Fedigrow

It's situational.

By itself, down voting but not otherwise interacting is fine. Hell, one of the uses of votes is to let the sorting work, so down votes are a valid form of interaction.

But, some people abuse that. So, if the pattern of their voting shows that they're targeting a single user, or trying to manipulate the ranking to shift sorting artificially, or points to some other bad actorship, mod intercession would be a valid choice.

However, a ban would not be an acceptable first intervention. That would be overreach, going beyond the scale of the issue. Contacting the user first would be the appropriate step. Remember, lemmy is still small enough that we can at least try to treat each other like people instead of just words on a screen.

Let me use a personal example to illustrate why contact first is the better option.

There is a community, which I won't specify to avoid causing them grief, that is dietary based. Because of my background, I have a higher than usual grasp of the general subject, and have higher personal standards for health claims surrounding fad diets.

As such, when I would scroll past posts on that community that were factually incorrect, or didn't give supporting evidence outsider of a YouTube link, I would down vote it without any further action or interaction. Early on, the only posts were being made by the mod of the community, and they noticed that not only was I down voting almost everything on the C/, but that was all I was doing.

On the surface, that can look sketchy, right? Some rando just down voting with no observable pattern.

So, they contacted me. Asked what I was doing and why. I explained pretty much what I said here, and the conversation was pleasant. That started adding in text that gave more info than just linking to a video, which means that people scrolling by weren't just hit by what amounts to ads for a fad diet, which is a major problem that isn't really discussed much, but can have massive effects on people's health.

With the extra effort in place, the posts ceased to have that same quasi-subliminal effect where people just absorb it passively due to it being background noise. So, I no longer needed to down vote those posts, and ceased doing so; reserving down votes for posts that either weren't on topic for the C/, or contained things that amount to disinformation.

That interaction gave me a ton of respect for that mod, even though I still disagree with what their community "advertises" based on my knowledge out nutritional best practices. It also made me willing to check their linked videos on occasion to see if maybe my knowledge and current best practices should change to incorporate that diet as practical and healthy. So far, all I've seen is that it's less harmful than I thought, but that's going too far off topic.

Looping back to your specific quandry, I think that it's always worth trying to communicate. Lemmy really is a unique social experiment, and the best part about it is the people. As long as we all try to handle things person-first, we have a high chance at things staying more like a community than a disconnected bunch of user names that might as well be bots for all we care.

Now, being real, humans are assholes. So chances are that your attempt at communication will fail, and may fail with them being a giant, gaping, stinking asshole. But I think it's still best to make the attempt before moving on to other options.

If they're an asshole, then you ban them on grounds of community interference. If they aren't, then maybe something good comes out of it.

Bans like that are a valid and useful tool. Anyone saying otherwise doesn't understand what it takes to keep a forum running smoothly. But it has to be a scalpel, not an axe. It's way too easy to slip into being a power tripping bastard that ruins the very community you're trying to keep healthy. If you find yourself reaching for that ban hammer before trying other things, it's time to get some backup. Find someone to help take the load off, to spread the stresses of having to police a community and yourself.