Welcome back to The Hiddens, an ongoing series of diaries for unofficially evaluating and considering the task and process of Community Moderation here on Daily Kos. Feel free to leave your thoughts and question in comments.
The numbers in "incident notes" are recs/HRs/replies as displayed on the hidden comments list at the time of writing. If they're followed by a number in parenthesis, that is the total number of replies downthread. If there are multiple sets, the record covers multiple comments, which may or may not be in the same thread. Other special symbols may appear, such as a hash/number sign (#) which indicates the statistics are for a non-hidden comment or other special circumstances.
Yesterday was a very big day for discussions, but not a very busy day on the list. Last night following yesterday's edition, the following hidden comments "appeared".
Somebody has some issues re: the President of the United States:
Incident: 'MLK'
Incident notes: trivial to the nth degree (1/16/1, 0/4/1)
Diary notes: LGBT, pro-Obama
User notes: TU, 2010, not a fan of the President
HR notes: the second comment was the first to drop; the first was a hop on
Disposition: trivial Status: huh?, open
A perusal of the user's contributions indicate this outburst is not unexplained.
This diary author didn't get the response they hope for, I think:
Incident: 'Jefferson Memorial (or: footloose and fact free)'
Incident notes: diary author, insults (1/16/1, 0/4/1)
Diary notes: demonstration, brief (*see note)
User notes: TU, 2005
HR notes: "fucking idiot", "sockpuppet"
Disposition: activism Status: dancing, open
The diary featured a video of arrests made at the Jefferson Memorial for "dancing", which last week was ruled by the courts to be a purposeful public disturbance inside such national monuments. *Yours Truly threw a zero in the tip jar (26/1) for lack of content or explanation. A Kossack who has spent several periods in the hiddens the last couple weeks scored a nicely contentious (8/4) with the subject line message "BREAKING: Idiots arrested for being idiots."
Maybe someone was just having a hard day:
Incident: 'Just plain rude'
Incident notes: just plain rude (1/8/9)
Diary notes: reading list, brief
User notes: TU, 2005
HR notes: comment criticized diarist's daughter's tastes
Disposition: blarg Status: reading, open
Sometimes the call can come down to extremely little things. Had this comment author moved some of the words he used into the comment instead of the subject line, perhaps he wouldn't have pissed so many people off with his seeming callousness. So basically what I am saying is that the comment sucked, but at least he's writing.
&&&
Yours Truly is a hop on! That's right, nestled under the second comment in the 'footloose' incident above, a group of my detractors have taken the opportunity to use the time they've spent in the comments section of The Hiddens to good purpose: trying to embarrass me because I've pointed out their flaws in various threads.
Incident: 'NLS #1'
Incident notes: the choice is made (0/6/3)
Diary notes: The Hiddens
User notes: Yours Truly
HR notes: 3 of the 71 words in the multi-paragraph comment were "nasty little shit". See below.
Disposition: tmax Status: sore, open
It should be noted that the original comment where I referred to that particular user as a "nasty little shit" (which occurred in another diary IIRC) was not HRd, let alone hidden. But these supremely-confident Kossacks found themselves in the comments section here and could not resist invoking (unevenly, as always) the rule that "insults" are to be hidden. The status of the above record relates to their feelings, not mine. I kind of like it when they make my point like this.
Apparently there is some confusion about whether TUs are being more or less honest about their moderation practices if they document things. The particular nasty little shit so deserving of that identity has been disingenuously suggesting repeatedly and purposefully (and without a shred of evidence or even honest reasoning to back him up, just "swift boat" style insinuations) that I'm somehow acting unethically or improperly by both HRing comments (as any TU can and should) and writing The Hiddens. And for that, he will now and for quite some time be referred to, appropriately, as a nasty little shit, because nasty little shits employ baseless smears when they have nothing else to argue with. Eventually I will get bored with it (this isn't a grudge, it is an object lesson) but that won't be soon if he keeps proving the name is appropriate.
Another agitprop troll account comes out of the woodwork with this hop on:
Incident: 'Just plain rude'
Incident notes: agitprop (0/10/4)
Diary notes: Breitbart fail
User notes: first and only contribution from account registered in 2008
HR notes: comment was (1/9/4) when first examined
Disposition: hash Status: tag, open
This account should be gone soon, one way or the other. The likelihood of the first comment from even an extreme contrarian being so obvious a troll and so perfectly matching the right wing's efforts to smear Representative Weiner is so small as to be non-existent.
And it seems the right wing smear machine has spared no expense to try to "get" Congressperson Weiner, if they're willing to burn two agitprop accounts in one day:
Incident: 'that much of an idiot'
Incident notes: agitprop (0/11/3, 0/5/1, 0/14/4, 0/9/1)
Diary notes: Breitbart fail
User notes: Newbie, 2010, no redeeming contributions
HR notes: long, ugly (and therefore successful) troll
Disposition: 50 Status: rwtp, open
This account did much better than the previous one, managing to post fifty different agitprop attempts to sow discord and push Republican framing before getting pegged. So, yes, there are accounts on DK created by opposing political operatives to try to derail and disturb our efforts to elect more and better Democrats. And as I've said all along, they are actually painfully easy to spot, and not at all like the "Kossacks with opinions" so-called trolls who simply don't agree with the hivemind on every point of discussion.
Of course we can't have two examples of real agitprop trolls without a counter-example popping up right away:
Incident: 'hidden proof'
Incident notes: Frist Rule (0/3/1)
Diary notes: response to Boehner lies
User notes: Newbie, 2011, 4 diaries
HR notes: "take your meds", contentious contrarian
Disposition: 4D Status: Tillman, open
It isn't really difficult to see the difference between an agitprop troll who actually is just pumping talking points and a Kossack (even a newbie) who is taking a controversial position in an argument. Still, I'm a strong believer in the Frist Rule, even the 'soft' version that outlaws "take your meds" as a generic insult.
The pitched battle between BK and LGBT advocates rages on:
Incident: 'Trick!'
Incident notes: pie fight (0/5/5(21))
Diary notes: LGBT-ish, pro-Obama (return appearance)
User notes: BK, TU, 2008
HR notes: caught on open ground in the middle of a pie fight
Disposition: slang Status: 47, open
There do appear to be vocabulary issues; apparently 'trick' is bad but 'queen' is OK.
It looks like getting "shills" banned at the drop of a hat is not sufficient to keep the anti-nuke reactionaries from getting trolled:
Incident: 'paranoid'
Incident notes: "insults" (2/8/3(29))
Diary notes: Fukuchickenlittleshima
User notes: TU, 2008
HR notes: return of frankenstein
Disposition: calm Status: cynical, open
So despite the "industry shill" from yesterday getting bony mojo, there are still some Kossacks (with much more solid DK credentials, if not nuclear power credentials) willing to take up the charge of responding to anti-nuclear power positions. If only he'd have been able to avoid the terms "ghoul" and "insane", I think he would have avoided this trip to The Hiddens.
So why not a little I/P palette cleanser:
Incident: 'apartheid (or: you know where this is going already)'
Incident notes: obvious (3/14/5(27) 1/5/1)
Diary notes: I/P, Rafah crossing
User notes: multiple
HR notes: pie fight (other comments in thread include (4/3, 2/4, 3/3, etc.)
Disposition: coconut Status: various
Messages from this pie fight thread have been popping in and out of the hidden comments list for several hours, it appears. Much discussion of HRs and uprates with retributive donuts and no content whatsoever. One of the users currently hidden (its worth mentioning it is the TU who was hidden it the previous record on the nuclear issue) went so far as to call for HRing the second comment (in this record) simply because it made a point that was refuted.
Yeah, is it just me, or are there other Kossacks who can't help thinking, "If we can't even discuss I/P on DK without it ending in pie fights, what chances does the actual I/P debate have in real life?" To deter the cynicism such a question might inspire, I recall that while DK only has me, the world has Barack Obama. So there is hope, after all. For the Middle East, if not for the Kossacks. ;-)
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
