Comment by TulliusCicero
2 years ago
I think it can be a failure state, certainly, but sometimes it's unavoidable, and banning someone can also mean more people in the community, rather than less.
Would HN be bigger if it had always had looser moderation that involved less banning of people? I'm guessing not.
edit: I guess what I was thinking was that often in a community conflict where one party is 'targeted' by another party, banning one of those parties is inevitable. Not always, but often people just cannot be turned away from doing some toxic thing, they feel that they're justified in some way and would rather leave/get banned than stop.
It was hard from my perspective because I would rather not ban anyone. You're right that failure to ban could cause players to leave because they are being harassed, but it's hard to know when to step in.
If you're too strict you'll drive off a lot of players, which sounds acceptable, but nobody wants to play on a near-empty server. If you're too lenient you'll have too many hostile players, but at least your server is not empty.
This was by far my least favorite aspect of managing a server, but I still had an overall positive experience and it is a huge part of me becoming a software engineer.