Kafka at Kos: Chilling Effects and Liberal Ideals

I seem to have been stripped of my ratings ability.  

This struck me as kind of odd, because in the months I've been here I've collected a shamefully low number of troll ratings (zero, to be exact) and haven't handed many out (actually, that is probably zero as well, though it's not something I've kept careful trck of).

I haven't written diaries that have spawned cries for deletion.  In short, I've been boring.

As near as I can tell, I've been stripped of my ratings ability for uprating a comment that I thought crude but unworthy of being hidden.  (Since the begining of February, I've done this once.  In my time as a TU, I had previously uprated one other comment that was hidden.)

Now, DailyKos clearly has the right to restrict privileges of any user (including me) or ban a user for any reason or no reason.  That said, this situation is a bit Kafkaesque.

Generally, due process is held, at a minimum, to require notice and a hearing.  I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly wasn't aware that uprating any single comment could cause this effect.

I have no idea who, exactly, imposed this sanction upon me and, therefore whom to talk to about it.  (Is it the admins as a group?  One of the admins? Which one?)

I understand that these rating suspensions will end when the primary season ends.  Does that mean June? Or August? Or some other date?

Shockingly, not all trollrates are given with the purest of motives. If uprating a single comment that the community deems trollworthy is grounds for a revocation of rating privileges that will yield a greater unwillingness to uprate comments that others deem trollworthy for good or bad reasons.  Is this a good thing?

(In some sense this diary, like many meta diaries is somewhat self-indulgent.  To those who have read this far and feel that way, I apologize and thank you.)