Yesterday, a self-described Ron Paul supporter was apparently auto-banned from this site. Someone else went down in flames, too, but no one seems to be sure whether it was auto-ban, manual-ban, or some other form of technoevaporation. That one seemed to be for constant over-the-top comments and flat-out lies about one of our candidates.
Since this site is first and foremost about getting Democrats elected, the bans seem to make perfect sense. And maybe it was the best thing. But maybe there is something else going on in the process that the community may want to consider.
This site has been fascinating to me for years. People come here to lurk, comment, or write diaries – all without receiving one dime for their troubles. The amount of information and discussion is second-to-none, as far as I’m concerned. I come to Daily Kos in the morning to get my news.
Yesterday, I got into it with another user or two and was quite disturbed by what I saw. This person may appear in the comments here and link back to many of my posts. That may be useful. I had a lot of free time on my hands yesterday or I never would have gotten in as deep as I did. I’m a mom with two daughters and was taking a day to hibernate before the holidays. Spent most of my time bantering here and watching something I found disturbing: what I see as flat-out cyber bullying of DKos users.
I’ve been around here long enough to have seen it before. Maybe a diary appears about it, maybe people just suddenly wake up and see what’s happening to the discussion on the site. It is "just a website" after all, so I wonder why I care so much about what happens.
What I see starting to happen (again – it’s always a cycle) is that the TR bullies are bullying not only the Ron Paul supporters, but other users who disagree with their assessment of how things should be handled. Quite frankly, I was interested in the discussion this banned user was generating yesterday. It wasn’t about the freaky stuff about Ron Paul, it was primarily about the Federal Reserve and economics. It did quickly degenerate, mostly because as soon as the person identified as a Ron Paul supporter all hell broke lose.
As I said, fine. The community spoke. Or did it?
Or was it more a case of other’s jumping on the troll bandwagon of one person who took it upon his/herself to yell "Ron Paul troll" after every comment this particular user made. How many people actually went back through the comments far enough to see what generated the initial discussion? Seemed to me that this person also had an affinity for Kucinich. Things made a little more sense to me, as far as "the troll’s" interest and support for Ron Paul. (OK – not sense, exactly...but at least I had some context.)
It’s one thing to troll rate a comment that you think is over the top – that’s what the damn button is for. Others can uprate it, and disagree with you if necessary. Community moderation at its finest. But what happens when other users start calling you out for "serial uprating" and gathering others in an effort that amounts to harassment for your disagreement with their TR and their assessment of the situation?
Now, if you’re going around uprating and just being an ass, then some shit may come your way. And there are those of us who can’t help but be very sarcastic (not with ratings, but with comments) when treated like a child. But generally, I don’t see a lot of abuse in uprates – someone disagrees that the comment should be hidden. Most of us take this uprate very seriously and go back and do some research before we uprate. The reason may take a variety of forms and often requires an explanation to the community. (Anyone read The Giver? Just had a flashback.)
We each have a voice here. Some of us have two voices, rec’s and trolls. The funny thing is that voice changes, depending on how much you can hang out here. TU status comes and goes. But the purpose of the buttons is for giving feedback. That feedback should be free of coercion. And anyone has the ability to uprate. That can be as powerful as a troll button. It needs to be used when you believe it should be used. That’s the other end of community moderation. The reality is that TUs need to be moderated sometimes, too. < Brief pause for the design genius of this site... >
Two quotes to consider: "Guidelines for Dealing with Trolls" from Hunter’s diary, written back in the 1600s, I think.
"Don't have long off-topic conversations accusing someone of being a troll. If it's not patently obvious to most comers, then they are NOT trolls. And if you're following the rules and rating the posts and not the poster, the question of whether someone is or is not a "real" troll shouldn't come up. Judge them based on their actions -- don't disrupt entire threads worrying about whether or not they might disrupt threads themselves. I mean, geez..."
"If someone has clearly been unfairly troll rated, you can use a 'recommend' to unhide a troll rated thread: but think about it before you do it. It takes only one "recommend" to unhide a comment hidden by three [it’s two now] troll ratings, and you're essentially vouching on your honor that you think the comment is not trollworthy. If you thwart responsible troll raters by rating threads up that quite clearly should be hidden according to the guidelines of the site, e.g. consistently act as an accomplice for a true troll, you may find your own ratings abilities removed."
I was called a fuckwit, lame-ass, and other things I can’t recall because I uprated a comment that led to an entire discussion I found interesting. Years ago, those hostile comments to me would have received TRs themselves. You just didn’t use names like that for other users. Republicans, yes. Fellow DKosians, no.
So, time to contemplate our buttons and all the rights and responsibilities associated with them. Don’t get bullied into silencing your voice. We get enough of that in this country. We don’t need it to take over the site here.