Transgender Community

It's unusual, perhaps unprecedented to deal with something like this in its own post, but I think it's warranted given the magnitude of what just happened.

Last night (from my point of view anyway), this post, henceforth to be referred to as "The Failbomb" was made by chocolate13fire. Whether intentional or not, the failbomb served as a massive piece of trolling, and was entirely inappropriate for this community. Furthermore, the failbomb continued to explode in the comments of that post, and most recently in a second post (which I have removed). Normally we would deal with rule violations and problematic issues in-thread as they arise, but there's so much to do in this case that it's happening in this post.

Anyway, after combing through the comments, the following action is to be taken:

chocolate13fire, as the perpetrator of the failbomb, and for continuing to exhibit deeply problematic behaviour in the comment thread is to be banned from this community.

o0teressa0o made several problematic comments in the comment thread, and apparently has not taken 2 prior warnings for similar problematic posts on board, and is to be banned from this community.

eidolonamorata was extremely active in the failbomb's comment thread. For tone policing, victim blaming, being provocative, minimising the negative experiences of trans people, for blaming trans people for the transphobia we experience, for castigating people for not displaying an appropriate level of deference to the failbomb's original poster and for referring to trans people using phrases like, "You and your people" is to be banned from the community.

eigengrau, for fanning the flames in the failbomb, is to receive 1 formal warning.

levyn, for being condescending towards, and minimising the hurt that trans people feel is to receive 1 formal warning.

jitusk, for singling out a particular community member for personal attack is to receive 1 formal warning.

the5ws, for making a separate post which was clearly a continuation of the first post in a short timescale (a violation of community rules), and which read to me exactly like a lecture aimed at community members, liable to provoke a second front of fail, is to receive 1 formal warning.

Furthermore, because it has led to misunderstandings in the past, and did on this occasion too, the text in the user info page which reads:

The Transgender LJ Community exists to bring together people of all genders for discussion of Transgender issues.

...is to be amended with the following explanatory note:

The phrase "all genders" has resulted in confusion in the past. To clarify, it does not mean "trans people and non trans people", as being trans is not a gender. "All genders" means those who identify as men, women, genderqueer people, androgynes, neutrois people, and so-on. Those who are not trans are welcome to join and post, but please reflect that this is trans-centric community.

If anyone has alternate wording in mind, please feel free to suggest it here. In the meantime, we'll go with that.

auntysarah, on behalf of the moderator team.

We just had a post by a chaser. We generally try and filter such people at membership application stage, but it appears this one slipped through. We're very sorry about that.

Apologies to anyone who saw the post and may have been traumatised by it. I've removed it, and banned the poster. Hopefully it's the last we've seen of them.

Sarah, on behalf of the mod team.

As mentioned earlier, entries posted to this community will now default to being publicly visible unless you set the privacy option to "Members" while posting. This does not prevent anyone from posting members-only entries, it just changes the default.

Also comments from non-members are allowed, but will default to being screened. This is to prevent abuse by trolls and spammers.

auntysarah, on behalf of the mod team.

I'd like to remind users of rule 6 from the community info page:

6.) Do not change the size or colour of the text in your post. It makes your post more difficult to read and does not make anyone more likely to read it. Similarly, bold, italic, and underline are used to add emphasis to specific bits of text; do not use any of them on your entire post. This defeats their purpose and has the same effect as changing the size or colour of your text. Posts which violate this rule will be given 24 hours to edit their post, after which time it will be removed.

Recently there seem to have been something of a rash of posts making use of lots of colours, fonts, HTML tables, and so on. There are better places to demonstrate ones mastery of HTML than the friends pages of people who read transgender. Posts that do take on the appearance of "my first DTP project" (with apologies for those too young to remember 7 pin dot matrix printers and who have never experienced such travesties) will be mod noted, given 24 hours to fix the problem, and then deleted, as per the community rules.

Thank you.

I guess this is a plea for common sense more than anything else. It's the nature of this group that sometimes there will be a controversial thread, and that's fine, as long as we can discuss things in a respectful manner, even if the discussion gets a little heated at times.

However, making a post, waiting until it's generated a lot of discussion, and then deleting it and reposting the same thing, or something very similar, as a new post is not acceptable. It's especially not acceptable when the old post generated a lot of heated debate, because deleting that comments thread and reposting risks the same thing happening again, but this time with many people involved feeling defensive.

Whether intentionally, or otherwise, the effect is to troll the community. Please don't do this.