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ialdabaoth comments on [moderator action] Eugine_Nier is now banned for mass downvote harassment - Less Wrong Discussion

107 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 03 July 2014 12:04PM

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Comment author: shminux 03 July 2014 06:00:39PM *  26 points [-]

I seem to be the lone dissenter here, but I am unhappy about the ban. Not that it is unjustified, it definitely is. However, it does not address the main issue (until jackk fiddles with karma): preventing Eugine from mass downvoting. So this is mainly retribution, rather than remediation, which seems anti-rational to me, if emotionally satisfying, as one of the victims.

Imagine for a moment that Eugine did not engage in mass downvoting. He would be a valuable regular on this site. I recall dozens of insightful comments he made (and dozens of poor ones, of course, but who am I to point fingers), and I only stopped engaging him in the comments after his mass-downvoting habits were brought to light for the first time. So, I would rather see him exposed and dekarmified, but allowed to participate.

TL;DR: banning is a wrong decision, should have been exposed and stripped of the ability of downvote instead. Optionally, all his votes ever could have been reversed, unless it's hard.

EDIT: apparently not the lone dissenter, just the first to speak up.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 03 July 2014 08:50:10PM 9 points [-]

I'm also unhappy with him being banned from commenting but not downvoting. While I frequently found his comments obnoxious and annoying in their connotations, they definitely served a net positive on the site.

That said, his moderation practices clearly served a larger net negative, so if there are technical reasons why it's difficult to undo his moderation and ban him from moderating in the future, I suppose this is the best we can get.

Comment author: tsathoggua 04 July 2014 02:52:46AM 2 points [-]

I think the end goal is to stop him from down-voting as well as commenting as mentioned in the last sentence of the post.