Basically, we have a self-appointed nanny or number of nannies on a mission to silence as many non-believers as possible. They visit this group ALL DAY LONG looking for new posts on which to go jury-fishing. Remember, 5 posts hidden and you can't post to DU until your earliest one becomes 90 days old.

They're afraid of honest discussion, afraid of those who stand up and say "I don't believe you!" They can't burn us at the stake anymore, so alerting on every damn thing is what they will do.

I was under the impression that the hosts could see who made each alert in the group.

I'm aware of the problem, I read a lot here, not so much in religion, because it's a cesspool. A big part of why I keep my mouth shut is because I hate that feeling of being watched. I've joined the super secret group where we can eat babies privately though. Lots of fun.

You could repost this in ATA replacing Host with Admin, but Skinner recently stated in there that there was no problem with alert stalking, although he did admit that some people do a lot of alerts.

I was going to alert on the lolcats, there would be no repercussions other than personally knowing I was a trolling douche canoe.

Hem

It seems to me that risk pales in comparison to the reward of potentially getting somebody banned for 90 days.

LMAO! You have a way with words!

:-D but I daresay there's more righteous indignation in this group's personal trolls than self awareness as to personal douche canoery.

it is the one guaranteed bright spot on DU Welcome

Group hosts only get notifications of alerts made for SoP violations, and there aren't many of those - the nannies stopped sending them once they realized we weren't going to lock posts simply because one of the usual religion trolls got his/her feelers hurt.

I'm personally okay that as hosts we don't get ToS alerts, but it would be nice if we could know the total number of alerts. There's already a good amount of information on the About This Group page (http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=about&forum=1230), and it would be trivial to add the number of alerts. I doubt, though, that it's something the admin team would look at doing.

Is posters being notified EVERY time one of their posts gets alerted on, with all of the same information that we now only get when a post is actually hidden. That would give everyone a much better idea of how much the alerting system is being abused, if it is, as many of us suspect.

of a post that is let stand when I am on a jury. I also think that it is only fair to the poster who is alerted on. I do this because one of our own who is now banned did this for me once and I appreciated knowing. It was a 0-6 ruling, but the comment by the alerter did give me information that was useful to avoid further problems.....kind of.

this couldn't be done, and done pretty much automatically, through the site software. Once it's set up to do things that way, little or no direct intervention by admins or hosts would be needed.

And just having that system in place might dissuade some people from alerting on everything in sight, if they know that all of their alerts would be visible, and that the bogus ones wouldn't stay hidden to everyone but the jury.

From now on, I plan to make it a practice to post the results of any failed alert that I'm on the jury for, as a response to the alerted post. I think the posters have a right to know.

The clowns among us would use alert to rattle someone's cage.

Notification of alerts would never do any good unless the alerters' names are made public. And that is never going to happen. Skinner has made that very clear.

People in religion, and Skinner himself, have vehemently denied that there is any significant alert trolling going on in DU. If certain people started seeing that for every one of their posts that got hidden, 10 or 15 others had been alerted on (regardless of whether they knew by who or not), that would put the lie to it. I wouldn't consider knowing that those posts had been alerted on (which I don't now) "harassment", and I don't think giving such abuse of the alert system (if it occurs) more exposure would encourage it. Some things scuttle when you shine more light on them.

I will personally slap the crap out of you.

But in all seriousness, you are right that it would make sense to put a stop to the abusers. It just isn't going to happen here. But as long as you stay out of the cesspool, and keep the rhetoric at a reasonable level, there isn't much they can do to you.

I enjoy the smiles.