Skavau

Skavau @piefed.social 9h ago

I'm not speaking for whatever you did. Just generally, there can be legitimate reasons for community owners to ban specific downvoters.

4

Skavau @piefed.social 9h ago

Yes but the people you banned didn’t mass downvote all content in the community you run.

No, not literally every post. But a good chunk of them. And none of them had ever commented or made any posts. So I banned them. Some of them had no post or comment history whatsoever, as I said.

We covered this already, you need to make leaps of judgement in order to justify this to yourself because you know what you are doing is wrong. No it isn’t deep.

Why is it wrong? They never interacted there, (or even on the fediverse at all in some cases) and they just downvoted a lot of posts, sometimes straight out of the box. It was a pattern I observed and after observing it for a while, I banned the users who did it.

6

Skavau @piefed.social 9h ago

When explaining your actions and you justify it by blaming something else… Wait because you didn’t intend for it to be an excuse you think it isn’t an excuse?

Blaming what? It just is. Some people spend their time on the fediverse downvoting entire communities. As a result of that they risk getting banned from those communities. As I said, it's not that deep.

Ah yes, you miss a lot. Yes yes I know you have painted pictures in your head of people based on meta data you dislike, that is what I am saying is part of the problem.

I don't think about these users full stop. I just see that an account is mass-downvoting all content in a community I moderate and ban. When it happens. It's pretty rare.

8

Skavau @piefed.social 9h ago

Is every explanation according to you an excuse?

It’s kinda interesting to watch you deny things you said 2 posts ago like when you said multiple times you never called anyone a troll but it’s like right there for all to read…

Ah yes, my original post (I was quoting myself as I've had these discussions before) was "downvote trolls". I missed that. Fine. Just "downvoters" then. People who downvote every post in a community. I'm thinking if someone does that, they simply don't like the community and it's completely reasonable to ban them for it if you find it damaging to the posts that they downvote.

I don't believe there's ever a particularly good reason for someone to mass-downvote every post on a community - and in doing so they risk getting banned from the community. This is public knowledge on the Fediverse at this point.

10

Skavau @piefed.social 10h ago

So now it is EVERY post and you know how they feel about a community? Has anyone you banned in the past met these latest requirements?

Most posts. And I obviously don't know, but I'm thinking if someone comes into a community and downvotes everything that they probably just don't like it. It's not that deep.

It shifts blame it is an excuse that is extremely basic. You should have absolutely no authority you are stupid as fuck

Shifts blame to what? Who is blaming anyone?

So you're getting personal now?

I absolutely do literally have 'authority' over the community I run, and it's considered entirely acceptable by most instance owners for community owners/mods to ban people for mass downvoting without post/comment contribution.

12

Skavau @piefed.social 10h ago

Intent does matter intent doesn’t matter you really are confusing me dude I can’t imagine this is easy for you, either.

In terms of mass downvoting, it doesn't. From my perspective, they would just be a user who downvotes every post and who has no interest in the topic of the community. My instinct is that they likely just don't like the community.

It would be wrong to think only a developer could fix something especially when it isn’t broken technically.

You're right, the downvote-upvote system is working as intended - and community moderators respond as they choose to towards it. I think it's working much closer to "as intended" compared to Reddit actually.

Your actions?

They're not excuses, they're perfectly valid and justifiable reasons.

Skavau @piefed.social 10h ago

You'll note that if you look at their mod log that they've been banned from dozens of communities for it.

14

Skavau @piefed.social 10h ago

Your example is my example for how you keep changing the goalposts and trying to frame the people we are talking about as acting with malicious intent.

How is that changing the goalposts? It's exactly the type of scenario I'm referring to here. People who have no interest in a community just instantly downvoting any post they see from there.

I obviously can't know what the intent of someone who say, mass-downvotes every post on !television@piefed.social is (the community I run) but the impact is the same. If they downvote almost everything on there, and never post or comment, they obviously aren't that interested in it.

Yea no I would not have imagined more than that from you.

What? You realise I am not a Lemmy dev, right?

Great excuse 10/10 moral high ground statement

Excuse for what?

3

Skavau @piefed.social 10h ago

I am not speaking for the user who OP referred to here, but it's not about visibility but about the impact of downvotes in terms of trying to grow and maintain a community.

If someone who doesn't like metal music enters !metal@lemmy.world and downvotes every post there - and commits themselves to doing it to every new post, this hurts their visibility across the Fediverse. Would you not say its reasonable, in this specific hypothetical, for the community owner to ban a user who does that?

16

Skavau @piefed.social 10h ago

Your hard on for control and mental gymnastics to justify it.

I don't see how I've done any mental gymnastics here. I've given you my logic plainly.

The goal posts are changing now it is people to come into the community with malicious intent this whole time? No we are talking about people curating their own feeds with the upvote and downvote feature always have been.

No? The intent doesn't matter. I can't know why someone is bulk downvoting, but all the same - if it's all they're doing, I reserve the right to ban them for negatively decreasing the visibility of posts on the community without having any evidence of engagement via posts or comments. If it seems they fundamentally dislike the entire community itself, then I will ban them. It doesn't happen very often though.

Given the context of the thread and explicit clarity it is obvious what you are doing. You keep trying to paint individuals using provided means express themselves in ways which you happen to dislike as evil doers who need banning.

I refer you to my !metal@lemmy.world example.

Be real, if you truly feel the way you do, without malice, isn’t the righteous thing to try to change the system instead of banning those participating in it?

In what ways should the system change here? I don't necessarily think the upvote-downvote system is sacrosanct and irreplaceable, but it's clearly going nowhere anytime soon - so I work within the confines of that.

Have you made an attempt to change how downvotes affect smaller communities?

How could I do that?

18

Skavau @piefed.social 12h ago

Very simply factually wrong. A downvote is a contribution in itself so there is that, pretty basic.

I don't regard downvotes as a valid contribution if that's all you do. If someone for instance dislikes metal music, and went onto !metal@lemmy.world and downvoted every post there, I would consider it perfectly legitimate to ban them for that. They're not meaningfully contributing. They don't like metal music. Their interaction is effectively vandalism.

Yes I am aware of the picture you are trying to paint against individuals you disagree with.

I don't really see how this has anything to do with disagreement. This has to do with communities not having their reach negated by people who disagree with the community itself.

Which leads to the obvious question really still unanswered: Why would anyone care if they're banned from a community for bulk downvoting in the first place? They clearly don't use it other than to show how they don't like it. So why would it matter?

It’s a trump style move. Things about you are starting to make sense…

What things about me would this be?

20

Skavau @piefed.social 12h ago

I am not misunderstanding you, you are misunderstanding me. What I am saying is that “only ban users who mass downvote and never contribute” is wrong, both factually wrong and morally wrong.

How can it be factually wrong?

I also disagree that it's morally wrong.

An individual can’t mass vote, a vote is a contribution. You are not a reasonable person, you know this by now right?

By "mass vote" I mean someone going down and downvoting every single post in the community. Not on a single post.

30

Skavau @piefed.social 12h ago

I never called them trolls for doing that.

Also, you misunderstand me. I would only ban users who mass downvote and never contribute. I don't ban users for downvotes here and there.

Skavau @piefed.social 12h ago

All moderators already make decisions based on their opinion.

As I said: If someone mass downvotes the majority of posts they see coming from a specific community on the feed and have no interest in the actual community topic (which seems obvious to me if they're only downvoting and have never contributed any posts or comments), that it’s a perfectly legitimate reason for the community moderator to ban them for that because of the impact that downvoting at scale has to the community.

32

Skavau @piefed.social 12h ago

Who did I call a troll?

34

Skavau @piefed.social 12h ago

I never called anyone a troll.