The fun is over... again

[Renew Deal]

We are making some changes to the moderating/jury system. (THIS IS IMPORTANT.)

We are making a number of changes to our software today. If you notice any bugs or problems, please post in this thread to let us know. Thanks.


The TOS checkbox is being removed from the "Alert abuse" function.
Until now, when you clicked the "Alert abuse" link to send an alert, there was a special checkbox that you could click to indicate that you believe a post violates the Terms of Service. Unfortunately, too often the TOS checkbox was used incorrectly -- either members would neglect to click it on posts that actually did violate the Terms of Service, or they would click it on posts that did not remotely violate the Terms of Service. Because of this, the DU administrators long ago stopped giving any credence to Terms of Service alerts, and instead have been reviewing every single alert regardless of whether TOS box was checked.

From now on, the DU administrators will be notified of every alert sent. In addition, the MIR Team will be notified whenever a post is removed under two conditions: 1) If the post is removed on a vote of 6-0, or 2) if the author of the post has fewer than 100 posts. We believe this will give the MIR Team all the information they need in order to keep DU clear of malicious intruders.


We have created a very limited system of software-initiated account reviews.
In our continuing effort to catch and remove malicious intruders, we are instituting a software system that automatically flags accounts for review under certain circumstances. If an account is flagged, then that account will be temporarily unable to post or perform some other site functions -- but the ACCOUNT IS NOT BANNED. If an account is flagged, its profile page will show "Status: Flagged For Review," and the account holder will receive an automated message indicating that they are under review. Please note that the account review function is narrowly aimed to try to catch malicious intruders. We aren't going to disclose exactly when accounts get reviewed, except to say that it is most likely to happen if a member gets too many posts hidden in a relatively brief length of time. (Note that this function replaces the auto-ban function, which has been retired.)


Members who are abusive while performing jury service will lose the privilege of serving on juries.
The administrators are getting increasingly concerned about the small number of members who repeatedly post rude juror comments while serving on juries. The vast majority of jurors are doing the job in good faith, but unfortunately a small number of people are not. Some people seem to be using the juror comments as a "free" opportunity to make extremely abusive comments to people -- that's not ok. If any juror has a history of inappropriate comments, or if any juror makes a single comment that is way over the line, then we are going to exclude that individual from jury service. If we do take away any person's jury privileges, we will do so transparently and make a note of it on that person's profile page. (Look for the words "Eligible to serve on Juries?&quot


STARTING 90 DAYS FROM TODAY, if you have five hidden posts on your account you will be unable to post.
After nearly 2 years on DU3, it is apparent that the vast majority of people are participating in good faith, and are making the effort to avoid posting inappropriate comments that might get hidden. However, there is a very small contingent of people who do not seem to be trying very hard, are not particularly embarrassed or ashamed that they are getting posts hidden, and continue to engage in disruptive behavior. For these people, we feel it is time to provide an incentive for good behavior. Starting 90 days from today, if you have five hidden posts showing on your Transparency page (a 90-day period), then you will be temporarily unable to post. In order to regain your ability to post, you will need to wait until the oldest post of the five is more than 90 days old and "falls off" of your record. At that point you will only have four posts showing on your Transparency page, and you will regain your ability to post.

If this seems harsh, I would like to share a few stats with you. Over the last 90 days, only one half of one percent of DU members who posted managed to rack up five or more hidden posts. 99.4% of actively posting DUers stayed under the 5-hidden-post threshold (and 86% had no posts hidden).

But no matter how bad your record is right now, please note that NONE OF THE HIDDEN POSTS CURRENTLY SHOWING ON YOUR ACCOUNT will count toward the five hidden posts. That's just math. Over the upcoming 90-day "grace period," all of the hidden posts you got up until now will fall off your record. So, if you change your behavior today and stop getting your posts hidden, you'll be fine. But if you persist in disrupting DU, and persist in getting posts hidden, every single post you get starting from THIS MOMENT will count toward your 5-hidden-post limit.

Please note that creating additional accounts in order to get around -- or preemptively avoid -- any restrictions on your account would be considered a Terms of Service violation. The best way to avoid restrictions on your account would be to avoid getting your posts hidden in the first place. It is not that hard.


And, on a completely unrelated note:

We have upgraded the ad code on our site to improve page load-time.
We use Google AdSense as our primary ad serving solution. Google recently unveiled a new kind of "asynchronous" ad code which (they claim) will not interrupt page loads. With our old ad code, if an advertisement failed to load or loaded slowly, then you would have to wait for the ad to appear before the rest of the web page would load. But with the new ad code, the ad code is loaded separately from the code that renders the web page. So you do not have to wait for the ads to load in order to download the webpage you want to see. Please note that at first you may see some extra white space near the top of the page -- if you do, click shift-reload/refresh on your web browser to fix the problem.

[sharp_stick]

1. Dammit

I'm going to have to tone down the jury comments.

If current posting habits keep up it will be a lot quieter around here in 90 days.

[morningfog]

3. Very telli is the percentage of chronic abusers.

Half a percent sure sully the place.

[Renew Deal]

4. Those are just the hidden ones

Some of the non-hidden ones are pretty bad too.

[Rex]

2. Better late then never.

nt.

[MineralMan]

5. All of those changes make sense to me.

I suspect they're likely to bother some folks here, though.

[hobbit709]

6. What about those who abuse the alert system?

[MineralMan]

7. I'm not sure how you'd identify those.

There is already a 24-hour block against alerting if an alert gets a 6-0 vote to leave. That should cut down on the bogus alerts and probably already has.

Skinner has repeatedly said that there's no real evidence of abuse of the alert system. I believe him.

[hobbit709]

11. only on a 6-0 result.

There's been more than one poster that's admitted to serial alerting.

[MineralMan]

14. I don't know.

I'm sure Skinner does, though, so it's not a concern for me.

In the whole time DU3 has been up, I've had one post hidden, and I understood why. I haven't posted anything like that since. It's easy to maintain civility in posts, it seems to me.

As for people alerting maliciously, I don't really have any experience with that. I've been on 300-some juries, and I've seen a few alerts that weren't justified, but every one of those failed to get hidden anyhow. I just don't think it's really a problem.

I know that a few of my posts get alerted, but so far, none of those have been hidden. I have pretty strong confidence in juries when alerts are based on someone's dislike for another DUer. They usually don't hide posts based on those alerts.

[msanthrope]

9. With every alert going to admin, it's going to be real clear, real soon, who is alerting in

good faith, and who is not.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. I expect it to happen, like the sun rises

but hey, what can I say? I do not play rigged games. This is one of them.

The changes have some good to them, but this is meant to weed people who are not cool with the kids out.

[X_Digger]

8. I expect we'll see a lot of alert-stalking.

Lots of 6-0 and 5-1 leaves for pro/anti-snowden/guns/GMO/pit bulls/{insert other divisive topic}.

I mean, if you can bait the people you don't like into saying something that you can spin to 4 random jurors as deserving a hide often enough, you can knock them out of the discussion.

[msanthrope]

10. With every single alert going to admin, it's going to be difficult to do that. nt

[X_Digger]

13. I would hope it doesn't become a lot of noise, like the TOS checkbox thing. n/t

[NightWatcher]

12. I enjoyed thrashing the stupid alerters in my jury comments

I think if you hit alert, you should be subjected to any comment that the jurors wish to leave shy of a personal attack.

[Phentex]

17. I saw some really bad ones...

not just the kind telling the alerter it was stupid for alerting. Some were as bad or worse than the posts. I wondered if admin looked at the alert abuse alerts and decided to act on it.

[Tx4obama]

15. Below is a link to Skinner's thread, you might want to add it to your OP :)

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10132863