This issue just keeps getting more and more entangled - someone called to defederate from an entire instance based on actions regarding a single, tiny community (on a fairly small instance to boot), now it seems that I should go read that article in order to fully understand what’s going on… so I’m drawing a line here and saying that even without bothering to read that article, the wording of this OP (in YPTB I mean) is poorly framed.

Communities should have the right to protect themselves from not merely random downvotes but serial, bot-like brigades. Especially for something called “Thoughtful Discussion” where they are aiming for more limited participation by more thoughtful people, and all the more so when they make a special rule just for that. PieFed has superior methods to handle this - like the ability to restrict downvotes selectively to only community members (I think? I am not a mod there but I remember seeing that mentioned somewhere) - but using Lemmy software there really are no other options provided besides banning people who don’t bother to read the community rules. I agree the solution is not ideal but what else does Lemmy offer to meet the same need?

This OP could be a YDI, or it could be CLM, or even BPR, but without being an admin or doing my own intricate research on lemvotes (which is the burden of OP to have provided) I simply do not have the information necessary to decide. (Therefore it’s probably YDI, even if the mod’s rejection reason could have been more clearly articulated on their end.)