DU doesn't need fewer regular posters in GD.

[Awsi Dooger]

136. Based on sports forums I knew the jury system was a bad idea

I am ganged up on all the time on a few sports forums, for two basic reasons: I don't adhere to conventional wisdom regarding sports, and I'm the only vocal liberal on sites flooded with simplistic angry conservative white males.

Consequently it doesn't really matter what I post. There is one guy so scared of my content he follows me around and negatively rates literally every post I make, while telling his buddies to do the same. I have one friend on that site who got hold of a private message and sent it to me. It was basically a gang warfare strategy to try to drive me away from the site.

The same thing happened here in prior years. Long time posters will remember that for a brief period -- circa 2006 -- we were able to see Ignore lists from other users. Some posters took great delight in passing around those ignore lists and comparing names. It was particularly prevalent in Election Reform.

Then during 2008 there likewise were Ignore list recommendations passed around, trying to get rid of Hillary supporters. Those were the darkest days I have witnessed on this site. Hillary was treated like evil incarnate. I don't blame the Hillary supporters who left and never returned. Then in 2016 it was quite something to see supportive Hillary posts from names I recognized from 2008 as desperate to drive Hillary supporters away.

I did not agree to jury participation. The original system was fine. I trust the administrators far beyond random members who might hold a bias.

In my early years here there was no problem comparing one Democrat to another, even if that meant criticism of one of them. I remember the 2004 primary battles and participated in them. We had a Wesley Clark group and John Edwards group, and so forth. Those two groups really disliked each other, BTW. That's why I mention them. It seemed like each one viewed the other as the person they had to get rid of in order to go one-on-one against Howard Dean or John Kerry. But overall the discourse was fine. I knew who didn't like me but it didn't amount to anything. I had frequent disagreements with a poster named FrenchieCat but I never had to worry about her (?) trying to get me banned, or passing around Ignore list recommendations.

Recently I have received several warnings and been surprised every time. Rachel Maddow is merely a broadcaster but apparently it is against policy to criticize her. In another thread I merely agreed with someone else regarding Elizabeth Warren's poor instincts but that prompted the right wing talking point warning. I was told my account was under review. Then I challenged the original warning, and won. My post was restored. Was I supposed to cheer? I didn't know if it meant my account was no longer under review.

Mostly I do political math anyway. There doesn't seem to be much interest in that around here anymore. I miss the early years on this site, when Jiacinto always had some related feedback and questions. Likewise with TruthIsAll, even if we seldom agreed. But anything math related he would respond to.

I also think it was a huge mistake to get rid of the GD Politics forum, to differentiate General Discussion from General Discussion related directly to politics. Nowadays and especially after Trump was elected, General Discussion is virtually nothing but politics. That is a shame, IMO. The original General Discussion forum had tons of content that was too heavy for the Lounge but wasn't related to politics. I would estimate those threads are now less than 25% the prior amount. The same ideas are possibly being posted elsewhere in specialized forums but I am not seeing them and I doubt many posters are.