After three months of warnings about the violation of two Hide Rating rules, more vigorous enforcement of those rules will begin on September 15.
The two rules are these from the FAQ:
Do not troll rate someone you are actively having a fight with. If you are in a heated argument with someone, you should not be judging whether or not what they say is trollworthy. Leave it to others to decide what behavior is or isn't over the line. ...
Do not give retaliatory troll ratings. If you get what you believe to be an undeserved troll rating, do not retaliate. Leave it to others to decide if the rating was abusive. It is begrudging community practice to respond to an undeserved troll rating by troll rating the ratings abuser, thus reducing their own level of "trustedness" and making them less able to abuse ratings in the future. But don't do it unless you are absolutely positive the original rating was abusive -- and I mean 100% positive. And never do it if you're the one that got troll rated. I repeat: do not troll rate fights that you yourself are in.
Users caught violating these rules will have their rating privileges suspended. Of course, administrators can't be everywhere at once reading thousands of comments a day, so some users who break the rules will no doubt escape notice. For a while. Every time they do so, however, they're rolling the dice.
Some will say, "who cares?" Certainly the violation of these rules is not the only or even worst problems with discourse at Daily Kos. But they are among the clearest, most unsubjective rules, and their violation continues to enhance flame wars that distract and detract from real conversations.
In the next week a clearer rule regarding "Hide on Sight" trolls - Hosers - will be provided. After a short period, violation of it will also lead to the suspension of ratings privileges.
In a Sunday Listening Post diary, Kossacks will have the opportunity to choose a rule or set of related rules that they will then collectively and democratically write or rewrite using the collaborative software of Mixedink. If this process succeeds, other rules will be put into the hopper for democratic writing and rewriting.