March 29, 2012

The point is that thinking, independent adults do not like to be managed

by self-appointed authoritarians, especially those that want to dumb down someones else's 12 year old progressive, adult political web site to be something safe for kids.
Adults the world over do not talk like people on Sesame Street. Most here have a problem with that.

For myself, I have been responsible for myself and living on my own for 50 years. I do not need nor want some self-appointed authority telling me how to word my posts and what words I had better not use because they personally do not like them. Especially when this is not their web site and they can no more make the rules than I can. I have been here since 2001 and salty language has been tolerated all of that time. If it were a problem with the owners, it is well with in their power for them Clean this site up. But it has never really seemed to be a real problem for them. That said, I will chose my own words, thank you.

March 28, 2012

And the neighbor kid, with help of a couple of his friends, keeps bossing the other kids around

and trying to get them to act how he thinks they should be acting, berating their style of clothes, disrupting their activities, critical of their speaking styles and teen-age 'code words'. Including criticizing them if they use too big of or new or strange words they have learned in school.
The parents mostly ignore this pseudo-self appointed baby sitter. They don't seem to notice the ruckus this kid is causing in the neighborhood. They think that the kids are just being kids.
But most of the neighborhood kids are A and B students. Several are wrestlers. Bad news for the self appointed authoritarian and his friends, who think they know so much.

Meanwhile the rest of the neighborhood kids, being fed up with his BS, start getting together to find ways to set this kid in his place in no uncertain terms.

Sort of like DU is doing right now.

March 28, 2012

And by whose standards is this DU to be held to?

Yours? Mine? Someone deep in a Safe Haven, that is afraid to post in the scarey open?
Respect goes both ways. The Serial Alerters don't respect the majority views of DU'ers and they expect respect for whatever set of rigid views they hold? Ain't a gonna happen.
Community Standards needs to include the majority. The Serial Alerters are trying to define their own Community Standards, without the majority or in spite of them.

I do wish the Surveys would be activated here. That would settle some hash real quick.

March 28, 2012

Exactly! DU2 was much better in that respect.

DU3, not so much, because DU3 has an Alert System that activates a random panel of jurors, out of the blue, whose minds are elsewhere when the Alert notification is received by them.

We have people here that think that rules rule, literally. The spirit of the rule, not so much. If it's is a rule, then that rule is sacrosanct, never to be broken, changed or questioned. How is that Liberal or progressive?

Then there are those that interpret those same rules, not only in ways never intended by the rule makers, but their interpretations can get pretty convoluted sometimes.

The Political Correctness aspects of both groups trumps discussions, context, obvious intent, ham strings ideas and derails good discussions. To say nothing about the vendetta aspect of their bullying.

DU is poorer because of less than a dozen members of both groups trying to remake DU into their own version of what a political discussion board should be. (Noticed I left out "Progressive" and "Liberal" from the previous sentence.) Alerts are being used as shinny objects that are detracting and derailing DU from the principals Democratic Underground was founded on. The real enemy, the Republicans, far right wing-nutz and other assorted crazies, flushing our country down the drain for their own profit and amusement, are being forgotten because of the in-fighting caused by and justified by a few.

March 27, 2012

I think the Professional Alerters need to feel some consequence for their excessive alerts.

The playing field needs to be leveled a bit.

For any alert that goes 6/0 to leave, suspend Alerting privileges for 24 hours and not be able to alert on the member they alerted on for 30 days.
For any alert that goes 5/1 to leave, suspend Alerting privileges for 10 hours and not be able to alert on the member they alerted on for 15 days.
For any alert that goes 4/2 to leave, suspend Alerting privileges for 3 hours and not be able to alert on the member they alerted on for 24 hours after that.
For any alert that goes 3/3 to leave, suspend Alerting privileges for 2 hours and not be able to alert on the member they alerted on for 24 hours after that.
The above will help to cool things down far better than any time outs or lockouts or hidden posts of the alerted on will.

If more than three 6/0 alerts to Leave in a one week period for any one member, send Alerter to MIRT for evaluation.

The root problem here are the abusive alerters who use the jury system to bully, intimidate and even silence those whose opinions and members they do not like.
Community Standards, my ass. They want their standards regardless of the community. The jury system is flawed because of that. Alerting is without cost. It can be sometimes compared to an ambush, where the one doing the ambushing is assured of absolute safety.

If the member whose post was alerted on, were notified every time, when any of their posts were alerted on, regardless of whether it was hidden or not, the real extent of the problems with the jury system would quickly become evident. The Alerter does not necessarily need to be identified to the Alerted on.
But without this critical piece of information, failed alerts, the jury system will continue to limp along, pissing off most everyone for its unfairness, at some time or the other.

The problem here is the Alerter, the accuser, being anonymous, can run up alerts as vendettas against any other member. They can alert on anyone and everyone, as often as they want, for any reason, for perverse fun and games, revenge, any reason without any cost. Even to the extent of creative interpretations of the TOS and SOP. That needs to change.
If you give the police a false report, there are consequences. There needs to be consequences for excessive, frivolous and fraudulent alerts on DU3 also.

If the Alerter lies as the reason for the alert, there needs to be consequences. Being mistaken is one thing, outright lying is another. For instance, if the alerter says a poster is calling a another member a name, be sure the alerted on is not giving his opinion of someone's post and not the poster themselves. There is a difference. Or if the the reason the alerter gives for the alert is not even evident in the post, there needs to be consequences. It the alerter says something is thus and so, they had better be able to document it.

The Alerts score card in the member Profile needs to be activated also.

March 27, 2012

The problem is not the number of people on the jury. Six was picked for a reason.

That part mostly works. Changing the number of people on the jury will do nothing towards alleviating the root problem. That is just diddling with the symptoms.
The root problem are the abusive alerters who use the jury system to bully, intimidate and even silence those whose opinions and members they do not like.
Community Standards, my ass. They want their standards. The jury system is flawed because of that. Alerting is without cost. It can be sometimes compared to an ambush, where the one doing the ambushing is assured of safety.
If the member whose post was alerted on, were notified every time, when any of his post were alerted on, regardless of whether it was hidden or not, the real extent of the problems with jury system would quickly become evident.
But without this critical piece of information, the jury system will continue to limp along, pissing off most everyone for its unfairness, at some time or the other.

March 24, 2012

Social Security don't need no tweaks.

What Social Security needs is to get our Living-Wage-Jobs back into this country.
Part time, low wage jobs is not cutting it. Not for raising a family. Not for keeping the economy healthy. Not for keeping Social Security solvent.
Any tweaks to Social Security is more diddling with the symptoms and ignoring the real problem - The loss of so many of our Living-Wage-Jobs, that the economy is in danger of collapsing.

March 24, 2012

You got it!

We know the Republicans have been bought off and are guzzling the drug laced kool-aid. What we need to learn is that the Democrats in WDC mostly have been also. Why do we still act surprised when Democrats are "bipartisan" and act against the best interest of "We the people..."? Not being so far out there, is the only difference.

March 21, 2012

fluchen ask about the Alerter also. And so far no one has responded.

I can understand the jury being anonymous. They not only do not need to be identified, because there six random members for each alert. Also if they were identified, then the "Free From Any Consequence Alerter" could swarm any juror that gave verdicts, they or friends did not like.

The problem here is the Alerter, the accuser being anonymous and can run up alerts as vendettas against any other member. They can alert on any and everyone, for any reason, for perverse fun and games, revenge, any reason without any cost.

Alerters need to be publicly identified. List the alerts chronologically on a page, Who alerted, with jury verdicts, Hide/Leave - win/lose scord card by each name.

Also the person being alerted on should receive a PM notice for every alert on their posts, regardless of jury decision. Not just for a post being Hidden.
That will stop a lot of the Bullshit^* going on now.


Bullshit^* Sexist term that is OK because bulls are male and therefore full of shit.

March 20, 2012

The criteria should be,

is this an adult web site? Or is this a web site for grammar school children?

Du has safe havens for most anyone. More can be added, if necessary. Isn't that enough? Why do we have to clean up the rest of DU so as to not offend anyone in any of those safe havens too?

All the hissing, spitting and moaning, caused by the use of certain words and phrases, that some want banned, if carried to their logical conclusion, will reduce Democratic Underground to be safe for 1st and 2nd graders. After the current crop of bad words and phases get banned, what next? The precedent will have been set. It will be easier for the next step. More words and phrases forbidden. There will always be something that upsets someone.

More good people will be driven away because of this in-fighting. As as been noticed, many have already left. DU3 is noticeable poorer.
DU will eventually descend to the lowest common denominator of the remaining word banners. Imagine a DU that doesn't offend anyone. The remaining members will all have their "Safe Haven". Few will post outside those safe havens for fear of offending someone. And you had better believe there will be people just waiting to pounce, if they do. That will be where DU is headed.

There will always be other bad words and phrases. Already some are applying their own definition to words and phrases that do not appear in the real world, as a reason to ban words. Then there are the content of the posts, the subject matter. Banning posts on certain subjects because they would be, or might be, hurtful for some people for whatever reason. Bingo, there go anything on, for example, child abuse, pedophiles, rape, bad marriages, or whatever because it is, or might be, too painful for some to read.

Where does it end? Do you want Democratic to be an adult political web site? Or do you want it to be a play ground for children?