Posting this because no one else seems to want to, and it’s a discussion worth having outside of drama or personal conflicts. I’m undecided and can see both sides, but it’s important to address.
Potential benefits of a limit:
- Frequent posters hold significant influence and could, in theory, push misinformation or propaganda (though I haven’t seen evidence of this it’s a fair concern).
- A community dominated by one or two voices might discourage new members from participating.
- Encouraging quality over quantity could increase the value of individual posts.
Potential downsides of a limit:
- Could reduce overall community engagement.
- If set too low, it might discourage meaningful participation from well-intentioned members.
- It could inadvertently encourage the (mis)use of alt accounts.
These are some pros/cons but certainly not all! I encourage more discussion below.
[email protected] had UniversalMonk in the run up to the American election. They have about 15 alts, posted an average of 16 articles a day just on the main account, and would pointedly refuse to engage with any discussion of the actual content of the article in the comments. They were banned for “Indiscriminate posting of duplicate stories from different sources to flood the channel.”
That’s not this community, of course, but I think it is proof enough that it’s not an unreasonable concern for OP to have
So the banning seems totally ineffective. And Trump would have won anyway. So again, banning was totally ineffective and did nothing but spurn him on to post from more alts.
If you all would have just let him do his thing, you could block him and then never see his stuff.
But you all decided ban, he spread out amongst instances and usernames and now posts more than ever. lol
Was this comment meant to be a reply to me? You seem to be arguing with a bunch of things I never said
Well it seemed to me that you were explaining why he was a bad poster. I never said you said those things, I’m just saying that those things didn’t have an affect on him.
I mean, I suppose that was the reason he got banned, right? So people wouldn’t have to see his stuff. But there are probably more people now than ever because he just spread out.
If he would have just stayed here, people block him, never see anyting. Banning him seemed to have made him spread out everywhere.
I’ll note that I consistently called out Monk to the point that multiple comments of mine lambasting them got deleted (the mods were just being fair and enforcing the rules consistently; hats off).
However, there are some points you’ve failed to take into account:
(Most important) Monk posted to /c/politics at most about three times per day. This is realistically the bare minimum amount you’d want as a cap on posts per day. You can go back and check this for yourself; the overwhelming majority of their posts were on communities they created and moderated. Checking the month of September, the exception I saw to this was September 8th, where they posted four. This rule would have done absolutely nothing to deter their propaganda campaign.
As your own comment notes, making alts is a trivial matter, especially assuming you’re more subtle about the angle you’re pushing than Monk was. That I was aware of Monk for months but knew and heard nothing about these purported alts is, to me, evidence of that.
Every single post by Monk was heavily downvoted because everyone knew what they were doing.
The main problem with Monk was their comments, wherein they would engage in essentially copy-pasting Gish gallop responses. The moderators knew banning Monk would’ve made the community healthier because of this exact behavior but refused to take action.
Even if the problem had been the quantity of the posts to /c/politics (it wasn’t), the moderators would’ve been able to use their discretion to ban Monk instead of a blanket ban on frequent posts.
TL;DR: Monk’s problem on /c/politics had nothing to do with and could not have been stopped by such a rule proposed in the OP.
This is way off. During the October run-up when Monk was trying hard to influence the election, he was posting 10-15 times a day, which is about as much as anyone ever posts.
That’s how many times only to the politics community, no other place, on each of those days.
This part, I 100% agree with. Discretion is always a part of moderation, and the fact that they didn’t exercise discretion and common sense with Monk (and in fact actively protected him by banning people who he egged into conflicts with him) doesn’t mean that we should set some kind of new discretion-free policy that will impact the heavy posters who do bring something good.
Great points! Have my upvote.
Fair enough!
UM was a case for moderators to use their discretion, not a blanket ban for everyone who posts a lot.
There are a couple accounts that do a lot of heavy lifting for these communities in a fair and balanced way.
I still see him all over Lemmy.
That’s because your instance didn’t ban them.
I feel bad for them whenever they pop out of containment again but I really enjoyed their erotic friend fiction they would write.
Good! It appears that most instances didn’t ban him/her. So you all didn’t do anything to dissuade him and he probably posts more than ever under alt names and instances. lol
Seems you all fed the troll. And he probably loves that you are still talking about him.
Most instances in terms of user base did.
Also are you allowed to use pronouns like that?
“Most” instances didn’t though. Not only that, it takes a few seconds to create an alt username. So he/she probably didn’t stop posting in here at all.
No, probably not.
The admins at world and most of the other large instances usually ban their alts pretty quick though which is probably good for UM’s mental health.
Looks like he’s on almost 30 instances though. And new ones being made every day. He appears just as busy as ever.
How would this rule prevent alts? Seems like it would encourage their use if anything
This is an excellent point, added to the cons list in the body text
It’s not an unreasonable concern, no. But I’d rather the community be active and growing than address something that’s not currently an issue.
And now he just posts to other communities. Banning didn’t do anything to stop him, while Trump still won. Banning him just spread him out even more. It’s also very easy to just create new usernames. He probably has lots of alt usernames. So he can still post anywhere he wants to.
Banning did absolutely nothing to stop him. I still see his all over Lemmy. Welcome to the fediverse.