People who know know that AOU from Poal was a shitbag. But some of the shit he did is temping in rare cases when you run a site. Of course he didn’t do it in rare cases. He did shitbag nonsense to almost everyone.
I’ve got this one retard on my site. I know enough to basically have this guy diagnosed, which really makes me an asshole because I should be understanding. I’ve watched this guy progress toward Alzheimers. Again, I know my shit.
He was probably a smarter than average person at one point, and so this became his identity. He is having a hard time coping with not being the smart guy in the room. I think his only pattern of intelligence remaining is just criticizing anything other people and even that’s starting to fall apart. He doesn’t do it well.
He definately has a some of the reverse filtering effect of Alzheimers. See the brain is just a filter. It generates a lot of noise plus sensory and then it filters on that noise to make more noise that’s a little closer to a coherent thought and it does that in a loop until it has actions and words. In someone with Alzheimers this doesn’t work correctly and they miss filter. They can even have worse selection of options than random. Subconscious recognition of a bad idea can reverse reinforcement of which ideas to prefer. It sounds mean to say but people with Alzheimers can sometimes be almost calculatedly stupid. It’s kind of like how they have momentum toward bad ideas and trying to correct only makes them lean in. Imagine on a subcontious level that the internal forces that should correct errant thinking are being actively rejected, so they already have reinforced momentum toward bad ideas before these ideas ever hit the outside world. Like a pre-stressed bridge.
So now I’ve got this guy hitting every thread as an arrogant asshole treating everyone like they are stupid for not having the same retarded views as himself. It’s fucking insufferable. Every update I make to the site I’m an idiot for not doing something retarded instead. I can’t even cross post site update threads because it’s just embarrassing. And he thinks he’s doing me a favor sharing his infinite retard wisdom. And I’ve got a small enough user base that everyone is in the mode of “hey, let’s all upvote each other to grow the site.” I’m thankful for that in general but at some point you have to downvote the retard.
What’s also bad is that people with Alzheimers are not suggestable. Certainly not to any polite subtle cues needed to adapt to others. And even if they are suggestable or you meet the threshold of signal needed, that suggestion isn’t retained. They are on autopilot.
If it was a bigger site they would be lost in the crowd and downvoted to the bottom. Or there would be enough social distance between users that people wouldn’t mind calling him out. But it’s a smaller community so if people started calling him a retard it’s like being stuck in a motel with strangers. An ok vibe if it weren’t for one person and no one wants to ruin the vibe further by being the guy being far to honest with a senile old man. Not that that would do any good. He’s not going to be receptive to feedback and even if he were he’s not going to retain it.
This guy needs to get off the internet and go meet up with some family IRL because his condition is only going to get worse.
So what are the easy ways out?
Could ban him. For what? Being annoying? How is that bannable. BTW on a technical level that means wiping a password in a table. So that’s kind of AOU. It’s not my goal to be him.
I could be hella petty and put “|Retard” next to his username. If it’s not obvious this guy has fully gotten under my skin. I shouldn’t be proud of that but fuck he has. The advantage is I’ve got my users upvoting him I think in part because they think they are doing me a favor upvoting users generally, and doing that would help signal it is ok to downvote the stupidity or be negative to it. Heck hypothetically I just put retard on someone’s name, so you are allowed to downvote. But that is hella AOU.
This is the bad part. I’ve already determined I don’t want to be AOU. But the worst thing is there are no other ideas.
Most folks don’t know this but PMYB2, the previous owner of Poal before he died, who was generally liked, had these same tools. He talked to me about them. He used them hella sparingly. And so he had a good site with good users. Poal was actually a cool place when he was running it. Some people didn’t like Poal then but I think that was mostly tribalism because old voat still existed and people didn’t want to accept the signals it was coming to an end. But when PMYB2 died and AOU took over he used every shitbag tool they created for emergencies and used them on normal users.
Maybe shitbag tools need to be used every now and again. Or not. I like running a principled site. I do that once and it no longer is that. But man. I needed to get to a bigger pop before I got this kind of user. What I need are more assholes who are willing to tell this guy the truth. I already have done that job myself, but hearing it from more than one source is the only way his senile mind will accept it. Every other site managed to do it. He says mine is the only one he uses and he hates all the other sites. People aren’t nice to him. He doesn’t seem to like mine enough to not spam every thread with complaining.
The other reason why it would be really nice if people brigaded my site and berated him, hint, besides saving me from using AOU tools, is it just looks bad if I do it and I’m the only one doing it. You don’t see System on Voat yelling at people. He has voat users for that. On Lemmy downvoting is nearly reflexive for better or worse so if I had that userbase the right feedback would be happening
On a technical level to be a free speech site the site needs to allow being a senile idiot no one can stand. But that doesn’t mean you should be socially free to do that. I need users who can magnify appropriate social negativity where it’s correct. I only have nice users right now. Besides this guy none of them are assholes ever. That and myself when I need to deal with this guy. But the owner can’t be the only asshole. Then you just have an asshole owner. I shouldn’t be, but assholes are necessary and I don’t have any. So that leaves me stuck with the job.
j4k3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You are too emotionally involved in this to be objective in my opinion. You need someone that is very liberally aligned to asses the situation and take action accordingly. This is what I tell fellow mods. If a mod is participating in a thread, they are no longer a mod and should not take actions against others. Ask another mod to take a look and take actions.
Everyone has a right to have a bad day, and a right to be wrong. No one has a right to continuously bring others down. I would send the guy messages addressing this and see how he responds regardless of my biases and preconceptions. I would then notify him of my expectations for constraint. If he violates that, I would warn him, likely twice. If it happens thrice in a span of half a year, I would not hesitate to ban him. My policy is “first do no harm” and “live and let live,” but these apply to individual and group at the same time. Never be an authoritarian. All admin and mod actions cause harm that should be tempered with kindness empathy and reason wherever possible. Social interaction is an addition. Causing sudden withdraw in an individual may cause real and irreversible harm.