The mod banning these users is the same mod who made the posts they downvoted. This is mod abuse, turning the downvote button into an auto-self-ban button.
The message is “If you disagree with me, you will be banned”
Monitoring and banning users for using lemmy as intended to signal boost your opinion should be grounds to have all mod privileges removed. This behaviour undermines the integrity of the server and the wider fediverse.
Oh hi, this post is about me!
I’m experimenting with the moderation policy for niche communities described by @[email protected].
@[email protected], do you have any issues with this?
From your link:
This is a noble intention and not without merit. However it completely falls apart when it’s YOUR posts that you’re banning people for downvoting.
For many niche communities, the moderator is very often the sole poster as well. While I can see the perceived conflict of interest, kickstarting niche communities is challenging.
So challenging that you need to protect your own feelings by banning anyone who downvotes you, so that you don’t decide to leave a community that you’re already in a position of power over? Grow a pair.
Punishing users for their individual votes is mod abuse and vote manipulation. You are removing the voting rights of users who dislike your content.
The only acceptable grounds for banning a user based on their votes would be using a sock puppet to vote on a single post or comment multiple times.
If people think your posts are shit, they should be allowed to express that without fear of phantom banning. Suck it up, or delete your account.
What about if someone entered the community to mass downvote everything? Or did so every day?
If I made a metal music community, and an account came in every day to downvote every post because they don’t like metal - would I be justified in banning them for that?
That’s fine, if the post is legitimately popular, the upvotes will outweigh the downvotes. That’s how all of this works, and how it has always worked.
No, that would be an abuse of your mod powers. Conversely, how many downvotes do you think a user should be allowed before you can ban them for disagreeing with you?
No, this doesn’t apply to small and growing communities. Or niche communities of specific interests. When I started up my community, many posts wouldn’t get many votes - and an early downvote or two could easily sink a new post from trending at all, leaving it to languish to nowhere.
Based on what?
It’s not about numbers specifically. People downvote in my community now - and I see the same names whenever I check from time to time, but they also upvote and contribute - so I am not that bothered. I have only banned a handful of users for this behaviour since I started. Each one of them did nothing but downvote everything, and never contributed at all to the community.
You’re actively arguing for vote manipulation on the part of moderators.
I think its justified for community moderators to ban an account that never interacts on their community, and downvotes everything. I think it’s not justified for community moderators to ban an account just for a single downvote on any thread.
I think if there’s a serious problem, people can either make their own version of the community on another instance (a perk of the fediverse) and lead people away from the problem community to there, or pressure the instance owner in which the community is based - to remove them (another perk of accountability that doesn’t exist in the same way on Reddit).
Downvotes are a contribution, they are just the kind of contribution you don’t like. based on this, I don’t think you area good fit for modding; you should probably look to pass your role on to someone who can moderate responsibly.
and we allow rules in comms that ban certain types of contributions, like propaganda outlets, low value sources, *phobia
in general, not allowing contributions that moderators believe is bad for the health of the comm is an acceptable policy
I fail to see the valuable contribution of an account that has literally never posted on the community they are downvoting in, never even posted on the fediverse, quietly downvoting every single post in a community. It is nothing but vandalism that hurts the growth of new communities.
By your logic almost every single community moderator on the fediverse is not a “good fit for modding” because they too, will ban accounts for spam-downvoting on their communities.
Replying here as it’s higher the thread , but the other person you were replying to just seems to be sealioning.
Also, a 3 months old account with 3 posts, 2 about moderation issues, seems like an alt looking to stir up drama.
I think you’ve made my point for me. You should really find someone more emotionally stable to moderate your communities.
How on earth have I showed emotional instability?
And my communities are doing fine, thanks.
hear hear
You can express yourself. You can make a post in the community and engage in a dialogue. You can make a post another community, such as this one, complaining about the original community. You can make a new community where you just complain about the other community. You’re free to express yourself. But for people who want to participate in the community it should be for them
Cop out bullshit
Looking at your mod log in detail, here is some feedback:
Here is a great (trivial to identify) example of a sockpuppets being used on your community right now:
Hi Jet, thanks for the feedback.
Done.
What would you recommend for “drive-by” downvotes from /all? Does it always make sense to “wait for the second downvote” from a given account? On a practical level, this is difficult to keep track of as a moderator.
Thanks for the tip. Is there a way to filter an account’s votes by community?
It is, but yes, the most reasonable thing is to wait for a second downvote, or a third, or use time base grouping of downvotes, or opening the post to downvote comments. The signal that is most important to me is someone who DOES NOT LIKE THE COMMUNITY, all i care about is not excluding people who would participate in the community. For example downvoting a post, then opening the post and down voting comments, clear bad fit signal.
Not as of yet, I’ve suggested it to the lem votes person, but you know how time is.
That is some total whackjob reasoning.
The actual fuck? This is the dumbest take I’ve seen in a while (yeah, including all the commentary around the Charlie Kirk shooting), and they try to justify it as being a rephrasing of “A community is for people who share an interest”?
This is just an unhinged way of justifying isolationism and silencing critics. It reads like it was written by the mods of r/conservative. Go touch some fuckin’ grass, dude.
Not speaking to the particular community in the OP, but this can be valid in non-political contexts. If I made a metal music community, and an account came in every day to downvote every post because they don’t like metal - would I be justified in banning them for that?
Would it be fair minded to downvote like that?
Sure but that’s not what’s happening. The criticism isn’t for banning sock puppets or banning accounts for brigading, it’s for banning accounts that downvote “on-topic posts”, evidently even a single time. What you’re describing and what the mod in question is doing are distinct behaviors, as is what you’re describing and the concepts laid down in Jet’s “guidelines”.
I’m not referring to the specific community here. Community moderators can justifiably and unjustifiably ban accounts for their voting behaviour. I was just asking if you think its ever appropriate to ban someone for their voting behaviour.
I think I’ve already answered that in the previous comment. I’m not really interested in debating broader topics in the middle of a discussion about a case of specific, contextual behavior.
Fair enough. It gets dodgy to me when the community is politically controversial (as the one in the OP is) rather than hobbyist. I certainly hold different standards there.
Okay.
So trans communities should keep TERFs around ?
Can you identify a TERF from a single downvote? Or even 3 or 5 downvotes and no comments?
That’s not “not sharing an interest”. That’s being actively antagonistic and arguably harmful to those in the community. For at-risk communities, that’s a hard line to parse sometimes and it’s understandable for moderators to be less lenient in their decisions. A community about a money sink by the world’s richest idiot doesn’t really have the same concerns.
Hi I’m the wackjob, communities are places around the topic, and they’re focused on people who want to talk about that topic. If you go to the chess club and you want to talk about motorsports, it’s not going to be great for people. You be asked to leave eventually. Especially if you keep revving your bike in the chess club.
Hey. Just wanted to say that you banned me from a number of communities I only voted on with no notification. I only found out because I randomly checked the mod log one day. Trying to police participation by bans via voting behavior puts a chilling effect on the greater Lemmy community and creates an echo chamber with no critical examination of what is being posted. Also, it’s a pretty cowardly way to mod.
Were any of those communities you were interested in having a positive interaction with?
I honestly don’t remember. But I shouldn’t have my voice censored simply for disagreeing with something that was posted. The entire point of the voting system is so that quality content reaches the widest audience.
Also, how do you define a “positive interaction?” If I disagree with what’s posted but provide polite criticism, is that a positive or negative interaction? IMO, if I’m not flinging shit at the walls and insulting users, or otherwise violating the rules of said community, that feels like a positive interaction to me.
Yeah, i would broadly agree, polite criticism is the bulwark of a good discussion forum and positive.
What if i go to a motorsport club, but someone is revving is bike in the middle of a public speech, covering what they are saying? I should be able to downvote the revvig guy because I don’t like his ‘posts’.
With your logic, the moron should keep disturbing the speech and i would get booted off the club because I disliked his behavior.
Nobody’s forcing you to go to communities you don’t like. You can block them. In fact moderators of those communities are working hard to provide content. If you only want to be negative with that content it sounds like it’s a perfect idea to block it.
If you very much want to rage against content, you’re welcome to repost it someplace else and then have your say in a different community. But you don’t have the right to use the original community. If you behave well you’re welcome to most communities to participate. If you don’t behave well you’re not. It’s very simple
You don’t understand. In my example, i WANT to be in that community, but a single actor is being a jerk, so i let him know he’s a jerk.
Downvoting something you disagree with is not behaving badly. Banning people without knowing their motivation for a downvote is ridiculous.
On a single downvote? Sure. If someone comes into a community and downvotes the entire page, and they’ve never interacted on the community - I think thats different.
Agree.
What you’re demanding is that everyone interact with your community “appropriately” and on your terms, but that your interaction with the larger community yours is a part of is not allowed to be questioned or criticized in the way all other communities are. That’s some one-sided bs.
Yes one side of the door is for the community members, the other side of the door is for everyone else.
I’ve explained my philosophy comprehensively here: https://hackertalks.com/post/13884733
If you can find something inconsistent in that i’m happy to hear about it.
I read it. It’s not good and neither are your analogies. There is no “door” if your community is on the front page of lemmy at large. You are taking advantage of the open nature of the service to openly publish your content while pretending that it’s “only for you” and demanding that anyone that sees it outside of your community abide by your personal rules. If that’s what you want, then a platform like lemmy is the wrong one for your community.
I respectfully disagree, allowing a tyranny of negativity to rein simply because people have a niche belief - like AI, or diets, or religion, or politics isn’t good for lemmy. It stifles the growth of lemmy, because everyone has some niche interest that should be part of the fediverse.
If every single part of the fediverse is for open referendum, that’s going to chill lots of participation; it’s much easier to hate many things, then to be so interested in something that you stick your neck out and brave the negativity.
If you really want to rage against some content, cross post it and have at it.
It is not reasonable to demand that every user that disagrees with a post publish their own counter-post. It’s excessive, inefficient, and is antithetical to how the fediverse functions. Post voting is the bare minimum of participation. If that’s still too “chilling”, this is simply the wrong forum for what you’re looking for, and trying to force the whole platform to bend to what you want it to be is just selfish.
I think our schism is philosophically intractable. I don’t see the fediverse as one single homogeneous space. I see it as many small pools of heterogeneous activities and people. That can cross pollinate, cross communicate, and cross collaborate.
You’re also asking the entire platform to bend to your will, to allow you to express your negativity wherever you like. I don’t think that’s sustainable for Lemmy either.
That’s a whole lot of mental gymnastics to try to justify enforcing toxic positivity.
The coward’s way: don’t explain why you did what you did clearly, just obfuscate/point towards some “guideline”. 🙄
Not even a guideline, just some guy’s personal opinion.
hi i love this idea and have a niche community on lemmy.world that id like to remove the phantom downvoters from. I see under each post where it says Show Votes and i click it and get this. heres an example.
but if i touch a person it just brings me to their account.
If someone has never said anything in the community, how can I block them from that community? thank you!
I don’t think you can do it from the standard Lemmy UI, but you can use Tesseract front-end (tesh.itjust.works) to ban/unban a user by searching for their username.
You can be on topic and have the wrong take, so wrong that people simply think it’s not productive to the conversation and as such the downvote is warranted. What are you doing, my guy?
Everyone has issues with it. You’re abusing the concept of the fediverse with such power tripping
cool idea :)