But perhaps it would cause people to not be so trigger happy when alerting on a whole thread. But that may just be wishful thinking on my part.

is not set up for this.

Is that an Alert on the OP of a thread should simply default to a message to the effect of "Please Trash This Thread" back to the Alerter, unless it involves issues that require MIRT's attention.

As I understand it (and I could be wrong here) you can't reply to a thread when the OP is hidden, thus shutting down the discussion that others would like to have on the topic.

Having juries hide a particular thread is OK, but having them essentially stop a discussion in its tracks? Not so much.

limited. People with agendas will sign up for this to cause mischief. With a jury you get a broad section of du judging the OP.

People have been discussing it extensively on numerous other threads.

But what they've been discussion is that the thread was locked. Rude Pundit probably enjoyed all the traffic to his blog, I suppose.

And it's lead to quite a bit of extra-curricular acrimony, which we hardly need more of.

Especially for posts from long-time DUers. The only responsibility of MIRT is to identify and remove Malicious Intruders who have just signed up on DU to post trollery, spam or other unwelcome stuff.

I'm currently in the MIRT group. MIRT has plenty to do, and doesn't need any further responsibilities. Post content is a jury matter, by design.

Would that work?

Truly. I think it all works very well, overall. It's the best system I've ever found on a discussion website, and I've been on a lot of them.

But yesterday was a howler...

All that uproar over one hidden OP with "suck a dick" in its title.

When I saw that, I gave it about a 50% chance of being hidden. And it was. I can't see the basis for all of the uproar, frankly. Someone alerted and four members of a jury voted to hide.

MIRT is not the way to go

This one would be more abitrary. And RW trollers have discussionnist to do their spamming.

themselves. I mean, they would click on a button, and they would be able to hide the post/thread, no jury or alerting required.

The drawback is, it would not be anonymous, and you only get say, 5 hides a month, and then you run out, until the next month. Also, your duer handle/name would be visible, so it would be a risk that the person you did a hide on may strike back at one of your threads or posts, in revenge.

Muahahahahhahahahaha

It would be entertaining, if nothing else!

I don't think I am alone in recommending the use of that function

Now the locked thread in question is spawning a dozen carry over threads on the topic which will happen for about a week I reckon and within those threads will be a bunch of alerts

Are you only supposed to alert on things you 'hate'? I thought alerts were for the purpose of flagging comments (whether OP or not) that seem to violate site standards or rules.

The more I read in this ongoing series of threads post-RP hide, the less I feel I understand what exactly the purpose of juries and hides is supposed to be. Everyone seems to be suggesting the purpose of alerts is to somehow attack other posters with whom you disagree on an emotional level.

But if an OP gets hidden, that shuts down the entire thread. Now I can certainly understand that for posts that are in the wrong forum or ones that are just meant to be flamebait. But if the OP is on a controversial subject, or if the OP includes an offensive term that is not key to the point, then the discussion is nipped in the bud.

Personally, I thank in a case like that, people should just trash the thread so they don't see it any more. It's one thing to say, "I don't want to read this shit" and another thing altogether to say, "I don't wany ANYONE to read this shit."

Allow the alerter to specify the exact part of the text that is problematic, and the hide only hides that part of the text, and locks the post from being edited, so that it can't be immediately changed back by the poster. That way you don't have to lock the whole thread, or even, indeed, hide the entire comment.

But I'm not sure that the software for this site is that sophisticated.

That would work without any tasking of hosts or MIRT.

Maybe if people were accountable for their alerts, there would be fewer of them happening. On the other hand, it could just increase some of the sniping and hard feelings.



Not sure on that one...

Unless it's because this topic is still a lot of fun and everyone wants to keep freaking out over it in another thread.