This should help us cut down on the trolls. We recommend other instances do the same, because they will likely be targeted also.
I apologize for all their gore-posts as well, no one should have to see that. We’ll try to look for more admins from different time-zones as well to get them faster.
The two other possibilities we have currently as options, are turning on required email verification, and as a last resort, closing signups. I personally would rather not do either, but they are options.
Many thanks to @k_o_t@lemmy.ml and @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml for banning those trolls.
You do not need to apologize for actions of others, you did your best and you found a solution for this issue which is what at the end counts.
Lemmy does lots of more work than most other platforms I know, admins and mods are often very fast and helpful + resourceful.
My idea was to introduce some sort of reputation based system but the problem is, that bots maybe could abuse the system to upvote themselves to get some sort of credit or reputation, call it what you want. Most boards use captchas and eMail verification systems to workaround this. Maybe an option would be to enable captchas for users who have below x posts as a middle ground, lets say 1 captcha per new submission until you have 5 posts in total.
Edit
After thinking about it, another system without reputation or captchas or emails would be to hold back posts until someone has 5 posts and let the Mods, Admin approve it first.
Reputation would just turn this into Reddit, where you can’t do anything or interact unless you use a single account or post what Reddit would like you to post.
Yeah I updated my statement, gave an example. Up until 5 posts. I think that is okay as a middle-way. The system is not meant as competition system or to farm something.
The Lemmy devs have already decided that karma is just a bottomless pit that just harms users mental health, so it’s highly doubtful we’d ever have a reputation system be introduced, as that’s literally the same thing.
Also, captchas can be preventative to people with certain disabilities, so introducing them (I believe it would be reintroducing, actually) would contradict Lemmy’s disability-inclusive culture. As well, email verification wouldn’t work for people who would prefer anonymity. And nefarious users could just use a spoof mail account, so the introduction of required email account verification would really only harm privacy-focused real users, and do nothing to prevent trolls. Also, while on the subject and though you didn’t mention it, we don’t ban IPs because some VPNs reuse them for multiple people. So banning the IP of a troll might also cause the ban of real users.
These are my thoughts on email too. Using throwaways is so easy for trolls, and legitimate users now have a privacy concern since a lot of the “legitimate” email services are really invasive.