Had a small discussion with a good beehaw community member in one community, it got contentious but otherwise civil, and they have now taken to taking that discussion out in response to comments I’ve made in other posts and communities.
I would consider this a form of harassment, following me around Lemmy and having a argument seems to hurt the overall discussion in other posts and communities with anger and abuse.
How do I get help in this matter?
I interpreted “where we are now” to be:
“People get hung up on things that they could likely avoid by simply leaving the situation”
or rather
“Calling for a moderator after continuing to engage in something that makes you uncomfortable”
Note: I don’t necessarily agree, just my interpretations of the meaning. Clearly, neither of these are quite suited to this particular circumstance, since there’s a difference between leaving a conversation and being followed around.
The former, sure, I somewhat agree to an extent that community policing after a discussion is a little silly when realistically the same situation would have been avoided by just no longer engaging. For example, if you are walking down the street and see a crazy person engaging with every single person in front of you that passes by. You have the option to walk by them and ignore them, to walk a different direction to pass them, or to engage with them by talking right back.
On the internet, people choose the third option because it’s “safe”. In real life, most people walk by and ignore or go a different way. For both situations, potential aggravation could have been avoided by simply not engaging, thus, “Don’t feed the trolls”.
However as mentioned, that’s just not the case when someone is following you around. Per the previous example, that’s when you call for moderator support, or the police/public service to deescalate and further prevent the action from happening to others.
I don’t think “Don’t feed the trolls” [alone] is a solution on a public internet forum with changing people. New trolls will come anyway. Some people will always sometimes engage. And if the trolls continue, even without responses, it sets a mood in discussions and threads that influences people whether they engage or not.
That is my biggest concern, drive by hate has a chilling effect. Most people don’t want to jump into a contentious conversation.