Warnings

One of the problems we've had in the past when people step out of bounds on the site, behavior-wise, is that our choice of responses was limited. We could ban, which was extreme, we could give a public warning, but being publicly called out sometimes elicits the exact opposite kind of response. And as for sending emails, we don't demand current and working email addresses from our users for privacy reasons.

Now, we have a warning system in place. If someone steps out of bounds (being an asshole in the comments, copyright violation, etc.), an admin can lock down the user's account. A warning shows up at the top of the page explaining the transgression. The user has to click a button acknowledging he or she has read the warning before being given access to the site.

On our side, we have a record of the warning. There is no set number of warnings before we'd ban an account. That depends on the severity of the transgressions and other such factors. But now we have a much more efficient way to warn people of bad behavior without it being a choice between "do nothing" and "ban".

Also, we've started spec work on DK4, the next-generation version of Daily Kos, and it's going to be bad-ass. Of course, it looks pretty darn good inside my head. Making it reality will be a long, arduous process. I've budged 12-14 months of development. We'll be checking in over the next year to get community input on specific features we'll be working on.

Hunter is the lead developer in that project.