I am leaving DU. It will be interesting to see how long this post stays up.

[timdog44]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by In_The_Wind (a host of the General Discussion forum).

I have been here a long time. I have only started posting within the past year. When I first started to post it was "dog pile on the rabbitt". Because I was new and had low posting numbers, the people here whose job it is to harass new posters started to drool and let me have it. Had a a couple posts blocked, etc. So, I asked a couple of people who seemed to be reasonable and was informed it was the normal gang who does that kind of thing. OK, I can take that. Like a hazing, unnecessary, but some think they have to do it. Then I was able to engage inn a few threads and make my comments. No problem. As the days and weeks have gone by it seemed that I was getting my thoughts out. But it has turned uglier and uglier. I found out about the ignore button. "Ignore?" What the hell. If I ignore someone I can not see what they think, and if they ignore me they can not see what I think. This is not an exchange of thoughts then. It is a rigged blog site where the cliques rule. I have found myself ignored by 15 people. What does that do. One of the people I have found to be the most ignorant and with a very high posting number has over 100 people ignoring her/him. How is this an exchange of ideas and thoughts? How is this a civil discourse on the concerns of the day? Although the incivility of the person being ignored by 100 people can be expected due to the way the poster goes about, basically yelling their thoughts and then calling everyone else a f___ing idiot, or not have the logic an ant has. So, now we are getting to the crux of the matter. The incivility here is beyond the pall. This should be a place of learning and patience. Teaching and exchanging. It is not. People obviously do not read the threads they engage in as they repeat the same things or even worse ignore the posters. And even worse swear at them. No respect. This is a site of like thinkers, who have some differences of opinion, and are here to air those differences and find out why the differences exist. The other thing that seems to happen here is the multiple threads about the same issue, at the same time. I can understand, somewhat, on different days, but if the same issue is talked about in the same way, it is a waste of time as there are many, many things to be discussed, not just hashed and rehashed. So, I wonder where are the moderators? The outright cruelty and incivility should not be tolerated and people need to be censored. And that is supposedly done by "jury". That does not work. A number of people who are selected for juries are obviously not interested in being on them and do not leave any comment on why they voted the way they did. If that does not happen then no one learns why the jury decision came down like it did. And lots of times the comments are like plucked out of a can, no thought behind them.

So here was my sanctuary of same believers or close to the same. Ignorant, mean and uncivil. Not all, but enough to make this a very unpleasant experience. It is too bad. There is something to be learned here and I felt I had things to impart. For what ever reason, this place is falling apart and I longer wish to be a part of it.

[geckosfeet]

1. Help is available

[ucrdem]

6. Yes it is. Here are 2 suggestions:

1 - Hi timdog, there are certain posters who can call bullshit in a way most of us wouldn't dare and are generally liked and respected by many including me. They sometimes go on benders however and yeah that's a problem, but fortunately not ours. Alert if they're rude, keep alerting if they don't let up. Sometimes juries look the other way, but if you make a fairly clear case in the alert, and things are getting out of hand, they usually come through.

2 - Something else to consider is posting in a protected group when things get too stormy in GD. Here's a little pitch for the the Barack O group (BOG) I made last night:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023064858#post13

Please consider joining us if that appeals to you or try another group if it doesn't and hang in there amigo!

[sibelian]

2. I'm not at all surprised.

There are many discussion forums that are nowhere near as confrontational. Perhaps you'll find one to your liking.

rgds, s

[DCBob]

3. I have been here since 2008 and its always been confrontational on hot political issues.

Part of the problem is many here see attitudes of others as threatening to the basic core ideals of the Democratic Party, while others see their attitudes as threatening to the Party itself. When people of these opposing viewpoints confront each other, it often gets ugly. Maybe that's ok and good up to a point... but I agree it often goes beyond basic civility and discourse.

[steve2470]

4. Take a break, perhaps ?

It can get very heated, with ad hominem attacks at times. If you take a week or a month off and simply lurk, that might help.

Best wishes whatever you do.

[Uben]

5. members come and go....

Take it from a guy who has been here a long time...don't let em get to you. I've grown a skin so thick over the years, nothing bothers me anymore. If you let em get to you, they win. I have found ignoring the idiots is easy, and you can even get in a snide remark before you destine them to your trash bin! I read what I want to read, and comment on what I want to. Leaving, or threats to leave are just about as annoying as the trolls...don't do it. Buckle down and fire back or simply eliminate the source of aggravation....easy!

[NoPasaran]

7. Jimmy crack corn

And some people don't even care.

[HereSince1628]

8. I take that to mean you aren't really disconnecting...just not posting

you or your agent will be checking in regularly to see if this thread drops.

Believe me. It will. All Swan songs do.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. I think your basic problem is with juries allowing too much incivility

To a certain extent, DU is still an experiment as a forum using juries in this way - I'm unaware of another forum doing the same thing. And some people will find that they prefer a system with a few moderators with the powers to control the insults, instead.

But there are problems with moderators, especially on a large site. There's a lot of work to do as a moderator; I did it on DU, for perhaps 2 years in all, and found I couldn't post much, or even read much of DU that wasn't related to mod jobs, because there's always another alert waiting to be dealt with. If you try to deal with this by splitting up the forum into areas, and telling moderators they only need deal with one area, which their small group of mods has the responsibility for, you can still end up with inconsistency in the decisions - and then it would be an inconsistency that would continue for a long time. If you have a lot of mods, but say they can roam over a large area, you'll end up with a few awkward mods who slow the whole process down by always saying "no, we need to talk about this more before deciding".

The idea of the juries is that you'll get a fast decision, but you're not stuck with the same group deciding things time and time again. When dislike of moderators' decisions builds up, and gets expressed on the forum, it rapidly puts moderators off volunteering their time to the board. People don't appreciate being called 'fascists' when they're putting in more effort to run the community than their critics. I understand this was a significant problem towards the end of DU2.

DU was founded basically as a protest about the way Bush was installed in 2001, when the Supreme Court seemed to say "we've got to be decorous about this - a recount could cause bad feeling, so we won't try it". So DU has always attracted those who are vocal about their beliefs. And we've always been free with the insults of those we oppose - eg Bush. When a significant difference in opinion appears within Democratic ranks - eg during the presidential primaries of 2004 and 2008, over whether Pelosi should have impeached Bush in 2007, over the bank bailout, or now for drones and the NSA, you get fights. I suspect more people got banned under the old moderator system - possibly because that's necessary to keep the moderator workload down (the 'frequent fliers' in mod discussions were infuriating). Now that the workload is spread over most of the community, that's not so necessary.

[mick063]

10. Don't go.

I don't ignore anybody and I could give a crap if folks ignore me.


I will say that I simply cannot find a forum that has so many people aligned with my views. Because of it, I find DU to be a reassuring haven. I take comfort in knowing that there are many folks out there that see through the bullshit. Many appear to be quite educated and/or intelligent as well.

[In_The_Wind]

11. Not long at all ~ Locking