This one is both upsetting and weird.
So there was a user on ponder.cat whoās been spamming posts. Like a lot. 58 per day, on average. Not 58 comments. 58 posts.
I started seeing a little scattering of reports about it, mostly just figured it was the modsā business to deal with, and then finally today I actually really took a look at what they were doing and realized it was way over the top. Pretty much everyone in the comments agreed when someone brought it up.
A 25 day old account with 1,400+ posts? What the actual fuck? My entire goddamn feed is this one accountā¦
Touch grass. Good lord. Youāre carpet bombing multiple communities with repeats of the same crap.
The user was not receptive.
lol.
I guess people here do not know how to block an account.
:)
Is that a compliment or a rant?
May I introduce you to Lemmy block function.
If you donāt like my posts then block me and you will never see them again. As simple as that.
Thatās a bunch of bullshit. The voting was about as you would expect. I said to the user:
Thatās not how it works. If youāre interfering with the average Lemmy userās experience, you donāt get to claim it doesnāt count because each individual person would be able to block each individual problematic account, if they wanted to have a good experience. Honestly, these people have a point. You have been posting an average of 58 posts per day. Thatās too much. I post a ton, and thatās about 10 times more than me, and Iāve gotten multiple complaints about posting too much in particular communities. The handful of times itās happened, my reaction was āOh my bad what sounds like an acceptable levelā and then to more or less stick to an acceptable level. Getting snarky with people who are asking you to cool it is very bad. Please stop posting so much. Anything about 10-15 posts per day starts to feel really excessive to me. Definitely donāt be dismissive about peopleās complaints to you about it.
They rejected my suggestion, so I sent them a DM that was a little more direct about it: Stop doing this if you want to keep your account on my instance.
Then, for some reason, they deleted their account on their own.
Well, that was weird, but at least itās all resolved and we can all get back to what we were doing. Or waitā¦ whatās happening now?
I wasnāt expecting āmaking sure we make a safe space for the spammers by banning people who complain about spamā to be an important moderation duty, but I guess in the bizarro world that is [email protected] moderation philosophy, it makes perfect sense.
To me, talking directly to the person involved is the first and most important step not to skip.
People tried to do exactly that, and the person actively refused to honor the social contract.
Then, the next step is someone āin authorityātaking a little more time to explain exactly in detail why itās a problem, but still directly to the person involved. Thatās the part I quoted in the post. Itās weird if someoneās first awareness that something is a problem comes in the form of a āpetitionā to have them banned, with third parties talking about it.
After that, I progressed to the next step, DM conversation. It keeps the comments a little less cluttered if things become combative, and it helps the person save face if they do wind up accepting the recommendation. They donāt have to sort of āback downā publicly. I do think itās fair, if mod action is on the table, to clearly explain that it is. But to me āyou are getting reports about this, I agree with the reports, there is an overwhelming consensus you are breaking the social contract, our requests to cut it out are not merely advisoryā is way more forgiving about it than just ābehavior -> sanctionā which is the norm.
I thought about doing a temp ban or something, but it just kind of seems silly. Better to talk, try to achieve a meeting of the minds, and if we cannot, then they need to leave. I have such a tiny āuserbaseā here that I have time for this in depth conversation about it, so that seems better to do than just hitting the ban button. But I didnāt want them to be fooled into thinking that telling me to sod off in the conversation was going to be consequence-free.
YPTB only came into the picture because of the news mod banning the person for complaining about spam. Nothing in particular about the original user was even relevant to that, except tangentially.
I think I would be 100% fine with this progression if there had been a meta post. Your instincts are good they just have some holes.
Your input is noted. Be sure to let my manager know, in case itās relevant for my upcoming performance review.