The opposite side, in the "Tells from the Duy Finder"-thread stated that basically everyone was tanking.
OP sadly never answered my question wether or not they used flash, so we're left with a bit of guesswork here - with the two best points being him saying that he was "using Shield Lob and that level 50 skill" and that "he was taking most of the damage". Both dont sound to re-asuring to me that he indeed used flash and was tanking properly. You cant really hold hate on a group of mobs, or on a single mob (...more likely though) by only throwing your shield at them - partly because you'll run out of TP to fast to keep that up.
And who said anything about kicking him for "poor dps"? You're the first person to bring this up now - everyone so far has simply been stating that its a reasonable expectation of a level 50 tank - no matter if it took them a day, a week or a month to reach that level - to perform the basics of their job. Which is to hold aggro on all mobs.
A tank doesnt has to "spam AoE all the time" - specially considering Flash deals no damage. A tank has to spam AoE enough to keep hate on all mobs. Or, in other words: A tank has to tank.
Bit of a personal excuse here, that you can ignore if you wish:
Paladin is actually my main-job. When I started this game I picked gladiator because, you know, I like swords. I had never played an MMO before. I had no idea what a tank was or what a tank has to do. Granted, I was lucky enough to have friends explaining some very basic stuff to me (even things like "Yes, you're allowed to roll on loot from chests. Specially when it is for your job!"). I certainly wasnt perfect - and I outright sucked at dodging. Back then the servers were still overseas and my lag was quite bad. On top of me being quite bad myself. I recall this incident in Brayflox Longstop NM. I couldnt dodge the dragon breath of the last boss. Just couldnt get out of it. The scholar couldnt heal through the poison - and you're not supposed to do that. We wiped a couple of times til they removed me, rightfully, from that party. Given my performance we couldnt kill that boss.
Today its way, way easier to compensate for someones lack of skill or lack of trying or paying attention - and I'm not talking about dealt damage, I'm talking about dodging, tanking... heck, past level 58 my paladin can compensate the lack of a healer with Clemency - and I had to do that quite a few times already.
But non of that is "right".
Just because three other people can compensate for your lack of whatever doesnt mean thats okay.