Admittedly, this diary is less about attempts by the Religious Right to put dogs in pants than it is to snark about this site's new trusted-user formula.
But I think ordinarily it would have warranted a "BREAKING" in my headline, if it had fit, or if any of this were true. My question to you, gentle reader, is as follows: does anyone, including the creators, actually understand the new TU formula? Oh yes, I know it was explained to us not long ago how the new system would work, and why it was necessary to purge TU ranks of some bad characters who were troll-rating comments they disagree with. But (more after the commercial break)
today I apparently lost TU status, and it would be useful I think for us to have a full-bodied, open discussion about what we mean by "trusted user," to be followed by an Australian ballot vote, and then the hanging of two or three of the usual suspects.
I look back over my last 27 comments. I note through eyeballing that I have had nearly as many responses to those comments as the number of comments themselves. I also note that several of those comments have had 7 to 10 recommenders. I don't say that to feed my childish ego. I lost my childish ego years ago when the bank banned me from trying to deposit checks using the drive-thru teller after I managed through mechanical ineptitude to destroy the pneumatic-tube delivery system. Now, my ego is no longer childish. It is fully adult, which means it not only gets pissed off, it's legally able to drink.
So I ask you, Brothers and Sisters of the Collective, don't we get Brownie Points for posting comments to diaries that are not already saturated on the Recommended list? Shouldn't there be some free air miles when we draw comments from other posters, even if many of us are too lazy, or too judicious to recommend every comment in a thread?
And shouldn't we be granted automatic, permanent trusted-user status for 1)never putting the word BREAKING in a diary title that links to something that's been on Huffington Post for four hours; 2)never putting the word BREAKING in a satirical diary with a title that suggests something we would all love to see, like "BREAKING: President supports constitutional amendment requiring dog-pantsing"; or 3)not feeling the compunction to create a diary a day, even if we're allowed to?
Open for discussion here.