taking that away.

[m-dono.livejournal.com]

I think that the Laissez-Faire is safer, that's just my opinion of course. When I thought about it, I was thinking that there would be members there who would comment and post--myself included--who might not know what's offensive and what isn't. So perhaps it would be wise to make sure?

[7owti5.livejournal.com]

I'm a little saddened by Mumumugen's resignation, and hope he will reconsider. It seems like a very harsh self-penalty to impose, as I believe his intentions were good, and that the issue he addressed is very complex and emotionally charged for many people, thus, near-impossible to handle gracefully.

My philosophy on most things is, interfere as little as possible to maintain the order you want. If you don't really need to intervene because the comm regulates itself well, then laissez-faire away! After all, mods have lives, too, and this is a very active community. Of course, if things will fall into ruin without intervention, then it's in all of our interest to keep things running well, right?

After taking a look at the rules, I believe what was being addressed a few days ago falls under Rule #1 of the comm. In that sense, it's already covered.

[maplepie-tree.livejournal.com]

I'd personally rather stick to the way things have been going so far, without the hate-posts and racist lashings. Whatever you, the mods, have been doing has been good for the community, and I stand by whatever decision you may make, although it's very nice to be able to take a vote on it. However, if push comes to shove later on, and somehow this community takes a turn for the worst, I'd rather the members be able to come to the mods for neutral help in fixing the problem.

Wait, that doesn't sound right...Perhaps what I meant to say was, "keep things the way they are, but don't show favoritism towards one opinion or the other. Tit-for-tat." And all that jazz. Of course, if some dousche decides to be their dousche-y selves, I give you full right to slap them on the wrist or ban them. Well, maybe not ban but punishment will be necessary.

Sorry...I'm rather ill at the moment, so I probably sound like the dousche instead of the other way around...Bollocks.

[kainoliero.livejournal.com]

I'm sad to see Mumumugen gone and if, in the future, he should return I would not oppose. And welcome! a_liger! to the awesome mod team! o7

[atiko.livejournal.com]

I have been happy with the way this comm has been moderated to far, am very saddened by mumumugen resigning, and voted no on laissez-faire. :|

[downburst.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I've been rather unhappy with how heavy-handed this comm has been run, so I say an emphatic YES to laissez-faire.

[glareola.livejournal.com]

I, too, voted "no" to laissez-faire. This is a fandom that deals with some touchy topics, a little discipline is required. Everything's gone so well until now, why change to anarchy now? Okay, okay, laissez-faire is not the same as anarchy, but I'm afraid that anarchy might take over. If a conflict arises, then it might be too late for the mods to rescue the situation if they don't keep a tight watch from the beginning.
I'd love to see this community keep its high standards. It would be sad to see it going rampant.

I'm sad that mumumugen is resigning - I must admit that I don't know the ins and outs of what happened, but in general he left a very good mod impression on me.
At the same time, I welcome the new mod: Good luck!

[lb-x.livejournal.com]

I'm in-between here. Though I would definitely say that the heavy-hand could be relaxed a little. In the past 2-3 weeks the number of mod posts have been increasing to the point where I think one day, there was at least 3. I can't think of any other community I follow that has this many mod posts!

I think it should be fairly obvious what is blatantly offensive and needs mod attention. I don't have a problem with letting members try to address sensitive comments; and if the thread gets out of hand, that's when the mods can step in and override. We have a lot of intelligent people here with different backgrounds. There's going to be friction, but we can also learn a lot from each other through a little debate.

[theotherdenise.livejournal.com]

Although I'm merely a lurker, I think the majority in this community will miss the presence of mumumugen. After all, to err is only human.

Greetings to the new mod!

I voted no. Hetalia is a wonderful fandom, but only as long as everyone is respectful, open-minded and tolerant. If the mods treat every case individually and are fair to everyone, which as far as I know was the case previously, it is perfectly healthy to have a little discipline around.

I hope all the unpleasantness can be resolved.

[stormbringer986.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the new mod :)

I voted to keep things the way they have been. Allowing people to police their own posts is a nice thought, but you will always wind up with someone who purposely posts seriously offensive material just to stir up drama. Given the nature of Hetalia, I think there is an unfortunately high probability of that happening. I've been in communities with no mods, or ones who don't intervene on anything, and it has always ended badly.

[kuroraka.livejournal.com]

Thanks for expressing my thoughts so perfectly, now i don't have to write them down anymore!XD*lazy*

Also, i think the term laissez-faire might be a bit misleading, seeing that people seem to associate it with anarchy/no modding at all...

Finally, i'm sad to see mumumugen leave because i really enjoyed (most) of his posts. Good luck to him and welcome, a_liger!^^

[ayanako.livejournal.com]

I voted for keeping everything the way it is, cause it has been running great, in my opinion... I fear that laissez-faire could go a bit out of hand :/

However, to address the other topic: we´re talking about Hetalia here... It being a dramafree fandom without any controversy and whatnot is impossible... And I´m saddened by Mumumugen´s designation... He has been a great mod and everyone makes mistakes sometimes...

[thewaterbandit.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to see mumumugen go, but I'm sure that a_liger will do an excellent job.

As for the vote, I voted against a more laissez-faire approach. I think that a degree of accountability is necessary, especially in a community for something like Hetalia which deals with extremely sensitive and controversial issues. Speaking personally, this community appealed to me precisely because it seemed to handle these issues sensibly.

Although mistakes have been made, I'm sure we've all learned from them and will try our hardest to stop something like that happening again.

EDIT: Wow, way to ruin a reply with bad coding, self *headdesk*

[nittle-grasper.livejournal.com]

I think mumumugen has generally been a good mod, so I am sorry he feels the need to resign as a result of one mistake. It was by no means anything unforgivable...

That being said, you know I stand by laissez-faire. Essentially that would mean it places more onus on the community members to keep the comm safe and to its liking rather than place all the pressure on the mods to decide, which will never be truly "fair" if they respond to the reports of maybe 5 people when most of the comm doesn't find something offensive.

I think if a culture of welcoming debate and making it so that people are comfortable freely challenging other people and expressing AND DEFENDING their points of views is established, it'll be a more educational and intellectual stimulating environment. Hetalia is full of a diverse group of people from different backgrounds, and obviously we are not all a flock of sheep that needs a community mass line. I personally would love to see more diversity on what people's points of views regarding certain things is, though civilly done.

That being said, if the general mindset is still one of "oh, well, I think this person is misguided but...it would be mean if I corrected them when everyone else is agreeing", that still doesn't solve anything.

So I guess the real question being asked in the poll is essentially whether or not the majority of the community wants more responsibility or not?

[despedia]

mumumugen was a wonderful moderator and it's saddening to see him go. Heh, people shouldn't forget that mods are humans too.

Whatever the case, welcome to the new mod! And I'd rather things stay the way they are.

[thenakedcat.livejournal.com]

I voted against laissez-faire, because I really feel like letting slurs or hate-speech remain in the forum could send the wrong impression or create a hostile environment for the targets of the hate. I've seen vigilant moderation done well and done badly, and despite the risks for it going bad, I think having a designated someone there to remind that this is not the place to get heated is a very, very good thing.

Additionally, I would like to suggest to the mods that they make use of the option to freeze threads, rather than just using deletion? That way they could say, "Alright, this isn't all the way to offensive yet but you're heading there. Please cease and desist."

[akisilver.livejournal.com]

I don't really see that he did anything wrong...but that's his decision I guess. Also please don't refrain from participating just because you're a mod. You're a member too, and we really like your posts. So please let us see them again.

[nittle-grasper.livejournal.com]

Slurs or hate speech are infringing on the rights of people and should be modded, of course.

The issue was over portrayals of ideology and historical accuracy.

"KOREANS SHOULD DIE" is not either, and would not fall under the laissez-faire policy. "Less modding" does not mean "no modding".

[revanchists.livejournal.com]

This.

[truffle.livejournal.com]

Oh mumumugen, how I will miss you.... ._.
Even so, I welcome a_liger with open arms~ :)

I wasn't around in the midst of the goings-on as they happened, but I read the post and the comments with it, so I can understand why things unfolded as they did, and I felt it unfortunate... but I really appreciate the sense of responsibility this mod team has (is that the word I want?) and was always impressed by it (and I expect I always will be ♥ ).
So cheers to you mods~ current or otherwise.

As for whether or not there should be a laissez-faire approach here or not... I'd rather keep things pretty much as they are.... I... can't quite explain myself.

Jeez I hope this was coherent....

[starshards.livejournal.com]

... Well that's a pile of wank.

mumumugen has an incredible amount of respect among fans as the most well seen of the mods, and the one putting forward neat initiatives. I don't see why he should feel the need to resign. Everyone makes mistakes, and as far as I can see the only mistake he made was not discussing something with you guys. :/

Because, much as I missed the main arguments, I personally didn't see a problem with advocating more research. I don't recall seeing him threatening the banhammer on someone just because they want to make communism omgkawaiidesu.

To be honest, no I don't think we should have a leissez-faire system. hetalia is the first place where people look for Western representation of the Hetalia fandom. It's certainly the first place the JFen look. If people are really that desperate to declare undying love for the Soviet Union, or that facism really wasn't that bad, then they should bloody well use some common sense. Because at this rate, it's just proving the haters right when they say that we're all in it for the omg-so-cute gay and not the history or the expansion of our own geographical knowledge. Which I can assure you, as someone who was inspired to buy history books again and has renewed interest in her university course over this series, is not in fact true 100% of the time.

As far as I can tell mumumugen responded to complaints, as a mod should. I'm disgusted that he felt the need to resign over something so pathetic when he's done so much good work for the community.

That's all, really. :/

tl;dr

[rainbow-cnxn.livejournal.com]

That's disheartening to see mumumugen leave. Seemed like a nice guy, overall. In any case, I wish a_liger the best of luck.

My two cents regarding the role of moderation in this community:

I think that this community should not shy away from encouraging active, objective discussion about history and current affairs. Key word is "objective". We should strive for evidence-based posts with a healthy regard for all viewpoints. Badly-supported personal gut feelings, though, should be kept out of the fandom as much as possible. So for example, I have no problem with allowing a post that goes "JAPAN HAD VERY GOOD REASON TO INVADE KOREA". Though it is perhaps outrageous, it is presented within the realm of FACT (not OPINION) and so is debatable, and I hope that the community would discuss it in great detail and show how wrong OP was. On the other hand, if someone posted "KOREANS SHOULD DIE", I'd totally be for moderation of such a comment. It is very subjective and undebatable because it falls solely within the realm of OPINION. In short, "not your personal blog".

And certainly, there's a difference between spirited political discussion and trolling. If certain users show that they can't handle being trusted with producing and policing content, then I think that they should be banned. I think that things such as racial slurs would also fall under this category. They don't contribute to intelligent discussion in any way and only serve to spark shitstorms. (As an aside, though, I'd love to see posts discussing how racial slurs came to be. Such a discussion could be intelligent and relevant.)

Having said all that, how do fan-creations fit in? The comm seeks to be dedicated to not only discussing the history behind the comic but also sharing fanworks. Personally, I believe that art is a form of self-expression highly imbued with subjectivity and that such subjectivity should NOT be stifled. I don't think that artists are particularly obligated to represent history accurately according to an implicit community-wide understanding of historical accuracy. Propagandist art? Fine by me. It's within the artist's prerogative to like what she likes and to think that it's awesome and worthy of being spread. (Not to mention, the idea of enforcing objectivity in fanworks on this comm is somewhat frightening.)

The only fanwork that I would moderate, though, would be especially hateful ones. It's one thing for a work to go "NAZIS WERE AWESOME" and another to go "DIE, JEWS!". While hate is as subjective as any other emotion, I think that it is in the community's (and greater society's) best interest to try to minimize the ideologies of hate as much as possible. So because I think that the comm should be agenda'ed in that way, my arbitrary line in the sand is for statements and ideologies of hate. Of course, this "line" isn't always going to be so clear-cut, and I'd be happy with giving the mods plenty of free rein for interpretation.