Summary:
- @Cat@ponder.cat was posting at a high volume to !news@lemmy.world
- there is no written rule on !news@lemmy.world about post volume
- there is no written rule on ponder.cat about post volume
- !news is the one single community Cat was this active in
- !news has no ponder.cat mods
- from my understanding, all rules Cat did break were unrelated to volume (correct me if I am wrong)
- ponder.cat admin @PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat reaches out to Cat via comment and then DM essentially threatening account deletion if Cat doesn’t lower their activity level
- Cat understandably deletes their account because who wants that
Of course, PhilipTheBucket had the right to do this, but I also think it’s exceedingly bad form and people have a right to know that this admin is willing to go above the community mods’ head like that.
Internet etiquette has dictates for dealing with undesirable yet not rule-breaking behavior that was just ignored here. Communication should be chosen before simple fist waving and threats.
I agree with this comment that this is a bait-provoked reaction. Next time I recommend:
- at the instance/admin level, the creation of instance rules about volume
- at the community level, advocacy for community rules about volume (i.e. “[Meta] Petition: Limit daily submissions to !news to ensure community quality”)
- avoid personal slapfights to get your way
- avoid escalation directly to account termination threats
Source: https://ponder.cat/post/1731587
BPR. This could have been handled better but I don’t think that the admin was powertripping.
IMO what Philip did wrong:
In the meantime, look at all Cat’s replies in the linked thread: the user is not just being spammy, they are being uncooperative, belittling other users, and passive aggressive. This sort of behaviour should not be given a free pass, and I do think that, if Philip dug across Cat’s post/comment history, he would find more reasons to ban the user from his instance… at least if his instance had some rule against poor behaviour.
A lot of those dictates boil down to “report, ignore, move on”. Reporting would do nothing, and ignoring would be bad advice - because bad behaviour tends to spread. Eventually you aren’t just blocking a single person, but a whole lot… or leaving the space because why bother. As such, users in communities with lax moderation tend to monitor each other’s behaviour a bit, and this is not a bad thing.
They absolutely were. See my longer comment elsewhere in the thread.
I don’t plan to weigh in all that much here, among other reasons because I feel like it’s mostly all been said about this situation at this point.
Other random response: Mine is a tiny instance (basically a glorified self-host), I was well aware of the context of what Cat was doing, partly because I was steadily getting reports about it. This was just the one situation that led me to decide something actually had to be done, or else I was enabling them to pollute the wider community in ways that the wider community was really being vocal that they didn’t want.
The hostility and belittling of other users who were telling them to cool it really rubbed me the wrong way also, yes. I left them alone initially because I thought maybe they were just sort of clueless about good participation on Lemmy but at the end of the day, what’s the harm, and it’s the mods’ business not mine. Once people are trying to have a reasonable conversation with you and you’re being hostile and snarky at them, your benefit-of-the-doubt level drops to a whole new type of category.
fully agree! especially the part about it only being in a single community thats a key fact i should have mentioned :)