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First and foremost I'd like it to be known that I do not like having to do this kind of thing. However in the interest of protecting the site from bad actors that seem to have unlimited time but no time to have a discussion about how to behave here. My hope is that this will lead to a discussion and a real solution to the behavior that has been causing problems here on poal.co. @Hanswormhat I genuinely tried to reason with you without resorting to using admin abilities, and your behavior is at this point just abusive. I genuinely regret its come to this.

The straw that broke the camels back is the abusive comments on almost every post. This in my view is attempting to discourage people from speaking and is attempting to use his speech to silence others. This is not acceptable and is not ban worthy but I'm not going to let it continue until a agreement can be reached.

I have not had to take this kind of action in almost a year and I'm very happy I can say that. I don't do it lightly or without a considerable amount of thought.

As always if you think I have made a mistake please call me out on it.

First and foremost I'd like it to be known that I do not like having to do this kind of thing. However in the interest of protecting the site from bad actors that seem to have unlimited time but no time to have a discussion about how to behave here. My hope is that this will lead to a discussion and a real solution to the behavior that has been causing problems here on poal.co. @Hanswormhat I genuinely tried to reason with you without resorting to using admin abilities, and your behavior is at this point just abusive. I genuinely regret its come to this. The straw that broke the camels back is the abusive comments on almost every post. This in my view is attempting to discourage people from speaking and is attempting to use his speech to silence others. This is not acceptable and is not ban worthy but I'm not going to let it continue until a agreement can be reached. I have not had to take this kind of action in almost a year and I'm very happy I can say that. I don't do it lightly or without a considerable amount of thought. As always if you think I have made a mistake please call me out on it.

(post is archived)

[–] [deleted] • 8 pts

Your job as I see it is to preserve the common sense of the site. Now free speech isn’t free mang. It comes wit consequences and you have to accept those period.

It’s why I asked for permission to do things here. Same with phuks because this ain’t my house. Like it or not skippy this is your circus of monkeys

[–] • 9 pts

I genuinely hate having to do things like this I avoid it as much as I can. However there are people that come here looking for a ban to prove this place doesn't have free speech and it forces me to act I avoid it for as long as I can. I really do. Its why I generally don't just issue bans I disable the account and ask the person to talk. So that we can come to a solution to the issue and then I can re enable the account and we can all move on.

[–] [deleted] • 8 pts

However there are people that come here looking for a ban to prove this place doesn't have free speech

He didn't just voice a controversial opinion or argument - he made accusations against others. Accusing them to be transgender and furthermore to lie about it.

To me the point of valuing free speech is to have people voice opinions and arguments even if controversial. Not to make unreasonable accusations.

And not just one or two accusations but dozens per day and hundreds overall. In the process drowning the voices and content of others who do not spam theirs.

And even if it weren't accusations I think the sheer volume of content he posted was abusive. I think he demonstrated quite well why voat has a point with restricting the amount of submissions for new and highly downvoted accounts. It allows the community to regulate this behavior while still giving a user the option to post their content.

[–] • 0 pt

I'm a Voat mod and yes that's why we have those restrictions and why we couldn't back down on the rate limiting when the Admin/Owner was looking at doing so.

Voat's been hit with a couple waves of whole groups pulling this kind of garbage. At one point anonymous subs were event set up to harass users via @ posts.

I have a decent size block list. I flat out tell people, I'm done with this so welcome to my block list. By personally blocking them I've never had to block anyone from the subs I mod/own in the four+ years I've been on Voat. Because the people doing spamming realize they're wasting their time because other top users will also block them.

[–] [deleted] • 5 pts

Yeah I get you don’t like doing it, but at the end of the day do you feel that it was handled with the best means available to you?

I think you did.

What else can you do really? That user is specific to slander and hatred for everything. Much like a nigger. Just tear shit down others built up because fuck it why not?

I got zero faith this person will talk in a reasonable manner. Pretty sure they will make an alt and then go right back at it to get banned again and again.

[–] • 6 pts

I spent a long time considering my options I spent hours of my time trying to reason with this person. I would be willing to spend hours more trying to reason with him, but if the only response I can get no matter what I say is "idgaf" and "you are a tranny" then no discussion can really be had. All I want is for him to stop trying to silence people. Thats it nothing more. If this is the only way I can accomplish that goal then, what other option is he really leaving me with?

I sure hope if he makes an alt its to have a reasonable discussion.

[+] [deleted] • 3 pts
[–] • 2 pts

Very little of this is your fault. If anything, you're too lenient.

I genuinely hate having to do things like this

Then you're not going to do a good job of running this site. People who come here should want to fit in. Banning someone because their an asshole, is the sanest solution to dealing with assholes. If you'd given him a year, he wouldn't have become any less of an asshole. He'd merely have rattled everyone else that much and made the rest of us worse.

[+] [deleted] • 0 pt
[–] • 0 pt

If you ban him you absolutely prove this site does not have free speech, prove me wrong

[–] • 2 pts

I’ve already made an annoucement about how we intend to solve this and it does not involve banning anyone all of his alts he has quite a few will be re enabled after we push the new feature.

[–] • 0 pt

You're an asshole. Eat a bag of dicks.

[–] [deleted] • 6 pts

I'll withhold judgement until more information comes out, but as someone who came here because of a ban I'm sure you can understand my wariness.

It's unfortunate that this is probably exactly what he wanted to happen.

[–] • 6 pts

I completely understand your wariness. I do I’ve only done this twice in the history of the site IE only to 2 users and the other user got re enabled. My hope is that’s how this one works out.

I hate using bans I don’t ever want it to be the solution to a problem. However people come here looking for it and most of them give up after a couple of days. I’ve never banned a legitimate user and I can’t see a reason I ever would(legitimate being a person who just comes here and talks to people with no intent to shut the place down, if your intent is to shutdown the platform I’m going to act what other choice do I have?)

[–] [deleted] • 6 pts

The guy annoys the hell out of me and he's obviously putting you in this spot on purpose, but it sounds like you're handling it the best way you can.

[+] [deleted] • -4 pt
[+] [deleted] • 5 pts
[+] [deleted] • 4 pts
[–] • 3 pts

Just let him be. As someone who never interacted with his drama the most annoying part was people complaining about his drama. If we just ignored him would that not solve all of our problems?

[–] • 3 pts

Problem is half the users want to ignore him the other half want to turn him into a big joke. No matter what I did it was going to piss someone off.

[–] • 3 pts

I'm sure you checked the IPs against other accounts...

:)

[–] • 3 pts (edited )

IMO he’s not silencing anyone, just making himself look like a fool. The more often he proclaims anyone and everyone to be a tranny, the more obvious it is that he’s the village idiot.

He claims all sorts of insane bs that just make him look retarded, like gorillas are actors or marlins are a conspiracy.

[–] • 3 pts

Well once the new feature is implemented he'll be free to do that all he wants.

[–] • 3 pts

I just saw that post. Good idea 👍🏻 I think blocking is a good solution

[–] • 3 pts

I'm tired of getting run off of good sites because of looser trolls. There is a difference between targeting someone because of the content of their post that you disagree with, and targeting someone because of their pattern of engagement on a platform. I think there should be basic codes of conduct that we should all agree too and if a user repeatedly violates them then they get the boot. Free speech is not a, "I get to be an asshole' card. I think some generally accepted codes of conduct that could result in bans that we can all agree too are:

  1. Anything illegal or promoting illegal activity

  2. CP

  3. Vote/posting/comment manipulations

  4. Doxxing other users

  5. Promoting violence

[–] [deleted] • 2 pts

The thing is he didn't do any of the things you listed.

Maybe have another rule against unreasonable accusations (he did after all make plenty of accusations).

But I suspect in that case he would simply flood poal with flat earth stuff or something else that will get annoying very quickly.

Voat solved it by limiting the amount of submissions for new and downvoted users.

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

If you have the gay faggot reddit tier voating systems, you're always going to have censorship. That is all the gay faggot voating sytems are for.

If you have unprincipled admins, you're always going to get cowards like kevdude doxxing people.

[–] • 2 pts

So, in a nutshell, hate speech isn't free speech?

[–] • 2 pts

That’s not what I’m trying to say no. I’m trying to say you shouldnt be allowed to stop people from using their speech to make meaningful arguments if they want to by spamming a site.

[–] • 2 pts

I'm still not understanding how he's stopping anyone from anything, but whatever

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

I think you're focusing on the wrong part of the post simply because you want to point out where @pmyb2 might have been a tad hyperbolic. Hans' shit was getting out of hand. You're right, for the most part he was a harmless faggot, but holy shit he fagged up chat along with trolling almost every post that wasn't his. Did you even read the most important part of OP's post?

>My hope is that this will lead to a discussion and a real solution to the behavior that has been causing problems here on poal.co

Hans' account is disabled, not banned. The has been plenty of discussion on a solution, but you're silly if you think user blocking is as easy as adding another condition to some random script. Considering all of this (and keep in mind i came here from voat because of the recent shit putt pulled), I have no issue with this.

[–] • 2 pts (edited )

What do you think you'd do if he simply makes another account?

Also, I'm curious to know if you're open to the idea of reverting changes you make either from an admin perspective, design/coding perspective, or otherwise executive decision.

Oh, I should be specific about this too: I don't intend for you to think my inquiry has anything to do with how I do or don't feel about the subject of this submission. I'm simply curious about this as this posting sparked my interest. I don't mean to imply anything.

[–] • 3 pts

He has made several in an attempt to override the decision. If they behave the same way I hope they will wait too do it until we have the block user function in place.

I'm willing to admit that I'm wrong and I'm willing to revert something if it doesn't work out if I've said it once I'll say again I am not perfect I make mistakes. The choices I essentially had today was decrease the posting and commenting allotments or disable his account I had really hoped he would be reasonable but that didn't happen so I had to come up with something else.

If I've made a mistake and someone convinces me of it I'll for sure be willing to reverse that decision.

However in this case, the user in question either came here looking for a ban, or just wanted to ruin the place, or is genuinely mentally ill.

As an example if I gave a room full of toddlers unlimited free speech it would not result in anything good. So I would not limit their speech I would try first to reason with them and get then to speak one at a time. That doesn't work then I'd give them a time out in order to teach them how to enjoy that freedom without taking it from others.

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