Yay! Been scanning the twitterverse and after a long absence, it looks like @wekatweets is back on the boards.
[lprent: Good – I miss her and I hope this means that she has gotten through whatever medical issues she had. (Nope I don’t know any more than anyone else, but that was the most likely). ]
big red didn’t save the place mate – and to say people are adults is missing the point – look at all the shit things adults are doing, the shit things they are saying and ALL around the world. Being reminded of the bigger picture is helpful not constraining imo.
I liked weka but she was a terrible mod, the power went to her head and she almost destroyed The Standard.
I realise that you act like a misogynist dickhead, however that isn’t what I saw. And I suspect that I have a far better view on what happens on this site than you do.
What I saw was that while she was moderating we started to have a slow rise in the number of women reading the site. We started at about 28% according to google analytics and then it started to rise. Even after she stopped contributing here it continued to rise. Currently GA shows it as 38% of our readership. It has been as high as 42% in recent months.
Between her, and the other women authors / moderators / commenters here over the last 4 years they have both managed to raise the number of women reading and commenting, raised the standard of debate, and probably most important of all to me – have reduced the amount of required moderation to keep the site civilised to a more acceptable level.
I’m not saying that Weka did all of that herself. What I am saying is that the thing that saved The Standard was that she did and the others that listened to people like her did. The place wouldn’t exist now if she and others hadn’t taken up the challenge that was passed to them before and after the 2014 election to take control of the atmosphere of the place – because I and some of the other moderators didn’t have any more time. And weka with her patience and civilised behaviour was a really important part of that.
Basically you’re both completely wrong, and you show little understanding of the dynamic of the site.
It would help others understand if you opened up the hidden thread that went on leading up to her leaving. But given there are other reasons not to, I’m going to explain briefly (and probably incompletely) my version of what happened here in the open. This is a once only and I’m not entering into a debate on it.
The principle problem was my original assertion made some years back, that domestic intimate partner violence was best understood from a gender neutral perspective. Most of the modern research I’ve encountered over the past few years backs this up. However it does fatally undermine the feminist claim that it’s all about patriarchy. My position was simple, after 40 years of the feminist ‘male abuse of power’ narrative it seems that rates of IPV remain stubbornly higher than anyone would like, and maybe a fresh approach was called for.
This she hated with a passion and from then on in I became someone she wanted to get rid of. I tried a year of simply not commenting on gender issues at all, but this was not enough. In the end I was fed up with being stalked by her or tracey who seemed to work in tandem on me constantly reading shit into just about anything I said. Also in the author thread she made several clear comments that she wanted to see the ‘men who ran this site’ cleared out and the way opened for her to impose whatever agenda she wanted. She was starting to behave increasingly as if she was entitled to appoint herself “Chief Editor”.
When I challenged this … and I did it respectfully, but without ambiguity or ‘egg shell walking’ … it was not appreciated at all. Mixed in with this was the episode with Psycho Milt who made a sly accusation to CV of being a Nazi, and weka goes off the farm and uses CV’s somewhat restrained response as an opportunistic excuse to ban him for a year. In order to bring the stupidity of this to a head I banned PM for a year as logically he was the perpetrator of the exchange. (We’d seen far worse many times with no year long bans.)
Then in the mess weka unilaterally changes my backend editing privileges; which prevents me from rescinding the ban I’d put on PM (I had only ever done it to make a point). Sometime in this mix I get a message from the email account linked to my WordPress account that tells me someone had tried to hack into it. Fed up with this I deleted that account and have never accessed the backend since.
Apparently some days after this (I was no longer privvy to what she said) weka chose to quit. That was entirely her choice and certainly fitted the pattern of strongly pro-feminist authors not tolerating dissent from their ideology. If they don’t get thecomplete acquiescence they demand, they storm off leaving everyone feeling abused and dissapointed.
I had made it abundantly clear to weka that I valued her substantial contribution enormously, but her approach to moderation needed to be reconsidered. This had nothing to do with her, we’d had the same issue with TRP in the early days and he’s returned with great success. I was and remain deeply unhappy about weka’s actions, but in the end I’ve taken the view I’m not responsible for them.
At the same time I felt I had to take accountability for the part I unhappily played in the entire mess, and I’ve stepped back from any role as moderator or author. I have zero intention or expectation of ever taking it up again.
From my perspective we’ve had a better outcome persuading people to self-moderate and by setting the example we wanted. Bold type moderation has been rolled out far less often and we’re seeing the majority of threads constructively conducted with far less pointless abuse.
Ha I knew that something like that had happened. It is good the ugly truth is finally coming out and not the hiding of the truth.
You know what I think about your posting on this feminist subject – I have always been in the equality camp and you have insulted and tried to shame me for that for years.
You basically fucked it up for everyone else who wanted what weka wanted.
It could be called the ‘leg-up’ culture as it helps a person to gain a feeling of superiority by catching out someone else and gives a feeling of power and authority, right and righteousness to the person criticising.
It’s a mealy-mouthed bullying approach to others and turns individuals into priggish, judgmental people rule-bound like a severe religious cult. The adjectives below provide a cover of descriptions of the behaviour deriving from the word ‘preachy’:
having or showing a tendency to give moral advice in a tedious or self-righteous way. “his patriotic pictures had a preachy tone” synonyms: moralistic, moralizing, sanctimonious, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, priggish, sententious, pietistic, didactic, dogmatic;
That can even be seen on this blog FTTT. Finding balance in life is the hardest thing – encouraging people to speak up and discuss stuff in an intelligent way so all can learn from different viewpoints, including the person who initiates the opinion, is a major difficult process.
marty mars Everyone else doesn’t want what you want and doesn’t want what weka wants either. The whole purpose of coming here to discuss important issues is to see what is the best way forward and look round the subject seeing the flaws or advantages in what is, and what can be changed for everyone’s benefit.
You marty mars feel sure that your background, your experience, your knowledge when you support those who are not treated fairly, is so great that your opinions must always be right and others should step back and be quiet. Definitely you and others feeling the same, should have a fair hearing and then action to first improve and then overcome the situation as soon as possible. But proper time and hearing about all the problem is necessary for reasoned, lasting outcomes.
Red Logix is not to be blamed for trying for reasoned discussion. I thought he was wasting his time that’s my opinion. The call-out culture that has been referred to in recent comments, was often rife here when discussing sensitive issues like rape culture, racism and ‘identity politics’. The ambush behaviour from various people is a deterrent to discussion but was very revealing about those using this tactic; their prejudices and drive towards authoritarianism and cult behaviour.
I suggest we shape our input to thinking about better ways of managing ourselves rather than venting our spleen, and work with people who have a good faith approach showing a respectful concern about others needs and concerns. This could a type of government reflecting this approach: Geniocracy.
The term geniocracy comes from the word genius, and describes a system that is designed to select for intelligence and compassion as the primary factors for governance.
While having a democratic electoral apparatus, it differs from traditional liberal democracy by instead suggesting that candidates for office and the body electorate should meet a certain minimal criterion of problem-solving or creative intelligence.
The thresholds proposed by the Raëlians are 50% above the mean for an electoral candidate and 10% above the mean for an elector.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geniocracy
The equality of men and women is a fundamental principle I’ve totally upheld here. Yet it seems unless I acquiese to exactly the version of this feminists demand I believe I’m labelled a misogynist. Kind of odd really considering that not even a majority of women consider themselves feminists.
Still I have tried not to be provocative on what is clearly a sensitive topic and I truly cannot recall s single instance where I attempted to shame you or anyone else on this. By contrast you regularly indulge in insults and shaming as you have done exactly above.
Such a lack of self awareness Marty. I’m going to go back to not responding now. That was the deal.
I’m not sure you realise how entrenched your position is, RL, and this does make it difficult for others with lived experience of dv, that is different from yours, to effectively work through various aspects of this topic. So I agree with marty, in principle, if not words.
And my view of the reason that 40 years of dv discussion hasn’t changed anything is because societal & economic structures haven’t changed, and because males won’t work on this shit (the violence and the structures).
But I did enjoy Weka’s writing, and thought her moderation was more moderate and fair than most – people got multiple clear warnings and frankly they can’t blame anyone but themselves if she banned their arse.
That says nothing we haven’t known for ages. But what it is also intended to do is frame the issue using a power group analysis (one gender Vs the other) in a manner that has seen little progress and increasing antagonism in recent years.
It also omits a lot of other information about violence in our society.
All I’m arguing this one sided approach doesn’t seem to be helpful and maybe there is a better way forward. It baffles me why such a small suggestion is so upsetting.
I’d have to look back on the threads. Since 2014/5 I’ve been tied down getting projects out the door and on to the customers site for work. So I’ve had to prioritize my time time far more than I had. I simply haven’t been following the intercine fighting as much as I once would have. I’ve pretty much concentrated on the site ops and the the posts.
So I probably didn’t see too much of this because I simply didn’t have time.
However, the attempted hacking of the logins happens all of the time. My login has had a *lot* of hacks on it all of the time. So do all of the authors and the remaining commenters with logins. I have a email folder full of reports of it happening multiple times per day. Just as I have reports of when passwords are changed. At various times when it gets too intense, I’ve had to shutdown the email system that supports external password changes. And earlier this year I had a problem when the wretched thing started rejecting mail from the server (which I must retest – still getting odd emails saying that it fails sometimes).
With weka’s departure, I didn’t notice anything in the backend. But I may have simply missed it. However her not being around for periods wasn’t uncommon (like yourself when you’ve moved countries). She’d stopped several times from contributing for quite long periods when she wasn’t feeling too good.
What I have noticed after those internal disagreements after the 2014 election has been the slow but steady increase in women readership and eventually the slow decrease in the need to moderate. Neither has particularly affected the number of active readers.
The numbers of 200+ session readers per month has steadily increased. The slow decreases in page views has been from the overseas 1 page readers – which shouldn’t be a target group for a NZ political website.
Anyway, I’d better get on my bike and get to work.
Maybe your explanation is the correct one, I have no way to tell.
On the other hand in the whole decade I ran that account this was the one and only time I got that message. And it occurred on the exact day mentioned above.
judgmental people rule-bound like a severe religious cult. The adjectives below provide a cover of descriptions of the behaviour deriving from the word ‘preachy’:
“his patriotic pictures had a preachy tone”
synonyms: moralistic, moralizing, sanctimonious, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, priggish, sententious, pietistic, didactic, dogmatic;
Everyone else doesn’t want what you want and doesn’t want what weka wants either. The whole purpose of coming here to discuss important issues is to see what is the best way forward and look round the subject seeing the flaws or advantages in what is, and what can be changed for everyone’s benefit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geniocracy
Arishma Singh was killed by a man on 12 November 2017.