First off I want to say @heygeorge, this is one is for you! Couldn't have done it without you buddy.
Secondly I want to say I both absolutely love and hate you Voat. Equally. Sometimes at the same exact time, but other times some more than the other. Other times the exact opposite. It just depends. ;)
Yesterday I banned controversial user from v/gaming for being what I now have termed a 'Noid'. A Noid (according to me) is a person that regularly submits content that is low value, low effort, typically downvoted, and has low participation. Often times on purpose.
I banned this user from v/gaming for Spam.
Only one problem… the content was 'technically' on topic (a stretch but for sake of argument I concede). And guess what Voat did? What do you think Voat did? Yeah, that's right, Voat called me out on it. This is the part I hate.
So now we have Putts vs. The Goats and I'm not budging. Headbutts are heard throughout the kingdom. What rule do you cite? Spam? That isn't exactly right! What is spam, what isn't spam? Who says this is spam or that is spam? Spam this, spam that. Spam it all! I'm going back to browse v/all.
But through the smoke, Steam arose and how they enacted a rule to fight the troll. The problem now is this, everyone's a potential misfit.
And this made me love Voat, because it's a legitimate concern, the very merits worthy of wise discern. If I say that's spam, many decades from now what will the definition of spam be then? Think about your children and their children's children. What kind of Voat do you want them to envision? A Voat where much is spam, because that may happen if my stance stands.
So, here we are at the crossroads yet again. There's arguments on both sides, where to begin?
Edit:
I'm thinking now...
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Obrez ago
This shitty question is going to get drowned out by all 800+ posts already in the thread but let's answer the raw part of Putt's question.
What is Spam?
Specifically, is 5-8 submissions per day (to a single sub) spam? Does that become spam when you are north of 40 submissions in a week and pushing 50 or more?
If that is spam there might be some people who submit to v/conspiracy, v/news, v/politics and others who may very well be on that chopping block, I'm not saying positive or negative either way I think we are getting drowned in shit tier brainlet posting and low effort "soft spammers", as I would define them although Aged is certainly the lowest effort poster among them and the only one posting crappy smut.
I'm going to be presumptive and just say what I would do in this situation were I in Putt's shoes, unban the cunt, make a new rule that reads:
Have a definition somewhere linked on what this rule means:
If there are any cracks in this new rule I'm suggesting I doubt anybody could really do anything bad with them and if they can that is what downvoats are for in the first place. If Aged Violates the new rules even once ban him again.
I think most of us understand the mess here is the loose definition of "spam" being wrangled to ban the universally unwanted u/aged because a more specific rule went unmade, this seems to have happened because of a long time campaign to bug the shit out of Putt by people who are frankly as shit as Aged. My concern isn't that Putt made a bad call, he didn't, he made a careless call out of what looks to be exasperation and burnout from a bunch of zealous pearl-clutchers who want to ban things they don't like. Right now they are coming for something most of us don't like but how long before they start asking for more and more after proving their tactic of running the admin ragged gives them results they want? I and many others have been targeted in the past by one of the main individuals involved in this whole episode and if this isn't what is going on it sure does look like it considering Aged got banned right after these folks publicly requested he be banned even though he was in violation of no rules.
This whole shitstorm is largely semantic and revolves around the idea of a slippery slope down to censorship, as Putt said himself in reference to Dissenter's shadowbanning of posts with certain banned words:
I'm not saying Putt is a hypocrite or that he has bad intentions here, I'm saying he set a precedent and example that could be used to ban and censor users in the future, especially if the wrong people get admin or site mod, because they can reference our lord Putt"s actions in their own rulings to justify untold future cuntery, Even though Putt just off the cuff banned this fag because he was tired of hearing about him shitting up a System sub. This is Important no matter how trifling it seems today because precedents are set by admins and tomorrow people could be requesting bans on prolific posters of low quality/low effort content that is generally well received (because many users just see agreeable headlines and upvoat; echo-chamber shit but all the people talking are mumblng tardlets). You think a pedo getting banned started drama? Imagine what comes from banning the top submitters in some of the most popular subs on the site for spamming low effort low researched crap that get's upvoated mostly because they write good titles that people want to upvoat, The sites image would be irreparably hurt, that's why organic resolution is key or giving the users the tools they need in the rules to preserves a subs integrity.
My goal with this post as a former forum admin myself is to take as much work and stress off Putt's plate as we can, If you are begging admins or mods for user bans non stop because their content offends you yet hasn't broken any rules you are a part of the problem here and you are making the admin's job more difficult than it needs to be, the correct method to "clean up" v/gaming was not by petition to have him banned it was via suggestion to make a rule which would exclude the sort of inane tangentially related smut he trash posts; essentially an agreed expansion on what it means to be "off topic". The maxims by which I and my admin team operated were: the fewer rules, the better the system (elegant rules design being paramount to minimal rules), the fewer the rules less work for us.
My suggestion is that if users are pressuring mods and admins to hand out bans to users who haven't broken sub or site rules those users should instead be banned, at least from reporting/atting/pinging and similarly so if they are constantly demanding new rules to catch their quarry and see them banned for them, I don't know that this is what has been going on but It's what I've been seeing and the vibe I've been getting.
Most of this post may be moot if voat collectively agrees that what aged was doing for months on end was "spam" and is willing to accept the consequences of this definition of "spam" and if it does I suspect we will see long-term ramifications some good, some bad but mostly just making a butt-load more work for putt.