Auto-SummaryGeokills responds to community reactions regarding the relocation of the "Cultivation Confessional Booth" thread, acknowledging its role in fostering connection and comfort among users while explaining the decision to move it. He emphasizes the difficulty of balancing free expression with a welcoming environment and notes that the move was not meant to erase the confessional's value. He addresses concerns about transparency, staff decision-making, and the need for community feedback, while also encouraging users to explore other forums. Geokills acknowledges the emotional attachment to the thread and offers potential solutions, such as moving it to another forum or using personal signatures to maintain visibility. He reaffirms the community's ongoing evolution and the importance of diverse engagement, while admitting that mistakes may occur and that the forum remains committed to improvement.
There is a lot to digest in the comment stream here, and I'll do my best to respond to items that appear generally directed toward me.
Before getting into individual responses, I want to acknowledge something that comes through clearly across many of your comments: the confessional wasn't simply somewhere to go off-topic. It helped people feel comfortable participating, connected newer cultivators with experienced members, and gave people a reason to keep showing up and helping in Mush Cult. Those are meaningful contributions to the forum itself, and I totally understand that keeping the thread available elsewhere, doesn't necessarily preserve all of those benefits.
In this instance, giving the community a heads up and an opportunity to comment before the move may have been helpful. We can't hold an endless public debate on every policy decision, but that doesn't mean every change is best handled the same way. The staff will continue reviewing the comments here, and we reserve the right to change our collective mind. That isn't a promise to reverse the move, but your feedback is part of what we will be considering.
Now, for a bit of point by point...
- callmehippie, different venues have different expectations for conduct. The warning I issued concerned how you expressed yourself, not your disagreement with the decision. You're welcome to criticize the move and explain why you think we got it wrong; I ask that you do so without personal insults. You ask why OTD wasn't always an "opt-in" venue. Well, the OTD debate has in fact been regurgitated time and again throughout Shroomery history; always with a major dose of drama. I in fact campaigned repeatedly to have OTD completely removed from the community in my early days. We settled on disclaimers, creating the Pub forum as an alternative, keeping it guest-view hidden so it wouldn't be indexed by search engines nor viewable by anyone visiting until they registered, and when realizing that it was still leaking some unsavory content into areas of the community that we didn't want to see happen, it went fully opt-in during this most recent round of "As the Shroomery Turns"
 . The point being, this is an age old point of contention, one I've been on both sides of. It's extremely difficult to balance the desire for a bastion of relatively uncensored freedom on the internet, while simultaneously maintaining a warm and inviting atmosphere. This is why we try to split the difference with venue specific expectations.
On your ratings, I've reviewed the ratings and you have two negative general ratings, neither of which are obscene or vulgar, and your overall aggregate is averaged to a 5 because the folks who negatively rated you have a higher incidence of giving out negative ratings, which we in turn custom weight to carry less weight in your aggregate score (this is just one example of the insane lengths we go to in efforts to be fair). General ratings are just that.
- RealityGlitch, I see your comment about being harassed. If you are referring to persistent actions taking place outside of OTD, please inform me privately, with links if possible, and I will take the time to review them to do what I can to curtail that type of behavior. I also hear that some of you have already reported problems and felt the response was inadequate. That concern deserves review on its own merits, rather than an assumption that you're simply conflating OTD with the rest of the site. We are largely volunteer run and do miss things, so please reach out with detail, and understand that it might take a minute for us to get back to you.
Separately, no one is trying to hide the confessional. We considered beef's journal a reasonable place for it because it is personally curated, full of great content, and somewhat typical of what the journal feature was originally designed for and how it was often originally used. I recognize, however, that a journal doesn't offer the same visibility as MC. If beef would prefer his thread in the Pub, I'd be more than happy to move it there; he only need ask. Folks ask me to move threads to/from their journals to forums with some regularity.
- bloodssonnew, I am not asserting with confidence that we will ultimately create an off-topic forum for MC in MC. What I am acknowledging is that we are always a work in progress, and we reserve the right to pivot, change and/or revert change when it appears warranted. I can also see why mentioning that possibility while moving an existing thread serving a similar purpose seemed contradictory. It was an acknowledgment of possible future options, not a plan to replace what you built. The largely volunteer staff here is human, will make mistakes and errors in judgment, but we are always trying to balance the spirit and needs of our community with practical structure to ensure its longevity as one of the last relatively unrestricted and active forum communities on the internet.
- DorkWithTheHair, we hold a lot of discussions behind closed doors. If we held a public debate for every decision, we would be unable to do much of anything at all, because there are always different takes and desires amongst a population this diverse, and we will never satisfy 100% of the community. We make efforts to consider the community writ large, which is one of the reasons veggie created this thread: to provide a designated space for constructive feedback. As I acknowledged above, that doesn't mean advance consultation wouldn't have been useful in this particular instance.
I will not be posting internal discussions here. If I were to invalidate the expected privacy of our internal discussion board, I suspect it would have a chilling effect on open and honest staff collaboration. We try to promote people we believe to be thoughtful individuals with a variety of skillsets and dispositions, and we have a private venue where they can speak candidly. That privacy doesn't prevent us from explaining our reasoning publicly or taking responsibility for the results.
- beef, I always love ya man. Your heart is gold and I see that you try to do your best with what's in front of you. I also sincerely appreciate the time, effort and love that you so clearly pour into this community.
- Rasmodius, I get what you're saying with regard to "the breakroom inside the workshop." Your point isn't only that people enjoyed the breakroom; it's that having it right there helped keep people in the workshop, answering questions and welcoming newcomers. That is a fair consideration, and one we need to weigh alongside our reasons for keeping MC focused.
I would still encourage you to help build that "garden for the weeders" in our other forums, while recognizing that moving the thread doesn't automatically recreate its relationship with MC. I also don't discourage the occasional off-topic diversion in discussions in Mush Cult. It's going to happen, and that's OK. Much of the time, those local community comments will be left in place; sometimes, they might get moved. The confessional remains a great thread in its own right. What we were trying to do was maintain a forum structure that is increasingly difficult to maintain in the era of endless scrolling social media, up-voted prominence and massive "all in one" aggregators. Whether this particular move serves that goal well enough to justify its costs is a fair question.
- Blopblop, I understand preferring the company you've found in the confessional. I don't agree with describing its participants as a higher grade of human being, but having different preferences about where and with whom you spend your time is entirely reasonable. I would like to see our mush cult cohort branch back out into other areas of the Shroomery community. When I arrived here over a quarter century ago, there was more of that crossover. I know I can't snap my fingers and bring back a bygone era, and an invitation to explore other forums has to recognize that people will decide for themselves whether those spaces offer something they want.
- Marxcelium, I hear you man. You're correct that moving the thread to beef's journal does reduce its critical mass, so to speak. I also understand how alienating the internet can feel these days, and how increasingly rare genuine connection points with like-minded individuals have become. It's an excellent point for why the confessional matters, and helps explain why many of you are bothered that we moved it.
One practical way to help maintain its visibility would be to activate your personal account signature and add a prominent link to the thread. If several active mush cult participants do the same, that could help new members find it. I recognize that this is a partial measure, however, and doesn't fully replace being visible in MC itself. Or, as stated previously, I would be happy to move it into a different forum such as the Pub, perhaps even Physical & Mental Well-Being. I would have to check in with the mods there, but I'd be willing to explore it.
- GymnCarrey, I get what you're saying. It sounds a lot like what Marxcelium noted in their post. Frankly, I love that you guys are so focused on community, because that IS exactly what the Shroomery is. There are always going to be parts of a community frequented by different people, and those smaller circles can be valuable parts of the whole.
I would really encourage all of you to try branching out into our other forums a bit more. And I understand that it may not work for many of you. It takes effort, it feels different, and we all only have so much time and energy to allocate. Some of you have also made clear that you already tried and didn't feel comfortable, which deserves more than another invitation to try again. Maybe I'm just a sentimental dreamer, but I've seen this community more integrated in the past, and while I don't expect us to revive ancient history, I do think we can build a more welcoming environment in many of our forums. That takes participation from members and attention from staff. I'm all about less division, but I'm paradoxically also all about forum etiquette and organization. 
There are numerous other comments here, I suspect there will be even more in time, and I will continue reading through them. I want to reiterate the invitation for all of you wonderful souls to try some of our other forums on for size. I'm pretty sure we all want a beautiful garden here, so let's all work to plant those seeds. I firmly believe that the more diversely engaged everybody is, the better and stronger the community can become.
Please remember, again, we are always a work in progress, and we do fuck shit up sometimes. We stand by the need to keep MC focused, but that doesn't mean every decision made toward that end is beyond reconsideration. Was moving the confessional a poor decision? Maybe. Will people on all sides of an issue say some stupid shit from time to time? Probably. Will the Shroomery still be here tomorrow, next week, next month or next year? I suspect so, and I hope all of you will be as well.
PS. I don't believe beef being on a self-ban should effect the viability of his confessional thread, unless he intentionally decided to hide it before he took his leave.
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