Somewhere a bridge has gained its Troll back.

[MineralMan]

505. There's some truth to that, I think.

I suspect that most jury decisions are just fine, and the jurors try to judge a post on genuine grounds. However, I'm pretty sure there are some who just look at the poster's screen name and vote according to what they think of that particular DUer. In many cases, such votes are made with no comment. In others, though, the comment reveals the personal bias.

Recently, I made one of my rare alerts on a post. The result was 4-3 to leave the post. What post is was is irrelevant, but I only alert on posts that contain a personal attack on someone other than myself. One juror commented, "I see you MineralMan." That juror voted to leave the attack.

Now, my writing style is pretty easy to identify, so I'm not surprised that some people can guess that I'm the alerter by reading the comment I leave. However, that particular post was, indeed, a personal attack on another DUer, so that particular juror could have been the deciding vote. I don't know for sure, of course, and I have no idea who the juror was, nor do I care.

Juries usually rule well, I think. I've been on about 550 juries, so I've seen a lot of jury results emails. In most, I don't see any real biases, whether I agree with the ruling or not. Sometimes, though, I do see real biases, and a single vote can turn the decision in many cases.