In November 2022, I was really, really bored, so I made a Neocities. Partially because making websites was kinda trendy, and also I needed a reliable place to document stuff relating to my original fiction that might actually become something someday, maybe. But I kinda fell off, as my lack of skill with HTML combined with me not really liking Neocities' dashboard made it pretty unsatisfying.

Fast forward to February 26, 2024. Nekoweb had launched the day before, and I just found out about it via Twitter (I was following Dimden on there because they made the OldTwitter browser extension). It seemed cute and I liked the way the dashboard felt to use, so I restarted my site from scratch on there. Or rather, I should say "here" because I'm still on Nekoweb to this day. I liked it enough that a little over a month in I bit the bullet and pledged three (3) whole dollars. What I got out of it is pretty worth the money, I think. Nekoweb does what I need it to do. The webhosting service itself is an easy 4.5/5, I just miss the built-in custom themes (but Stylus has served me well).

That's not really the point of this blog post. The community is far more interesting.

Nekoweb's social aspects (both tech support and casual conversation) are primarily concentrated in the official discord server, which (as of the time I'm writing this) has over 3,000+ members. That's a lot! It's always been a very lively place - both in a positive and negative sense. People are always eager to help each other improve their sites and contribute to the rest of the community, but on the other edge of the sword its easy for people to get stirred into a frenzy when anything even remotely unpleasant happens.

I've seen my fair share of discourse over the past year, and whenever I come across it I've tried to be chill about it. I don't like being inflammatory, and I especially hate to see people making asses of themselves. Gotta be a voice of reason and good influence in tough situations, which is why back in August I had the urge to warn against the dangers of handing mod permissions to just anyone who happens to want it.

At the time I was floored. Like, I just wanted to be smart and cool, lmao. When I said "don't just give it to anyone who asks", I kinda thought I was implying that you should handpick trustworthy people yourself and ask them personally if they'd be willing to moderate (I don't like mod applications, I don't trust people who reach for power unprompted). Not forcemodding people who spout wise-sounding quotes when relevant.

So on the one hand, I was very annoyed - having had prior experience moderating wikis and servers when I was a kid, I've come to learn that I really hate moderating. It's a difficult and largely thankless task. It's the responsibility of maintaining good vibes without being a party pooper. Sounds simple on paper, but it's nerve-wracking, and I especially hate the internal politics that often come with the position. On top of that, the decision to put me in charge seemed highly impulsive, which is one of the things I thought was implicitly unwise.

But at the same time, it's not like there were that many better candidates. I'm a relatively level-headed and decently active early adopter, so it makes sense that people would put their trust in me rather than some random popular mouth-y teenagers. I just kinda had a feeling I'd regret instant-resignation. So very well; if the powers that be have decided I ought to be the enforcer, then that I shall be. And I'll continue to moderate the discord server for as long as they'll have me.

But I gotta admit, I haven't been that great of a mod. When I was given the ol' ball and chain, there were already 2,000+ members. That's a lot! And I work a full-time job on top of that, so it's always been difficult to keep up with stuff that happens. Furthermore, the rules have always been very vague (fellow nekowebber June critiques this aspect in more detail here), so my autistic ass has always been unsure of where to draw the line. Obviously people being blatantly inflammatory ought to be punished, but what constitutes simply 'annoying'? The rules as written are highly subjective, and while I did scour older message and ban logs for precedent, my conclusion is that moderation was primarily vibes-based. This does have benefits (as its easier to justify throwing the book at people who deliberately go against the intent of the rules while still following the letter), but by that same token it's extremely frustrating - there's just too much gray area to word your way out of punishment. And whenever I was in doubt of myself, I chose to do nothing. Things got a little easier when Joosh and July were added to the team near the end of the year (as the holiday season at the time made it nigh-impossible for me to check the server), but I still don't think this is enough.

I could spend the rest of this review criticizing how rude and irritating a fraction of the discord powerusers happen to be (as June has said and July implied in their reviews), but frankly a lot of that is just a result of my failure to properly moderate the server. I just didn't realize just how much garbage was floating right under my nose until the Cereza incident (you can read her perspective here). As it turns out, the fruit of knowledge is rotten. Since then I've been trying to be a more proactive presence. Obviously that's rather late in the game, and that alone is nowhere near enough to purge the bad vibes over the past few months. I've done y'all a severe disservice, and for that I'm sorry.

I do have some ideas on how to turn the tide around. I can't help but root for the underdog, and I want nothing more than for Nekoweb to be as good as it can be. As such, I want to do everything within my power to make that happen. The ball's not entirely within my court (Dimden has final say), but a few ideas:

1. Rewrite the rules to be more clear, or expand the rules to provide examples of Jesse What The Fuck Are You Talking About. June goes into this at length in his review, but the Discord's rules look more like that of a friend group server than something with thousands of members. The high level of subjectivity within also makes them hard to justify enforcing, because from any perspective basic enforcement can look like overstepping. Hell, even just providing examples of "bad", "good", and "annoying" behavior would work wonders, I feel. I'm willing to rewrite the rules myself if no one else will.
2. Add a modmail/tickets bot. What this does is create an inbox (shared between the mods) for users to anonymously communicate with the mods for various purposes. This would help a lot in catching issues that slip through the cracks (like Some People refusing to cease calling transfem and nonbinary people "bro" despite repeated requests to Cease. what the hell man). There's a lot of good options for this, and my suggestion for implementing it in the server got positive reception, so I see zero downsides.
3. Expand automod. The team being as small as it is makes some degree of automation necessary - at the moment, all automod does is filter out banned words and thoroughly scunthorpe a slur. Kinda pitiful. Some bots have both modmail and better automod. If two birds can be killed with one stone, it's worth looking into, I think.
4. Make the mod role actually visible separately within the member sidebar. It's well-documented that we're deliberately hidden so we can jumpscare would-be rule-breakers, but I think as the server has grown it's more of a detriment because it means nobody knows who to ping when shit hits the fan.
5. More mods!!! July is stepping down in the imminent future, leaving just me and Joosh. This is Not Great. If it were up to me I'd try to sic the ball and chain on June. But maybe actually ask whoever you wanna promote first.
6. Don't put unbans up for community vote. This should go without saying, but I remember a few months ago Joosh banned TM and lel for blatantly shitting up the place and then like a month later put up a poll to unban them and that irritated me. I've learned firsthand that if you fail to stick to your guns, it leads people to believe that anything goes. Given the state of things, that belief's probably justified, but we can't be doormats anymore.

I've been a total negative nancy these past few paragraphs, but honestly it's not all bad. There's lots of delightful people in the server, and even the worst members still contribute something positive. And as I've said, part of why the server has gotten so obnoxious is because of my failure to keep peoples' worst tendencies in check. That was (and still is) my responsibility that I bungled (that I would like to cease bungling). But I'm hoping that going forward I can help move things in a more positive direction.

Also today's my 22nd birthday so please be nice :3

In a shocking turn of events, almost all common complaints are being addressed. My post led to another person (Jb) posting their own review, and this uptick in criticism led to more and more people discussing their grievances and what could be done to improve the situation at length. It was a very fruitful and productive discussion, and it's led to the following:

1. Two (2) historic problem users (moosyu and jhorn) being banned for good.
2. Two (2) new moderators (June and sen.fish) were brought on board.
3. A complete overhaul of the rules, as well as reworking of #nekoweb-help (it is now a forum rather than a single channel)
4. The mods are now separately visible in the sidebar.
5. Sapphire has been added for modmail and automod purposes. I assume it'll be fully set up by tomorrow.

I'm honestly amazed, I didn't expect this much change in such a short timespan. I was really worried there'd be stronger pushback from the lassiezz-fare crowd, but there was near-unanimous support. I'm really glad. Morale's higher than ever now! It's incredible that so many people within the community managed to collectively push for concrete change and actually have it happen. Happy birthday to me.