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ChristianKl 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: ChristianKl 04 July 2014 12:00:52PM 6 points [-]

Begging the question that mass downvoting amounts to harassment.

He did it with the intention of driving away people from the community. Doing things with the intention of weeding out people is well described as harassment.

Eugine would have had the possibility to respond to Kaj with an apology and a promise to not engage in this activity again in the future. From Kaj summary it looks like he didn't. While I would have prefered a solution where he could have stayed, I think strong moderation is valuable and I therefore support Kaj's decision.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 July 2014 02:55:27PM *  7 points [-]

He did it with the intention of driving away people from the community. Doing things with the intention of weeding out people is well described as harassment.

It's good for the forum to drive some people out. The question is in correctness of particular decisions about driving people out and in acceptability of means of doing so. Applying the concept of harassment is misleading (noncentral), as it suggests incorrect conclusions (e.g. driving people out is undesirable in general), even if some of the other conclusions happen to be correct (e.g. disapproval of Eugine's behavior).

(One currently accepted method of deciding to drive a user out is to see if most of their comments are significantly downvoted by many users, and if they keep posting similar stuff regardless. If that's the case, their comments start getting deleted, which is a means of driving them out or motivating them to reduce active participation.)

Comment author: CCC 04 July 2014 05:23:23PM 12 points [-]

It's good for the forum to drive some people out.

That is likely to be true, but I'd argue that it's not good for the forum if a single self-selected mostly-anonymous person is the only one deciding who gets driven out.

'Single' implies that consensus among the community is not required; 'self-selected' implies that anyone with an end goal different to that of the site can attempt to force their goal on the community; mostly-anonymous implies a lack of accountability for their decisions. These are all red flags.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 04 July 2014 11:23:39PM 3 points [-]

Yeah, I believe even the signal to noise crowd is generally opposed to individual karma bombing.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 04 July 2014 12:29:28PM 0 points [-]

He did it with the intention of driving away people from the community. Doing things with the intention of weeding out people is well described as harassment.

Some people describe that as improving the signal to noise ratio. A good many, I believe.

Eugine would have had the possibility to respond to Kaj with an apology

Likely he's the hero of his own story, and believes he has nothing to apologize for. Never had that lesson in losing against those with power over you.