Summary:
- @[email protected] was posting at a high volume to [email protected]
- there is no written rule on [email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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
(Y)DI + this is an unmarked [META] post + no admin action was taken against the account + history of behavior + it looks silly to make a wholeass new thread after getting cratered to oblivion in the original one
Phil’s “mistake”, if we’re insisting there is one, was not approaching the account-hopper with “You post a lot, and most of it is questionable trash. Please don’t shovel shit from this instance anymore if you want to remain.”
That’s actually exactly what I did. You’ll note that OP’s complaint is that they describe that as “threats.” No sanction was ever given to the person who was spamming (“posting at a high volume”). We just talked with them, and the consensus was overwhelmingly that they needed to cool down, and then they deleted their account.
Here’s the conversation where it happened (what’s left of it, see next link): https://ponder.cat/post/1728396
I don’t have a lot to add to the conversation that already took place here: https://ponder.cat/post/1731587
It’s made a little bit more complex because there’s a separate issue of [email protected] mods not really reacting to propaganda-spammy users, and so I decided there was an issue with this user when the mods were saying there was not. The behavior was in no way limited to [email protected] though. I’ve seen reports for them in:
And so on, I think you get the point. Several of their posts had been removed before from a variety of communities, because they were spamming and posting low-quality crap. I can’t show you in the modlog because they deleted their user, but they were a source of reports for a while. I was leaving it alone for the mods to handle, until it became clear that the community overwhelmingly considered them a source of negativity. Then I talked with them about it (not for the first time) and explicitly said that they needed to stop in order to keep their account. It just happened randomly that the post where it came to a head happened in a community with bad moderation (which, possibly, explains why the post stayed up for us to be able to have an argument about it in the comments).
I think most of the issue motivating this post is that I riled up OP by being kind of sarcastic with them. That part’s on me and maybe it would have been better for me to be more zen. But as far as the original situation, IDK what the expected reaction could possibly be, other than what I did.
This is a separate issue entirely. The fact the admin got “ahead of the bullet” by making a PTB post about the reaction to their action doesn’t mean they are magically immune from discussion of the actions that started things, that being slapfights and direct account termination threats.
Nobody is suggesting this “magical immunity” you’ve referenced. This smacks of shitstirring, which has its place, but in this case looks reactionary. My previous assessment stands.
Spujb is notorious for shit stirring.
Is that what people do once shit posting no longer scratches the itch?
Asking for a friend obviously
Calling this an unmarked meta post reads to me as a call for this post to be removed. I apologize if that is not your goal. But if it is you are wrong. I am literally just here to document admin behavior that I believe could be improved upon.
It’s a meta post, you didn’t mark it as such. Nothing more, nothing less. If I thought the post should be removed, I would have reported it for removal. The metatude (It’s a word now. I invented it. Probably after someone else already did, but they’re not here, are they?) of the post is noteworthy, so I noted it. You could have done already, and still can even now.
heard but no. it’s not a meta post as it clearly is about actions that happened before whatever is described in the other post, and outside this community.
you seem confused about what meta means; meta posts are about the community itself.
thank you for your input but if i added the meta tag it would make this post worse, not better.
I’m not confused: you made a post about a post, discussing matters brought up in the post, after getting dumpstered by downvotes in the post you subsequently made a post about. If that’s not meta, then it better not have kids with meta or we’ll end up with the Habsburgs all over again. You seem to have a blind spot with regards to how that comes across, which is fair.
If you intended to simply be informative, you lost the plot by titling your thread as you did. I’d consider that an honest mistake if you hadn’t avoided any mention of the other thread and your involvement in it. It’s in bad faith, and it’s a bad look.
two separate topics.
tired of this boring conversation. blocked.
The ol’ Spubj “sticking my fingers in my ears and running away”. Classic.
To anyone who made it this far: “tired of this boring conversation. blocked.” in a reply made in the conversation itself almost universally means “I’m tired of you putting a spotlight on my bullshit and I don’t know how to handle it.”
deleted by creator