We will just have to see how this works out.

Bad record no jury duty. Just saying.

At least if someone wishes to serve on juries.

We are considering a number of other incentives for good behavior. Not sure which we are going to do.

But I don't think the difference will be very noticeable to the average person who is serving more often.

I serve on 2 juries almost everyday, does this mean i will likely serve on more or does this mean I am almost guaranteed to serve on 2 a day but no more?

You are being limited by the exclusion period, which ha bit changed. If you are getting called that often you're not going to get called more.

Now about those "incentives".

Fabulous prizes?

Spend the day with Grovelbot?

Free star memberships for value added content?

to address the current climate on DU.
I appreciate both efforts.

I'm going to be on the jury even more!

Willing to serve on a DU Jury: Yes
Chance of serving on a Jury: 100% (explain)
Number of times served on a Jury: 153


I just clicked on the detail - and I didn't realize it was weighted the way it was.

Just an aside - could we maybe work on having a link to the MIRT team in the jury request?

The reason being is I very rarely hide a post. It has to be a direct break of TOS. I also try and take the post at it's own value/merit.

But sometimes - you know see it's someone with a membership of a few days - and see a pattern of one liner disruptions - but you can't hide a disruption. You also can't hide the post based upon past history.

Just an idea and I'm sure it would take programming time - but I don't think I've ever seen a direct link to advise MIRT that, "Hey guys! We need to take a look at this poster and their reason for being at DU - even though they stood right on the line of TOS but didn't break it."

As a juror, you are enforcing community standards:

"This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate."

You guys know how a handful of members alert on others in hopes of hiding a reply and shutting a member out of a thread, right?

As jurors have no training and as there are often malicious alerts that result in truly unfair hidden posts, I fear that some good members could suffer unjustly from the increase in penalty points.

However, it only reduces their chances of serving on a jury, so I suppose it's not the end of the world.

Thanks for your enduring efforts to tweak toward an ever better product- it continues to be the best board on the intertubes.

Yes, there are some malicious alerts, but if they are utterly without merit they always fail. There is a very simple and effective method to avoid getting your post hidden: Be civil.

It's the alerts that might be offensive to the sensibilities of many or most but aren't breaking any rules, but get hidden anyway.

We can be civil and still have posts hidden if our statement isn't a popular one to the jury drawn to the alert.

As I said, thanks for the effort.

If your post offends the sensibilities of a large percentage of people on this website, you are taking your chances.

If you post something that goes against even a minor opinion about a topic or person a post can be hidden.

It doesn't have to be an offensive statement. It doesn't need to be uncivil.

And, by rules I mean the TOS and SOP.

I maintain that unpopular thought that is civil and unoffensive can be hidden by juries because juries are fickle and random and, sometimes, mean.

It ain't the end of the world.

Does not reflect well on DU.

I was not being uncivil to anyone, just noting what the Boston bombers' uncle had said about their mother, namely, that her starting to wear a hijab and her two sons' radicalization were "not a coincidence." I even included a link of the video showing him saying that, where he suggests that the mother had a hand in their radicalization.

My post was hidden as a "bigoted" statement, 4 to 2. The alerter basically accused me of making the "bigoted" statement that wearing a hijab means you're a radical islamist. That of course was not my intent nor what I said. Nonetheless, with the successful alert I was immediately locked out of the thread and unable to defend myself.

I figured it was no big deal since I was just knocked down to a 95% chance of serving on a jury. But I just checked and now I have only an 80% chance of serving on a jury because of that now pretty old hidden post. I guess this new rule applies retroactively. Oh well, 90 days is about to pass, so I should be back to 100% pretty shortly.

Still, I think there should be a way to appeal ridiculous jury results, especially now with the much stiffer penalties for a hidden post.

of at least minor misdemeanor on these. I think it was a bit nit-picky, but I accept the judgment of the jury.

But there were two others where it is clear the jurors either couldn't read plain English or else just did a hand-arsed job of their duty. There was absolutely nothing wrong in those cases, other than maybe a lame attempt at a joke -- which shouldn't have been offensive even if it wasn't very funny.

The point is that the juries do get it wrong in a lot of cases, and I would like to see changes that make it a little harder for juries to block posts that they obviously don't even take the time to read. Penalizing people for "serial alerting" and requiring all "block this post" decisions to have some kind of comment from the juror would go a long way toward making this a fair system.

I'll admit I have almost voted to block posts on several occasions when the posts didn't violate any TOU, but were against my opinion. I think I have always gotten past that, but it is easy to block posts just because you disagree with the point of view. A juror should at least have to say WHY they are voting to block it.

is that YOU aren't hiding a post, it takes at least 5 people to do so - the alerter and 4 jurors
so even if one or two are maybe not being completely fair, it still takes the rest to push it into hiding territory.

Sorry, but, as a liberal, I believe censorship to be morally wrong - and thus have no interest in exercising "my privilege" to silence the voices of others. If they are rude, abusive, etc, etc then I just ignore them and am thankful that I am not (*usually*) like that.



Guess this will likely join my other hidden posts ... but it is still true: Censorship is the enemy of free speech, of free thought, and of freedom itself.

with community standards, if you offend enough people you get a post hidden - you can still open it to read so that is hardly censorship.

but the fact is this isn't a place where all veiwpoints are welcome, not my rules, just a fact. if you want to argue with rightwingers and other dumbasses, there are plenty of places to go. If you want ugly, personal attacks to be the normal form of conversation you can find that elsewhere too.

do you tollerate every kind of speech in your living room? can somebody come in and just start screaming insults at you?

choosing not to judge others here is fine, but the way you choose not to be judged here is to behave in a civil manner and support Democratic candidates for the most part. It isn't that difficult, really.

I have seen exactly what you explain ...many times. Another example: If the "majority" wants to idolize then the minority that criticizes that idolatry can and will be penalized because the majority will have a better chance of skewing the jury. It's a bad system without proper peer review ...but I can't say what I really think about it w* t* p* o* g* t* **.

I think the system needs one of the following two precautions:

a) force the juror to enter some kind of explanation. That is the minimum the accused deserves, and that would ensure the juror is actually making an effort to reason through the "infraction". Well-thought-out juror comments help the accused person understand better how they should avoid problems in the future. "Hide it" without any comments is BS, as far as I am concerned. It only takes 60 seconds for a juror to get the context and offer a polite response. If they are not willing to do that, they should not accept the jury service. Of course, a "let it remain" response shouldn't require an explanation.

b) impose a penalty on people who consistently raise alerts that are not upheld by juries. If a member alerts on 5 threads in 90 days that are not upheld, then that member should no longer be permitted to alert on anybody else until those malicious alerts have rolled off the history.

The point is that collegiality is a 2-way street. Right now, the penalty only goes one way.

unpopular with some DUers. I don't know if my posts get alerted, but I haven't had a post hidden for a long time. I try to be reasonable in my approach and to avoid personality conflicts. That seems to work.

If a person disagrees with one's unpopular position and alerts, and if the jury consists of four or more who are equally in disagreement, then it matters not if the post is OK, within TOS and SOP, it will be hidden.

That.... is suppression of open discussion.

Suppression of discussion as a result of arbitrary and emotional, and sometimes personal, jury decisions, makes DU suck.

Hence I won't alert, but I won't play in juries either.

The system has some serious problems, and I can see why skinner won't see the problems. But there are problems.

I can foresee more swarms and more mass alerts. It's just the way it is. Henceforth I will assume every one of my posts will be alerted on, every one.

There are people who work hard to target members and alert on them, and there are juries that will remove anything.

The DU "Brand" of years ago, the one that provided a sense of consistent moderation and free speech, is no longer with us.

I expect old timers to simply give up, if that is the goal they should just be open about it.

Two things -
One, a malicious person could create a programmed 'bot to post inane pap ("love this post", "I agree", "EOM", etc.) to multiple threads in order to to artificially boost their count, as could an organized group of trolls. As a journalist, observing some of the high-count posters and some of the memetic trends they tend to promote, my BS detector goes off in a serious fashion.
Anyone with long-time experience in marketing and media recognizes you have a problem in this area, specifically.
Second, the posting guidelines are far too strict when it comes to identifying a personal attack.
For example, suppose a poster claims to be...I don't know...a journalist. Yet a responder to the OP, using logic and data, challenges that poster on the validity of the claim, saying the poster is lying about being a journalist, or casting doubt on the poster's motivations. In any other community that thrives on informed rhetoric, it is the responsibility of the poster to defend his or her expertise, or to ignore the challenge to that expertise. At DU, someone slaps the label "personal attack" on the post, and suppresses the informative debate that should follow such a challenge. It is unnecessary and damaging to the purpose of debate for a jury to defend challenges to a poster's credentials, especially when the the juries tend to base their decisions more on the thread count than on the merits of the challenge.
(Now that being said, as a person who runs a website, I recognize that you will run it the way you see fit, and congratulations on having a popular site.)

And, for that matter, personal attacks aren't banned.

Whether they should be or not is a different question, but for good or bad juries on DU3 don't have a set of rules they can apply.

While I don't necessarily agree with it - when people ask about the rules, Skinner has repeatedly said there are none. You take your chances with whatever the community will tolerate.

I think it is generally ok for run of the mill civility - and I think it stinks to high heaven when the majority gets to vote on whether things like jokes about trans* individuals, for example, are appropriate.

I was just pointing out that there are no specific rules against personal attacks - or much of anything. I would like a clear statement that - at a minimum - violations of TOS are against the community standards. A number of people have requested it, and Skinner has declined to endorse that viewpoint. So - according to the powers that be - even posts which clearly violate the terms of service of this site are not necessarily "disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate."

It's refreshing to run across some of the more thoughtful folks, and as I have become more active with DU, I'm starting to encounter them. The jury structure is annoying and prone to exploitation, though, and I'd bet it drives away folks who would otherwise promote some of the broader ideals expressed here.

what feels like a lack of concern about malicious alerts - and on the opposite side the lack of concern you have expressed about the volume of posts which are bigoted (particularly mysogynistic, homophobic, and biased against people of faith) which are not hidden.

That said, I agree that being civil is a pretty effective method of keeping your posts from being hidden. I have yet to have a single post hidden - even though I express views which are often targeted for groundless alerts (a few of which have been forwarded to me by a juror).

I am glad to see you are constantly tweaking the processes here on DU. Thank you for that.


I did have an idea for a suggestion that I wanted to present to you.


We currently have the option to add people to a "jury blacklist"; a list of people that we do not want to serve on a jury about one of our posts.

However, there are some cases where when a jury decision is made and the results are transmitted that one or more of the jurors was, basically, being an asshole, to put it bluntly.

They do not judge the alert on merits, but allow personal opinions on issues or members to guide their voting instead.

They might think that a member is a troll, and not only vote to hide based on that, but then expressly state that that is reason they voted.

Or it might be because they are protective of Democratic politician, or they don't like supporters of a particular viewpoint, or whatever.

The problem is that the alertee cannot add, for example, "juror #5" to his/her blacklist because jury duty is anonymous.



Is there a way to prevent an anonymous juror from serving on a jury that is judging a particular member's post, while preserving the anonymity of the jury process?

I envision in the email the alertee gets, a hypertext link next to each juror that says "add to jury blacklist". And when that juror is added, it gets put in the blacklist as "juror #5 12Jul2013".



My 2 ¢

But I'm not sure about giving people the ability to block jurors without knowing who they are.

That target certain posters - will vote to hide a post SOLELY because of who posted it.


We should be able to know who is one the jury or our "peers"

To hide posts. Not sure of the exact formula as it can't be a simple dislike count but say a post has 3 likes and 15 dislikes it is hidden whereas a post with 15 likes and 25 dislikes is not hidden. Does DU have enough traffic to be able to use something like this?

It is not that the jury system isn't working but it is a little cumbersome if it is done right. Also, I had one incident where I thought it was unfair. It was a case where I was defending myself from attack by another poster and responded in kind (no better, no worse) yet neither that original attack nor the response attack were blocked leaving me defenseless. Now I have no problem with the jury blocking me but I did not understand the other equally offensive posts not likewise being blocked as it didn't strike me as being evenhanded.

...is that it can be gamed by organized groups of determined partisans. The jury system isn't perfect, but the random-selection aspect of it addresses the problem of organized gaming.

but the random selection in fact only adds a tad of prevention from 'gaming' the system not anything like a total protection. If you think it is a problem solved it is even easier to game that system.

It could be an indicator of people that make bad jurors in general.

If a member gets anonymously blocked by a bunch of people. that it probably an indication they perform poorly.

some sort of ratio between blockage and total jury service works as a metric.

I would think the number of star members ignoring you would be better jury selection criteria than number of posts.

There's nothing preventing someone from posting simply K & R just to get their post count high.

is stating that only unanimous hidden posts will be reviewed by MIRT in big, bold letters. Too often I've served on juries adjudicating trollish posts where a juror will vote to "leave it", commenting that it's MIRT's decision to do something about trolls. It's like they don't understand that MIRT can't make any decisions about trolls unless trolls are brought to their attention by an unanimous jury. Kinda catch-22-ish.

But otherwise, I think the jury system is working well. And it's lovely not having Shark Week every day now that Meta is gone.

Thanks!

Admin gets all TOS alerts, hidden or not.

You, as always, are a font of wisdom, Pinto m'dear!

DU taught me online manners, LOL.

There are way too many cliques on DU. Certain posters have a free reign to post without reprisals, knowing that their posts don't get hidden.

Others have posts hidden because they take unpopular stances.

You end up with an echo chamber - this just makes it worse.

Would be to post in General Discussion.

and the DU jury voted that that was appropriate. Its still a joke if DUers can cast aside 'guidelines for violations' in favor of pettiness.

It's part of my charm.

I've had posts hidden for no good reason at all. Because people decide to be mind readers or interpret things incorrectly or simply aren't sophisticated enough to know humor when they see it. We should be able to appeal these ludicrous censorings.

And further, if you're going to do this, it should be implemented from now on instead of lowering people's chances based on past hidings that may or may not have been merited.

Personally, I find this whole system to be incredibly juvenile.

I had 1 post hidden now Im down to 80%. Same as people who've had 20 posts hidden I guess. Not really fair, imho.

This is really getting ridiculous around here. I thought I was associating with adults.

Its the only post Ive had hidden EVER. I believe I told someone to seek professional help. I see dozens of posts worse than that every single day but the one I said it to was popular so... done deal.

So now a non-paying DUer with no hides has a better chance of serving on a jury than you or I do. Thats pretty messed up. And now we'll have alerts just for the purpose of keeping people of juries. Fantastic.

I am a non-paying member with no hides and with max bonuses (I think?) for posting frequency and length of membership, and I'm sitting at 60%.

So yeah, if you get two hides and you were at 100%, then you're right down there with me.

Three hides and now I have a better chance of serving than you do.

At least that's how I understand it.

I only donate to places with transparent finances. There are such things as shelters for abused women. Much more worthy in my view.

The maximum chance of serving on a jury for non-donors is 60%, not 100%. So with one hidden post, you still have a higher chance of serving on a jury than every single non-donor.

However this could change.

It does add up, though.

Still, pretty weird.

(i.e. their chances of serving on a jury are 0%). It is 20% per hidden post.

Holy shit! I didnt know that. Thanks.

Some people can't tell the difference between an attack on an argument and an attack on them.

Or find a way to take offense, and then manage to get lucky enough to have the right number of jurors enable their bullshit.

If the penalty is going to be that high. 1 post hidden shouldnt have the same penalty as 10 posts hidden.

Just in case anyone else is confused: 1 post is 20%. 10 posts would be 100%. (5 posts is also 100% - you max out of jury duty at 5 hidden posts x 20% each)

Thanks. Id probably have known had I more than 1 hidden.

which noted that once your transparency page was visible you were off jury duty until it was hidden again - so I was anticipating this thread...

Thats a damn good rule, imho.

And I agree - people who can't be civil aren't the ones I want determining community standards.

The penalty is 20 points per hidden post.

I didnt realize it was per post. Thanks.

I have edited to clarify. Thanks.

Don't forget to change the explanation page:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=modsystem

right now the first thing you see is a generic complaint. you cannot see the actual reason for the complaint until you have made your decision. seems like one should see the specific complaint/evidence FIRST before voting. that is how it is done in a real court.

A juror casts the "official" vote after reading the alerter comments.

to flip the two.

Once people form opinions, even private ones, they are often reluctant to change them. When the issue is that from the perspective of a minority group many people just don't have a clue. If they can be educated, without needing to admit (even to themselves) that their initial opinion was wrong, the attempts at educating on issues the majority doesn't inherently understand might be more fruitful.

I can easily see a scenario where one candidate has 2/3 support and another has say 1/3. That 1/3 group already will have a terrible time getting a fair jury but if the juries then get more skewed by this system you could have a real mess. I try to imagine if back in the Dean vs everyone else days, I think Dean supporters would have been obliterated by this type of system. I also think the same thing would have happened in the aftermath of prop 8 to gays. As it was we had the purge, under a jury system that would literally get more and more skewed with no brake, a minority could literally find itself unable to post anything at all without getting posts removed.

And the jury system is the reason why.

As for primaries, I'm actually looking forward to them. The jury system will be more fair than the moderator system, and it will result in a lot less censorship. Which is not to say people will be nice all the time -- but I certainly don't think they will be any worse than previous primaries.

(BTW: Dean was by far the most popular candidate on DU in 2004.)

especially in the end game. Frankly in the aftermath of prop 8 I think gay posters would have routinely had their posts censored while anti gay ones would have pretty much never had theirs censored. I will admit I can't prove that but I really do think we are quite likely to see one sided censorship in the next primary war type situation. I think your new penalty will make that much more likely.

nt

So we're all good

right.

do this while I have two hides showing! you couldn't wait another 30 days? (or whatever it is)






seriously, I have no problem with this and I am a little ashamed to have two (and both related to the same problem, no less) - sorry about that.


EDIT - LOL! just got called to jury duty!

With a -5 and for repeated hidden posts bump it up to -20 per?

This seems really heavy handed, it's not like hidden posts are always correct, especially involving certain topics or "unpopular" posters.

But it sees skewed to me....I have served 16 times total sense it started...and yet I see others serve 2 or 300 times...and I spend a good deal of time here...so it seems like to me it is not random.

And I think some know how to game the system....I know I had a post hidden less than 10 minutes after it was posted....how can that be?...there was not even time to consider it.

But really I don't care...if clicks form and harass people that is your business not mine...and if they do it to me I am a big boy and can handle it myself...or find something else to do.

But thanks you for your efforts to make it work better....I hope it does, but I also know that the advantage goes to those with a desire to manipulate things.

When my chances of serving were far lower. I may have been online more, but it wasn't significantly more.

Perhaps it was because I was posting more frequently. I don't know, but it seems odd to me.

Mendacity is not civil. Bigotry is not civil. There is no civil way to lie. And lying on DU is an art form enabled by choices like the one you make today.

I see quite few, who despite a large collection of hidden posts and members ignoring, seem to serve on a disproportionate number of juries ( I assume they also have more free time than most typical members).

I feel this is too extreme; we went from one end of the spectrum to the other. I don't know how possible it is, but a graduated penalty would make more sense. Second, in all fairness, those who had posts hidden prior to today should not be penalized under the new system. Any hide they had prior to this should be "counted" under the old system. Basically, grandfather them all, except for the ones hidden today.

Juries are judging community standards violations. In other words: whatever the community deems to be inappropriate.

Furthermore: the number of alerts is actually very small. Way lower than the number of alerts on DU2 -- by an order of magnitude.

in part because many people have just given up. The civility level has decreased - and jurors all too often use the anonymity of being a juror to attack the alerter - or to tell the alerter to stop being a baby about the funny joke about transexuals.

It gets really old, really fast - I try not to let it keep me from on things I really think need to be hidden, but there are times when I am just too tired to deal with the near certain (on identifiable issues) behavior of some jurors who know they can get away with it.

And yes, I do alert on inappropriate juror comments. I was one of the early people to point out that option back when we had Meta. But running across the offensive post, taking the time to try to educate in the tread, being smacked down, alerting, then being smacked down by one or more jurors, reporting it, and hearing deafening silence is way too much for the frequency it happens to those of us in certain relatively well defined groups.

I doubt only me gave up, will no longer alert, just put the offender on ignore, and self removed from the jury pool. I suspect you are very correct. Some of us simply see it as a rigged game any longer.

I wonder how much has the use of ignore gone up, and trash forums as well. Anecdotally I suspect in proportion to people giving up on the alert system.

This place, not logged in, is just not pretty.

For example, when I alerted on a thread, I had several people trot out the old "anti semite" canard that happens whenever ANY criticism of a certain country in the Middle east is done. Now, people will pool together, and make sure that the worst are protected, and that a dissenting opinion is crushed.

The Jury system is rigged, sadly, we do need the old system back with mods. Yes, mods are a thankless job, but the jury system has allowed right wingers and others to totally hijack the place, and it shows.

I mean, personal insults are against the TOS, but now, the tos has been thrown out, for all intents and purposes, which means people will cut straight to the personal insults and bullying, especially to the cheering crowds that egg them on.

coz it was clear it doesn't really work.

I must be a really good girl.

Mahalo, Skinner~

On this page it still says -5. You might want to correct that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=modsystem

Thanks.

Or is it that, we're good, nothing wrong, and no changes are to be made?

Serving on a DU jury is a privilege, not a right. It is in the interest of the community to have the people who have consistently shown better judgment to serve more often on juries. I keep seeing people complaining about trolls allegedly serving on juries -- I would think that most DUers would immediately understand and appreciate any change that improves the overall quality of the juror pool.

Limited the jury pool to a few self-serving cliques that censor ideas/posters they oppose.


Bravo!

A very popular Elad post title at one time is now juried and locked.

There are huge problems with the jury system and the new rules will make those problems bigger.
I think one of the problems that has always been there, is that even a very new poster can be called to jury - posters that could be trolls, socks can look for their 'enemies' and try to make their mischief.

Being in the Barack Obama Group is a handicap as there are people here that resent our group and want to invade it. We have had to take on onslaught and insults being in that group or anyone who consistently supports the President. You are aware of people that think they have the right to come to a Group and disrupt, they have talked to you in ATA. And no matter how you explain it, it still is not absorbed and they still think they have the right to disrupt.

I am typing this in a hurry and so didn't re=read. I'll do that later.