I was the most trigger happy reddit mod back in the day but banning people for offences in other communities was something even I didn’t do. But if it’s what you say it is then that’s irrelevant.

Racism should break any civilised instance rules so report it for abuse to the admin. If it’s one of the more controversial instances that lemm.ee federates with you might consider that as a sign that federation policy might be the problem.

I would ban racist and rude people. Racists forever. Rude maybe a week or so.

I say go for it.

Imagine you were the manager of a coffee shop. There’s some dude who walks around town all the time wearing a Nazi uniform. You’ve seen him around.

One day, the guy shows up at your coffee shop, wearing regular everyday street clothes, but you absolutely recognize him as Nazi Uniform Guy. Everyone else in your coffee shop also recognizes him as Nazi Uniform Guy, and a non-zero number of your regular patrons would obviously be threatened by Nazis.

Get the fuck out of my coffee shop.

If you’re running a community on an instance that doesn’t ban obvious racists at the instance level then your community is on the wrong instance.

IMO YMMV etc

I say ban 'em. A reputation for banning racists is a positive reputation.

I feel it’s odd to ban people I don’t like for their behavior outside the community.

If you’re polite in my house, but I hear you’re talking shit behind my back, you’re not welcome in my house anymore.

Most of the time it’s a bad idea to ban people based on behaviour outside your “turf”, but there are some exceptions - and this is clearly one of them, the mere presence of the user in your community is bound to make it less safe to the others.

I feel it’s odd to ban people I don’t like for their behavior outside the community.

My 2 cents is that one moderates what happens in a community, not what happens in the world outside it.

I also don’t want the community to have a bad reputation of banning people I don’t like but this guys a known racist.

I don’t know yours, but I would quit a community where mods would decide it’s their duty to police the world.

There are many people I do not like, even a few I despise, but that’s just my feelings and emotions and my feelings don’t grant me any right to punish them in any way. Edit: unless they do something in the community I moderate that does not respect the community rules, obviously. But the key idea here is they must do it in the community, what they do elsewhere is none of my business.

Depends on the severity of the offense. Don’t wait for Nazis to specifically start Nazi-ing in your community, kick 'em out ASAP. Anything less than that though, probably let it slide.

Are you the sole moderator of whatever comm you’re talking about? Maybe you should talk to some of the other people who are active in the community, see if they are interested in helping mod, and decide together what the right course of action is.

Alternatively this is your chance to lay a few ground rules and then point to them when this behavior comes up again. Make it clear that human decency isn’t optional and that you won’t allow others to be trampled on just for a little bit of traffic in the community. This gives whoever may need it a chance to curb that behavior instead of immediately lowering the boom on them, and shows the rest of the community that you aren’t going after people on a personal vendetta.

Whatever you decide, I wouldn’t stress about it too much.

Part of the advantage of the Fediverse is that it does not have or benefit from any one moderation policy, but has many different moderation policies that can appeal to many different types of people.

Regarding this individual case, I would make sure you look at the context and spirit of that users actions. On one extreme, they could be throwing abuse at fellow users and being intentionally destructive in an unsuitable place.

On the other extreme, they could be participating in a shitpost community and speaking more sarcastically, just going for shock value.

There’s a whole range between these two extremes. Where you end up drawing the line is entirely up to you and what sort of instance you want to run.

I agree with your decision. You should be able to personally block a brazen bigot. They made the decision to say what they said. If it was ambiguous bigotry, sure, give them leeway if you want. But it doesn’t sound like they’re trying to have a good faith conversation.

How do people ban people who’ve never visited their community? Tho not OP’s exact situation, I’ve been banned from communities that I have never even posted in.

And I’d like to repay the favor to the mods who did it, but I don’t see an option on how to do that.

I’m just glad that there is finally a banning question that’s not about me!! :)

I personally think it’s bad form to ban someone from your community for things said outside the community.

Honestly, the stuff people complain about on Lemmy is a bit ridiculous. I know it’s not a popular opinion so probably no point mentioning it here, but… Yeah. People freak out about the smallest things.

Stuff like “misinformation” (person is having an opinion that is not based on science), or “ableism” (person is making a joke about stupid people).

Haven’t seen any real racism on Lemmy, but lots of people who think personal opinions about people from another race is racism. Like “the Indians I have met have been very quiet” = racism. :)