RE-VOTE! Do you support the proposed rules for the GD forum?

PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE MESSAGE BEFORE YOU VOTE.

NOTE: Due to an unexpected problem, we had to cancel yesterday's vote on the proposed rules for starting threads in the General Discussion forum. That problem has been fixed. But we have to start the vote again from scratch. All of the votes from yesterday have been thrown out, so if you want your vote to count you must vote again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

As promised, this is your opportunity to express your support or opposition to the proposed rules to start threads in the General Discussion forum.

These proposed rules have been discussed by our members for the last 48 hours, in the following disucssion threads: here (#1) and here (#2). Related discussion of a similar set of rules (NOT being consdered) are available in the following threads: : #1, #2, #3, #4. Please note that we withdrew this set of rules because we considered them redundant and unnecessary, and confusing to our members.

Please be aware that these new rules will significantly increase the power of the moderators to shut down discussion, and will likely result in a substantial increase in the number of locked and deleted threads.

This vote will last for approximately 24 hours. The poll will be closed at around 12:00 noon, Eastern Time, on Friday October 3, 2003.

Below are the rules which you are voting on. If approved, these rules will be pinned at the top of the General Discussion Forum.

************* BEGIN TEXT FOR NEW RULES *************

Rules to start discussion threads in the General Discussion forum

The General Discussion forum is by far the most active of all the forums on the Democratic Underground message board. In order to improve the overall quality of discussion here, we feel it is necessary to restrict the type of discussion threads which may be started in this forum. These rules only apply to the very first message posted in a discussion thread, and do not apply to responses posted in those threads.

If you are the type of person who can’t remember a bunch of rules, just remember this: If you treat other people with respect, and if you frame your messages in a way that will facilitate quality discussion, you are unlikely to run afoul of these rules.

The moderators have the authority to aggressively lock or remove threads which violate these rules. Admittedly, the determination of which threads are inflammatory is completely subjective. When a thread is shut down, members have a responsibility to respect the decision the moderators make.

Please note that these rules are for the General Discussion forum only. Some topics which are not allowed in the General Discussion forum may be permitted in other forums on the message board.

RULES TO START DISCUSSION THREADS IN THE GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM

1. The subject line of a discussion thread must accurately reflect the actual content of the message.

2. The subject line of a discussion thread and the entire text of the message which starts the thread may not include profanity, excessive capitalization, or excessive punctuation. Inflammatory rhetoric should also be avoided. Exceptions may be allowed for threads about our political opponents and/or policies which we generally oppose.

3. If you post an article or other published content which is from a conservative source or which expresses a traditionally conservative viewpoint, you must state your opinion about the piece and/or the issues it raises.

4. If you wish to start a vanity thread (ie: a discussion thread in which the sole purpose is to share your personal opinion) you must state your opinion in a non-inflammatory manner which respects differences in opinion and facilitates actual discussion.

5. No duplicates or same-topic threads. If there is currently an active thread on the first page of the General Discussion forum about a particular topic, you are forbidden from starting a new thread about the same topic -- even if your new thread provides a different viewpoint or new information. Occasional exceptions will be allowed when an active thread has a large number of posts.

************* END OF TEXT FOR NEW RULES *************

Do you support the proposed rules for the General Discussion forum?

I think it is okay to state a different opinion.

Differing opinions are fine--it's an organizational rule.

it makes who gets locked and who gets banned a completely arbitrary thing based on who isnt liked by the ppl that complain the most.

it's tyranny by the obnoxious

I should be able to say that in a post if it is not in a rude way.

All rule #5 does is stop you from starting a brand new dupe just to express your differing opinion on topics that already have threads for expressing opinions on. Imagine if EVERYONE on DU had to start a new thread, dedicated solely to their own opinion of, say Dean's appearance on a Sunday talk show. It would be chaos. You can disagree all you want on the existing thread! Sheesh.

I voted yes, btw.

However, I still voted no. (post 73 makes the point I concur with)

It might sound like a good idea to group all the reponses to a particular topic under the original thread.

However, in many cases a topic develops many additional ramifications as people continue to post new ideas and comments over time. While intiutively we might think that it is best to group all these comments in a single place, this can actually be COUNTER-productive if the comments start getting off onto too many other topics.

It could become HARDER to find what we need if we have to plow through a single thread covering all aspects of a particular topic. If someone feels that a subtopic to a thread warrants a new thread, they should be able to make that choice. In many cases, although this leads to a lot of threads, it can help organize a topic BETTER by letting us see all its subtopics at top-level in the bulletin board.

As I mention below, overproliferation of threads IS a real issue, and I'm not attempting to minimize it. However, forcing everyone to chime in under the original thread is too simplistic (and too lazy) a solution.

A better solution is to improve our bulletin-board SOFTWARE by adding a new column called something like "Category". Then when we post a thread, it can be under "TreasonGate/Plame Affair" or "BBV" or "Rush Limbaugh's Drug Problem" or "Rush Limbaugh Resigned from ESPN".

This would:

- preserve the important diversity of multiple headlines for "hot" topics;

- maintain our sense of empowerment and active participation, which I suspect is one of the reasons DU is so popular;

- organize things better than the current (a) lots of threads drifting all over the place on a given topic or the proposed (b) single monolithic, gigantic, hard-to-navigate thread containing ALL posts on a given topic; and

- avoid a potential problem where the "first" person to post to GD on a topic would essentially have all the power of framing the debate, because they get to write the ONLY headline on that topic.

PS - Saying that we want to avoid dupes "only on page one" is really another potential can of worms. Threads drift in and out of page one so fast, and most people don't understand that browsers are "stateless" and the current listing of page-one topics is probably out of date unless you hit 'Refresh'.

Arissa said (extremely, rhetorically): "Imagine if EVERYONE on DU had to start a new thread, dedicated solely to their own opinion of, say Dean's appearance on a Sunday talk show."

To which the extreme, rhetorical mirror-image reply is: "Imagine if WillPitt (or YOU) COULDN'T start the following new thread, dedicated solely to their entirely contrarian (and really meta-) opinion of, say, how to get Novak to 'fess up his sources":

Strap yourselves in, folks. I'm about to defend Bob Novak.
by WilliamPitt
153 posts and goin' strong (pretty good for a Johnny-Come-Lately thread to the whole Lock-Up-Novak debate)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=444519

I for one WANT to be able to come into a bulletin board, peruse the issues, notice there are dozens of threads on Bob Novak... and then come across one by WillPitt (weighing in after hundreds of other opinions have been voiced) and hone in on that one. I've heard the guy's name, and I have an opinion of how he writes, and if he wants to go and start a top-level thread on this topic, I'm intelligent enough to decide on my own that this could be intriguing. I DON'T want a moderator to decide this for me. This is why I DON'T read newspapers so much now - barriers to access.

Hey, maybe Skinner just wants to make a blog, with a small coterie of original posters who can start new threads. There is some validity to that. But that's not what DU has been so far. It's also why we have 32 thousand registered posters. The low barrier to entry does invite all sorts of amateurism and branching, but in the end, I would say that the quality of the debate and insights in GD has been amazingly good - and probably precisely BECAUSE of this ability to spawn multiple threads on a given topic, and the exciting, challenging "marketplace of ideas" that has given rise to.

Posting way down in a thread just isn't as good. You don't get prominence and you don't get the rudimentary self-ranking provided by thread-length.

I say, bring back the recent rating system that let us "rate" a thread, and bring back the recent "Number of Views" column that let us see whether lots of people found a thread relevant enough to even open. Let the threads duke it out amongst themselves - and maybe outlaw "kicks" (a/k/a "bumps" in freeperland) if we officially re-capture that in "Rating". Don't centralize this and put it all on Skinner's shoulders or a small group of moderators'. Make the software do this for us by building in a bit more structure!

Inevitably, issues are going to ramify. A big issue like Treasongate can ramify into subtopics on legal strategy, legal discovery, sentencing, foreign policy, CIA, media coverage, whodunnit, journalistic privilege, what-we-think-of-Maureen-Dowd's-article, whether-Rush-Limbaugh's-Drug-Problem-Is-A-Diversionary-Ploy - and each of these can split into pro or con or other views.

Up until now, the responsibility for splitting this topic into its subtopics has lain with the posters, and we've done a pretty good job of examining ALL sides of an issue. Some are now saying we're doing TOO good a job - and there IS indeed a problem with an issue splitting into too many posts, which makes it hard to keep up with it.

So a consolidation method is needed. I sympathize with Skinner's desire to do it without tinkering with the software, but I think such an approach is doomed. I have proposed a "bundling" mechanism whereby multiple, metastasizing threads on a given topic could be reined back in to a coherent category again. This would facilitate dealing with all aspects of big issues and it would still harness the power of the grassroots to figure out what the different aspects are.

The danger with a top-down or centralized approach to consolidating overproliferation is that it might result in underproliferation - people being discouraged from turning up new stones, and moderators closing down fruitful avenues of discussion.

If you keep a single thread on a topic, it leads to mauch better debate.

For instance; a health care thread. I like Kucinich's plan, you prefer Dean's. You start a Dean health care thread, while I start a Kucinich.

People who don't like Dean's plan pile on the Dean thread, while people who don't like Kucinich's pile on that one. Nobody gets anywhere.

If they are in the same thread, there is more likely to be headway (possibly even reconsideration) from both sides.

It's bound to get almost as nasty as before, but within reason.

or making it into a personal attack

attack the post and not the poster

Perhaps because they left out the word "separate".

What post 12 was arguing for was the right to post an entirely NEW thread rather than burying a rebuttal way down within it.

This is a VERY important point. Persuasion can become quite different when you are viewed as "originating" a discussion rather than "rebutting" one.

Sometimes a poster may want to reframe an issue entirely afresh. This is a very powerful device in the armamentarium of persuasion and rhetoric - are we to deny this device to the WillPitts (or the newbie FreeperRefugees) who feel that they have such a unique take, such a new angle, that it simply will not fit into the terminology and the framework of an existing thread? Are we to penalize posters for wandering late into a topic, and reward those who "post early, post often"? (God, what a nightmre that could turn into!)

I think it's very important for someone like WillPitt to be able to come in late at night and notice all the hounds chasing after Bob Novak and be able to post something like "Fasten your seatbelts, I'm about to DEFEND Bob Novak".

This right here shows that the monopolemic notion (like many other mono-... things that will remain nameless here) is silly - for even a true-blue religion like "Lock up Novak" can be trumped by a simple observation "It's not about Novak, it's about Journalistic Freedom".

In fact, the evolution of "dogma" or "doxa" or religion has been identified as one of the prime problems leading to groups' decline. Take a look at this groundbreaking paper by Clay Shirky where the three big threats to groups are discussed. One of them is "religion" - the evolution of a dogma within the group. If this is a typical pitfall for groups, a centralized system for locking threads (instead of letting them survive consolidated) is probably prone to aggravate this dangerous tendency.

{Problem Three} Religious veneration. The nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique. You can see this pattern on the Internet any day you like. Go onto a Tolkein newsgroup or discussion forum, and try saying "You know, The Two Towers is a little dull. I mean loooong. We didn't need that much description about the forest, because it's pretty much the same forest all the way."

Try having that discussion. On the door of the group it will say: "This is for discussing the works of Tolkein." Go in and try and have that discussion.

http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

I'm glad there are threads on "Novak" right now where some are saying "Lock 'im up" and some are saying "Journalistic privilege". Lots of issue have two or more "sides" - so evem with merging or appending threads what are we supposed to do, have Skinner decide to write a thread-head: "Novak: Lock Him Up or Preserve Journalistic Confidentiality"? Sounds like a cleverly phrased CNN poll to me. No matter how fair-minded Skinner tries to be, there's going to be the APPEARANCE at least of a cleverly-worded poll that's going to turn people off.

Even if Skinner decides to make that into 2 separate threads, there are still unresvolved problems. "Lock up Novak" and "Preserve Journalistic Privilege" could drift apart and wind up on different pages. (Yeah, they do now already.)

That's why I think we've identified a fundamental structural problem here which requires a fundamental structural change in our bulletin board. Overproliferation IS a problem - let's solve it by adding some sort of "bundling" instead of "merging" or "appending" or "locking and linking" for threads. "Bundling" threads into a category doesn't sound like rocket science. This board is written in php. Telling some programmers about this structural problem and asking them for help solving it might be better than beating up on ourselves for not being "logical" or "united" enough to stop posting dozens of threads on burning topics!

And how could we expect the moderators to keep up with such shifting ramifications of topics and meta-topics, if the responsibility for locking, merging, appending and then inevitably renaming and resplitting (for pro and con and port and starbord) arises? Why would Skinner even want to burden himself with this can of worms?

Overproliferation of posts and threads IS indeed a symptom of something - and right now, in our current software, it IS a problem. (It's also a big strength - I bet lots of people are here PRECISELY because they're so tired of not being able to throw tomatoes at politicians anymore or get their letters to the editor published.)

But there is more than one way to skinner a cat. I think we need to look at other ways of handling the overproliferation problem. Starting by recognizing it as an OPPORTUNITY and not just a problem to be hidden and eliminated might be a good first step.

Really, everyone, think hard, think like Democrats: Can you think of something dangerous about overconsolidation, and something virtuous about diversity?

Yes, from diversity must come consensus. Real consensus. Bottom-up, grass-roots consensus. People are objecting to rule 5 in droves, because it violates the grass-roots structure which differentiates DU from "one-way" or "my way or the highway" broadcast media that many have pointed to as one of the big causes of the decline in our democracy.

Mono versus diverse. That's what rule 5 is really about. And consensus. Can't anyone think of a better way to convert diversity into consensus rather than arbitrarily shutting down threads?

The very fact that such a silly rule is in this rule-vote is very disappointing. It doesn't make one think much of the "Constitutional Convention" that dreamt up this five-rule package.

So what if only one-third of the people see that subtlety so far.

With some of these threads, your opinion could be post number #213 which is in the middle of some flame war. We need to be able to express new and different view points in easy to read, not overburdened threads. I'm afraid I liked rules 1-4, but 5 is a violation of the first amendment (to some degree :thumbsdown:

I may not want to state my opinion within the context determined by the original thread-starter. I may want a different context. People should have the right to state their opinions in the way they want to state them. If you want to limit the number of threads, then just limit how many top-level threads a member can start on GD in a day.

"you are forbidden from starting a new thread about the same topic -- even if your new thread provides a different viewpoint or new information."

Without that clause, I would have gladly voted YES.

The arguments for yes have been good, but I just don't like rules in general and believe it is better to just let people be who they are and say what they want. We can take it, ignore it, or re-educate it.

I'd prefer that we leave the debates as open as possible... just my opinion.

before the rules take effect, you can HAVE an opinion, even if it's offensive to a few very vocal complainers.

Nevermind.

I'm not certain we need any new "rules". I believe in the power of persuasion without force... However, I do think the changes are mostly benign...

Sometimes after a topic has been going for a while, there is a new editorial or new thinking about the subject from an entirely different perspective...and this will be buried in a post with a lot of replies, and people will not click on that post again, thinking that they have seen all the major thinking on the topic.

But the board has been coming unglued recently. So I'm willing to give it a try.

The moderators aren't heavy-handed. I think they just want you to scan a category before starting a new thread about a topic which might already be under discussion.

Rules sometimes suck but in an online forum you have to exert some control to keep a small minority from getting out of hand and spoiling things for the rest. You don't want good, intelligent members of the site driven away or not joining due to a misperception about the site.

The great majority of DU posters are already doing the right thing and these rules seem like a non-issue to people who are being respectful of the site.

One n00b's opinion.

These rules are designed to protect people that are too thin-skinned to participate in a public forum.

This was the best forum on the internet until the christians started feeling persecuted because the rest of us didnt' believe their myths. That led to LOTS of whining from the 'true-believers'.

Now we are going to pacify these people by legitimizing their whining and censoring ideas and discussion?

Very very very bad move.

Please. Let's not turn THIS THREAD into a flame war.

just an observation of who seems to cry persecution the most

:+

this is the way I see it as well. Exactly ONE person on the boards seems to speak as loudly as the rest of us put together.

it's always the holy rollers that are whining the most

started coming on board and rejecting the notion that the highway is rightfully subject to regulation of speed. ;-)

This thread is going to be posted for the next day and a half. If everyone posts their opinion, we'll end up with well over 300 messages!

Now, I'm not going to do anything to deny you the ability to post your comments. But I strongly advise against it.

Thanks.

Skinner
DU Admin

But I guess supporting our positions must be okay

GD has gotten out of hand (Like I/P used to be) and these rules will help. But even more importantly, you should have complete faith in admin and the moderators (who get told if they mess up :evilgrin:) to enforce the rules fairly and with as light a hand as possible. Most rules here at DU are written so that when real abuses occur, the mods can point to a rule to justify locking a thread. Exact, precise following of every single rule is not really realistic. Trust the mods. They will enforse fairly.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. If this rule is fairly enforced, it will make a phenomenal difference in the quality of threads in GD.

unclear and can limit discussion of big events. I sometimes can't help but use some cuss words when discussing the extreme right, although I'm sure I can try to control myself. The rest of it looks OK in light of the fact GD has deteriorated into a Dem bashing cesspool a lot of the time.

Thanks to Skinner, elad, and all the rest for re-posting this opportunity to vote. (I'm glad I'm not one of the Admins -- I might have been inclined, in light of yesterday's prank, to simply put the new rules in place and be done with it.)

about posting in the correct forum, and instead of moving candidate threads over to Campaigns just delete them. The rest is basic courtesy that could be enforced socially, by not responding. Eventually the traffic would balance out.

Which may give you second thoughts. ;-)

The "no" votes are MUCH higher than they were yesterday at this time--I can't believe that many people changed their minds overnight. I'm sorry to say I think some moron like rabid nerd is having his way with us again.

Cat

to vote, hence the rise in 'no' votes

I feel like rule 5 is... not so good. Might want to work on that a little bit, but feel the rest would improve the overall quality.

And it is my hope the measure carries by landslide proportion.

#2 is just gratuitous and high-handed, IMO.

dbt

(OMG, I said crap! Oh, CRAP, I said OMG!)

But I'm interested to see how that will work.

For those complaining about #5---

I believe it's meant to force people to think before they respond. To take part in the discussion as opposed to going around in circles with new threads.

This can only be good for thoughtful debate and discourse.

Otherwise it becomes a huge collossal cluster F*&^

:thumbsup:

No inflammatory rhetoric? I don't think I've ever posted anything inflammatory here but I have to ask: Is this a political forum or a kindergarten class? We all have political issues that we get worked up over, and it's been my experience over the last year and a half/two years that "worked up" and inflammatory posts tend to spark the BEST discussions. Turning DU into a polite forum where nobody is ever allowed to say anything that other people here may disagree with will kill an important part of DU's character and chase off many of its most colorful members. I should know...I used to run a public discussion board with over a thousand members, and we accidentally killed it by doing the exact same thing that you're doing here (admin's: PM me if you want verification and more info, I can't back that up without identifying myself and I don't want to do that publically).

My personal suggestion: Create GUIDELINES, not rules, and simply state that moderators have the right to remove any post that is deceptive, abusive, hateful, or Freeper-like. Creating hard and fast rules just has a mushrooming effect anyway...people will figure out ways to do things that don't quite break the rules and yet still p*ss people off, forcing you to create MORE rules. Next thing you know you've got 30 pages of rules and a dead forum. You are MUCH better off going the "Moderator's Discretion" route.

The more ambiguous it gets, the more arbitrary and heavy-handed the administration will have to be. There are lots of clever people here who can easily figure out how to shrink the strike zone.

The rules will end up getting good people banned. I voted no.

Thanks for the opportunity to vote.

Isn't the end result rather apparent? I'd say 300 registered DUers is a more than representative sample size :-)

It's too late for me to change my 'Yes' vote, but you're probably right about this. I guess there can be different shades of "inflammatory." Whether or not the restriction will prove onerous will depend on how tightly it's enforced. Blatant contempt & taunting is one thing; tongue-in-cheek mild sarcasm is another.

As it's written your opinion can be as inflammatory as all hell but

you must state your opinion in a non-inflammatory manner which respects differences in opinion and facilitates actual discussion.

I think that's pretty clear and I have no problems with that because I trust the mods to still retain their sense of humour :) I'm willing to trust on this one in order to not have 20 variations of "Dean sucks" or "Clark sucks" eating up valuable real estate.

I only ask that if one starts a topic such as energy and someone KICKS an old or dying topic up that they consider that the OLD topic was KICKED up.

Can there be a designated trial period? For example, try the new rules for one month, see if it improves discussion or merely stifles it and creates too many headaches for the mods.

After a period of one month during which time the policy could be evaluated in practice, do another vote as to whether the new rules should remain.

Obviously, I have a fear of commitment. ;-)

Q. Who are the good people?

A. People who obey the rules.

Q. Who are the bad people?

A. People who don't obey the rules.

Q. Are there any especially bad people?

A. Yes, there certainly are. People like rabid_nerd, who not only failed to take the rules seriously, he actually sabotaged them.

Q. What shall be done with bad people?

A. Let them be cast out!

Q. Isn't that rather draconian?

A. This is a place of moral clarity. You're either with us or against us.

I have to say that I agree on this one, though it's an unpopular stance. I prefer to err on the side of openess and let people express themselves, even if I don't agree with that expression. It's an open debate, and I fear that these rules will ruin that debate.

Watch what you say. :tinfoilhat:

Skinner is framing this as a choice between order and rationality as opposed to discord, rancor and untidiness. Needless to say, order and rationality are passing by a 2-to-1 margin. Hooray for the good people!!

As rabid_nerd was quick to point out, the vote is a shuck. We'll never have any power to change an arbitrary decision. This is Skinner's show. If he were honest about it, he'd say "This is my board and I'll run it the way I want to." Instead he goes through some bogus display of running things democratically.

Good people will be run off because of these arbitrary rules. At least one solid Democrat - rabid_nerd - has already been banished. This meaningless "vote" is a manipulation, a shuck.

"At least one solid Democrat - rabid_nerd - has already been banished."

As if he was banished for his viewpoints or his opinions. NO! He was banished for sabotaging the Web site. You allow a guest in your house and he deliberately breaks things. Do you allow him to stay or do you throw him out to protect your property?

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I actually agree with banning him because what he did was moronic and destructive. That said, I still voted no because I prefer open debate.

he said this was in response to the hundreds of complaints.

if you want truth go look in A%A archives,

this didn't come from the top down but from the noisy wheels.

i say no anyway.

Guess I'll be spending more time somewhere else if this passes. I am not too fond of such "order" as is being offered.

Back to lurking, I guess.


Martin

Communists are bad people, and they certainly don't belong here. We have plenty of problems with subversives as it is.

</sarcasm>

I'm right behind you. I'll try and elaborate....and I apologize in advance if I come off as inflammatory or cast a shadow on someones Polly Anna day.

Inflammatory is, quite clearly, a relative term. What may be inflammatory to me, may not be to someone else. I'm fairly certain that every idea expressed on this board could conceivably be viewed as inflammatory by at least one of its members. That being said, it seems the only way to stomp out the possibility of such a heinous and unsavory scenario is to allow a single check-box on the "reply" page, entitled "I agree". If the box is checked and the "Post message" button is clicked, the generated subject heading, preceding your name, would read, Ditto. The "Message format" check-box, "Subject" field, "Message" field and emoticons should be done away with, as all increase dramatically the likelihood that a poster might intentionally or intentionally inflame another's ire. If one did not agree with the point expressed by the threads initial poster, he or she would lack any means with which to respond....or inflame..... We could, instead of referring to DU as a discussion board, refer to it as a Ditto board. Think of the bandwidth, hurt feelings and fragile egos that would be saved!

Nah Skinner....I don't like your new idea.....It quells freedom of expression...which to me is neither Democratic or Underground. If she comes to fruition....I'll not be contributing much anymore...written or otherwise.


Rapid Creek

I support the new rules. And it appears that they will pass by a solid margin too. :)

300 more votes...yeah baby! Charge!!! :spank:

I think moderators are intelligent enough to differentiate the same point on an issue over and over, from a different view on an issue once. One story can have numerous parts to it, take the CIA case. ALOT of details. The actual 'players', the law, Novak and his ethics, lots. And, if somebody posts an outright lie, posting the rebuttal deep in a thread isn't likely to be seen. And why somebody should only have to post an opinion from conservative news sources is beyond me, an reason for posting an article should always be given. But #5 seems to be worded a little differently than yesterday, or maybe I'm in a different mood, but I can't go with this anymore.

Sorry for the comment Skinner, but some people are missing that #5 only applies to other same topics ON PAGE ONE.

Hello people-- ON PAGE ONE.

One of my biggest pet peeves is this duplicate/same issue posting. I think there are situations when a new thread is warranted, but it gets very irritating.

Keep in mind, that you couldn't use all caps or excessive punctuation under the new rules. If they were in place now, we could both be banned!!!! :nopity:

But I can't stand RULE #2!!!!!!!

Rule 3 when posting an article or editoral...the author's opinion is probably obvious without an additional explanation. He or she is just trying to get reactions from fellow DUers, because it covers a relevant subject matter. Rule 4 allows the moderators to use their personal biases to determine what is or isn't a vanity thread. On rule five...I have several problems with this. My first problem..I thought this rule was already in place, second it is inconsistantly enforced, and finally there can be many different perspectives worth discussing on any single issue.

The big problem with rule #5 is that the first person to start a thread gets to frame the wording for the headline of that thread.

It is quite possible that a different wording for the thread headline could be valuable. Rule #5 would prevent a diversity of thread headlines. The best thread head wouldn't win - the FIRST posted would win.

We are frustrated with the one-way (corporate, broadcast) media precisely because they twist the facts, often by using a misleading headline. This same ploy would become easy to do on a DU where the first poster got to frame the terms of debate for a topic.

Rule #5 might be fine for Late Breaking News, where we are supposed to quote the existing headline anyways. On DU, a thread headline is a very powerful platform. I want to still have the right to phrase a headline in a certain way.

I don't agree with this one. On some days, an issue might be so explosive (Plame) that it can't be confined to just one thread. If it's a very nuanced issue, it might require a number of slightly different variants of the same general theme.

The no votes are loosing. :cry:

the nos will get a second wind!!! O8)

Some of you will be glad to know that I am out of here.

And I like the wording of his headline: "This sucks".

Wording which I bet someday will be construed as "obscene" or perhaps even as "homophobic" or "misogynist" by some well-meaning moderator.

(By the way, I'm gay, and I have no problem with saying "This sucks" pejoratively, although I suck too, but in a good way, I hope.)

Other wording could be used - something demure and decorous like our ineffectual mush-mouthed Democratic House and Senate leaders Gephardt and Pelosi would say.

"This is ineffective."
"This is counterproductive."
"I dissent."

What I'm getting at here is this: blunt, powerful language is NECESSARY to the functioning of a democracy. Being able to swear is NECESSARY to reach The People who are to used to tuning out all the garbage rhetoric of the broadcast media they've been forced to listen to for the past few decades. Blunt, powerful language is EFFECTIVE as a communication tool, when used judiciously - and whether it's "judicious" and "effective" is a decision for the speaker and the listener to make, not the moderator.

The politeness and decorousness of our currently Democratic "leaders" is arguably a big factor in what's got the country into such a mess. They are spineless wimps, and the public delights in hearing the Right tell them so.

We cannot predict what state the body politic will be in in a few months or years. There may come a day when saying "This sucks" or "F*ck so-and-so" may be the most appropriate language to confront jackbooted SWAT teams taking away our liberties. When the going gets rough, polite language just won't do.

And already one of the big attractions of the "right" is the people's perception that they don't pull punches. Whatever we may hate about Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or O'Reilly, you sure can't accuse them of being polite or delicate in their language.

And even patrician blue-bloods such as the Bushes have learned the value of a down-home Texas drawl sprinkled with some fightin' words as a tool to win over Joe and Jane Sixpack. Lots of not-so-rich people thought Gore was a stuffed shirt - even though he was the guy who really looked out for their interests, while rich Republicans have honed their gutter language as a way to draw in poor, less-educated people and make them vote against their own best interests - because the alternative, the Democrats, sound so stuffy and effete.

And then we get a new proposed rule on DU to "tone down" our language, or else our threads will get pulled. Do you see that this will only further cripple the Democratic cause, it will open us even more to accusations of "elitism" and "effeteness" (and the ever-present unspoken accusation of "unmanliness" underlying those accusations). As the country slides into war overseas and fascism at home, it may be quite important to be able to use a swear word now and then in our political debate. And if not on DU, then where? Good luck trying to write a letter to the editor with any profane language.

If you're worried about the delicate ears of children then just an obscenity flag and let people set a filter.

Style should not be enforced by deletions. It is a community attribute and as such it must be enforced by the community, not by moderators.

This only applies to initial posts. You can still use profanity in a reply.

<snip>
Profanity
Oh, and regarding profanity: Hey, we're adults. If it's really a problem (say, for minors), add an "adult language" flag as well, and allow filtering. Earthy, blunt language is vital to effective politics, and decorousness and stilted language can stifle debate and scare off people who already believe the Republican lies that Democrats are somehow "delicate" or "effete". Right-wing talk radio owes much of its success probably more to its vivid language rather than to the appeal of its content, and many rich Republicans have learned to appeal to the "common people" by using popular language. Allowing threads to be pulled solely for stylistic reasons is not going to help political debate, and it's going to turn off a lot people who already think the Democrats are too stuffy and wimpy.
<snip>

Or as Harry Truman put it "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Do not go over this. The fight is too importan.

The revolution is just beginning and we need you ;)

n/t

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

own.

Plus, having multiple discussions in the same thread will be hard to follow.

...for DU. And I say this as someone that knows what it's like to have a thread axed in its prime.

- But I long for the old days of DU when 'great minds' were challenged and topics were relevant to...well...reality.

- Good work and well done.

no will win! :7

I'm going to be really sad if we lose this one. :cry:

Now I'll read the thread.

Before we give more powers to moderators, we need to ask ourselves this basic question: Why do we feel so frustrated with corporate media and so liberated with the Internet? The internet is not moderated and it works quite well - the corporate media are heavily moderated and many are arguing that they are causing the death of our democracy. Yes, there are often "too many" results returned when we do a search on google - but isn't that better than what the people in China get when they type in "Falun Gong" and no results show up at all?

Now, having painted that dismal picture of the dangers of moderators, I will not argue below that having moderators is ALWAYS a bad thing. But we need to be very careful about giving more power (or workload) to moderators, and we need to look at other ways of allowing the group or the software itself to provide the kind of structure or policing DU is starting to think it needs. We should not become lazy and expect the moderators to perform functions that we can perhaps better perform ourselves.

Let's not get lazy and just vote away our freedoms because democracy is getting a bit messy now. Let's put together a better constitution (ie, better bulletin board software).

I really care about DU and I understand that it may be going through growing pains. This is a natural occurrence and we do need to be careful to make sure that DU can continue to be a positive experience to users and to have a positive impact on politics.

Summary of issued being addressed by the proposed rules
From looking at the proposed rules, I gather that the growing pains people are trying to address are mainly the following:

(1) Overproliferation of posts on a single topic. This can lead to fragmentation as a discussion is splintered all over the place into different threads.

(2) Posts which for whatever reason are "counterproductive". This can be because the post wasn't clear or accurate, or the language was offensive, obscene or inflammatory.

These are real issues. Prior experience with "communities" in general and "social software" in particular has shown that the rules of interaction can make or break a community.

Summary of alternative solutions to the issues
(instead of the proposed rules)
In summary the solutions I would propose are the following:

(1) Set up a "category" column on the bulletin board, and let the moderators have (some or all) responsibility for defining these categories and placing threads into categories. This way, the dozens of threads about Rush Limbaugh's drug problem or "Treasongate" can all be grouped together - but the vital diversity of the thread headlines will not be lost!

(2) Establish some sort of "reputation system" or "karma" for users, and/or a "rating" system for individual posts and/or threads. This also would involve adding just a column or two to the bulletin board, and letting people rate a thread or a poster. This system has been implemented I believe at slashdot.org and also at eBay with some success. It can be great help to scan down a long list of posts and see some rated "Informative: 5" or "Insightful: 4" or "Funny: 2".

= = =

More in-depth discussion is below - plus see the links to "social software" at the end!

- - -
The structure of successful on-line communities
The rules of broadcast media involve one-way communication paid for by advertisers, and the rules of Congress involve campaign finance and lobbying - and both systems are suffering greatly now because they have disenfranchised the "average person" they are supposed to serve.

DU is an on-line community and as such it can benefit greatly from the lessons of other on-line communities that have gone through similar growing pains. Famous examples of on-line communities are the WELL and slashdot.org and eBay. The people involved with these communities have encountered many of the same problems we have at DU - fragmentation of topics, counterproductive or unreliable posters - and have evolved some solutions to deal with them.

Moderators are helpful but they cannot solve all of a community's problems if the rules aren't right. I imagine one of the great attractions of DU is the fact that we all get to participate so easily: Read some news, go to DU, and say what you think about it. This immediacy and ease of use is an important part of the internet - it has even been shown that merely having to go through a sign-up screen to get to an on-line newspaper constitutes a kind of "mental expense" that drives readers away. Likewise, we should guard against making a contributor slog through many existing topics to make sure their burning issue hasn't already been addressed somewhere. This delay can destroy the freshness and impact of the thoughts in the poster's head and influence their post - much the same way as viewing the results of a poll BEFORE you vote can subtly influence how you end up voting.

Solving on-line commnunities' problems with better software
I think the two big issues about could be solved via better programming, not via more moderation.

(1) Set up a new "category" column for threads, to allow grouping of similar threads
Issue (1), fragmentation of posts, is very easy to solve: provide a mechanism to "group" posts. This would allow for a diversity of headlines on a given issue, and would also have the side-effect of adding another number to the system: the number of topics in a given group. BBV and Treasongate might at this time each have their own group with lots of threads in the group. This would give an indication that these are hot topics, while still encouraging a diversity of headlines within each topic.

(2)Set up a "reputation system" or "karma" for posters and/or threads
Issue (2) is trickier but it has been dealt with before in on-line communities with some success, and without the drastic approach of simply deleting threads that somehow qualify as "offensive" in the eyes of the moderators. First of all, there is the question of "Who should be the moderators?" The BBV discussion threads for example would be quite different if certain well-known devil's advocates or naysayers had the power to delete threads - and these topics are important enough that it is quite possible that a "shill" might lay low for several months trying to build up enough credibility to become a moderator and thereby exercise undue control over those threads.

Fortunately there are actually software mechanisms that can help us to prioritize different threads in terms of how useful they are, without the drastic and potentially dangerous step of simply deleting them. The notions of "karma" and "reputation systems" have been implemented in software in many on-line communities (such as slashdot.org) and have been successful in helping people screen out the useful from the useless - without censoring the useless. "Useless" threads are in a way "useful" as well, because they allow us to learn how other people think about a particular topic, and this can be helpful for strategizing. Preaching to the choir can be fun, but it is also important to understand how people with diverse viewpoints or communications skills think.

Why such a short (24-hour) voting window?
By the way, having this vote take place over a limited 24-hour period is neither necessary nor helpful. Many people have jobs and might miss a day on DU now and then - why should they be excluded from the vote? There is no reason why the vote can't last a whole week, to span a whole cycle of people's schedules and thereby maximize the number of people who are aware that a vote is even taking place. Some of the most important voters might be people who are also so busy organizing or working in the "real world" that they miss a day or two of DU - there is no reason for excluding those people in favor of those whose first act on getting out of bed is to log into DU.

The (short-lived) DU "Rating" System
Remember the "rating" system we had for a while when DU was revamped recently? That was a step in the right direction to solve issue (2) above. If a post gets a lot of low ratings, people won't waste time reading it (and the poster won't be able to become disgruntled and blame "the moderators" for pulling their thread), whereas if a post gets a lot of high ratings, people will see that the community considers it important and they will devote more time to perusing it. This "rating" system was a big step in the right direction.

I'm voting NO
So I would vote against the new, moderator-based ways of trying to help DU through its growing pains. Simply adding two new columns to the bulletin board - a "rating" column and a "category" column - would deal with the problems of "unhelpful" threads and overproliferating threads. Perhaps the rating could be not numeric but a word and a number: Look at slashdot.org where posts are rated as "Informative: 4" or "Insightful: 5" or "Funny: 3". This group-based, rather than moderator-based, method of separating the useful from the useless has much greater chances of maintaining the democratic and PARTICIPATORY ideals this community is about.

Profanity
Oh, and regarding profanity: Hey, we're adults. If it's really a problem (say, for minors), add an "adult language" flag as well, and allow filtering. Earthy, blunt language is vital to effective politics, and decorousness and stilted language can stifle debate and scare off people who already believe the Republican lies that Democrats are somehow "delicate" or "effete". Right-wing talk radio owes much of its success probably more to its vivid language rather than to the appeal of its content, and many rich Republicans have learned to appeal to the "common people" by using popular language. Allowing threads to be pulled solely for stylistic reasons is not going to help political debate, and it's going to turn off a lot people who already think the Democrats are too stuffy and wimpy.

Further reading
For further discussion about problems and solutions in on-line communities, see the links below. Howard Rheingold and Clay Shirky have written some provocative essays on the very problems DU is facing now - it would be a pity if we were to make big changes without at least becoming conversant with the experiences and views of other successful on-line communities.

DU is not alone in confronting these problems, and we should not try to go it alone in devising solutions. Let's vote NO on these moderator-based rule changes until we can have a better discussion of the other software- and group-based rules as well.

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy by Clay Shirky
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
http://www.craphound.com/shirkyetcon2003.txt

Social Software and the Politics of Groups
http://shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html

http://www.shirky.com/

Some reading on "reputation systems" (also called "karma")
These are used on slashdot.org and eBay
http://www.hebditch.org/archive/2002/12/000047.html

First: scottxyz, you're my hero in this thread. I agree: What you said, all of it.

Now, for Skinner:

Rule #2: I can't get past the "inflammatory rhetoric" clause. Too general. Too vague. Too open to misinterpretation. Too easily abused.

Rule #4: Ditto; the criteria for "inflammatory" content is just too subjective. Some topics (need I mean the Christianity threads?) are going to be "inflammatory" to someone, no matter how "respectfully" an opinion is stated.

And remember, this is coming from an extremely thin-skinned queer who gets very bent out of shape at the first hint of anti-gay rhetoric (hey, I'm no dope -- I know my own weaknesses). And yet, even I have hit the Alert button only two or three times over the past two years on anti-gay posts. (I repeat: "on anti-gay posts." I regularly hit Alert at the first sign of freeper disruption, which is something else entirely.)

So if I can walk away when the fire gets too hot without tattling to Mommy and Daddy every five seconds, anyone can.

I'm sorry if it means more work for the mods, but I think you all are doing an excellent job already (albeit sometimes a wee bit too good), squelching flames as they erupt. (Or, to put it another way, don't hose everybody down if nothing's on fire.)

Rule #5 is the killer. Perhaps it would cut down on the number of threads on the same or a similar topic, but I guarantee threads containing hundreds of posts are going to drive away us poor slobs using a dial-up connection. (So, on one hand, you'll cut the number of threads, but you'll also cut the number of posts, thereby decreasing participation.) I'm sure I'm not alone when, faced with two similar threads, one with 50 posts and the other with 200, I'll click the former and ignore the latter. Sorry, but the load times on threads with more than 75 posts or so are unbearable.

Overall: I understand why you feel the need to implement these rules. But it's just such "babysitting" of a presumed bunch of adults that has, in my past experience, turned message boards and mailing lists alike into something about as exciting and dynamic as day-old dishwater. Through no fault of your own, DU has already lost its "wild frontier" feel -- which, realistically, is inevitable with growth. Still I pray DU does not become inadvertently restrictive under the well-meaning but misguided quest for order and civility.

Me, I go by the philosophy that people will live up to -- or down to -- your expectations of them. Rein 'em in too tightly, and they buck, just because they've been restrained.

Whatever you do, Skinner, I'll still respect you in the morning.

Finally: scottxyz's links reminded me of one more piece (a Net classic) that should be required reading for every owner and member of every message board or mailing list (trust me, it applies to all cyber-communities):

The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists
http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/lifelist.html

Sapphocrat brings up a very simple "structural" (not political or rhetorical) problem with rule 5:

"I'm sure I'm not alone when, faced with two similar threads, one with 50 posts and the other with 200, I'll click the former and ignore the latter. Sorry, but the load times on threads with more than 75 posts or so are unbearable."

I hadn't thought of this - because I'm initially in the mood to gravitate towards the threads that have MORE posts in them (and I'm on dial-up! and I always hit 'View All').

I don't mind the lengthy load time - it's just that one of the main things I find fascinating about DU is the self-ranking nature of threads.

Either way though - big long threads can be problematic for reasons purely of size - and that's the solution rule 5 is proposing.

If the most important topics are precisely those that you DON'T want to look at - because the thread is too long - is that something we want to be designing into the system?

i like rule 1, but dislike 5, and dislike the other rules to varying degrees.

vote "yes" but after I logged in, the vote icon disappeared.

And here's why:

I've seen a rule like this destroy other message boards where people came for news.

Many of the people (and lurkers) here depend on getting the VERY latest developments and issues raised in stories as they evolve. Many of these people disseminate these fresh developments and insights and pertinent research to other networks and groups. It's a very useful dynamic for Dems.

When only one thread is allowed for an entire topic (the leak, for example) there is no place to put fresh twists and turns and insights and background research except to bury them in the middle of what might be a VERY long thread.

It's a real problem, and potentially a huge loss for our side.

:kick:
ANYONE BUT BUSH IN "04"

nt

I don't agree with the provision that profanity is not a valuable vehicle for a writer to express feelings and creativity. I would rather support a "x" rating on a post deemed profane, and that that "x" rating warn certain posters they might see some dirty words... Censorship of any sort is a sad state of affairs... and surely if i post a word your morality does not agree with, does that not say more about politics and the separation of church and state, and presumed morality.

I don't like any rules and i will ignore the rules as i cannot be a writer, creative and impulsive with some nazi censor being a big baddie to protect false civility. The felt need to censor is protectionist and totally unnecessary... do nothing. Make no judgements about what people say, and accept that if you do feel insulted by words, that is your choice, nothing to do with an anonymous writer.

Voltaire is right. Let there be free speech, just give a "rating" like a cinema film, if you must categorize the free forum to the panzies that can't handle swear words or the intensity they can imply.

I am for one rule: If a poster can be charged with destructive abuse of the DU board, then they should get a warning. It might be like a red spot replacing the doner star on the ID. Warning ratings could be in various shades, and people could read writers of the level of colour they felt comfortable. Some flaming red immoral writers who like to fuck and get laid.... we'll likely be several times warned... let the "reader" decide, don't punish the writers with limitations on our use of the richness of language.

1-4 with no hestitation, hestitated about rule 5 but decided it was worth a YES because of the first 4 anyway. :thumbsup:

The stupid "locking, dupe" crap needs to stop. Find a way to merge threads, or stop locking them and calling those who've already posted in the thread "dupes". This just adds more fuel to the fire. And "occasional exceptions"? What The FUCK does that mean? Define "occasional exceptions", and then we can talk.

Not that it matters, y'all are too dead set on finding new and improved ways to censor the forum.

Me and Organism.

Looks like Rule 5 is a real deal-breaker.

This is why the rules shouldn't be voted on as a "package".

This is probably also why we need more debate. Like a forum, a primary, and a few different sets of rules. Let us help, Skinner! You started the board but you need to acknowledge people's expertise with more than a straight yes-or-no vote on a single five-rule package.

A lot of people here have software experience as users or designers, including "social software".

One easy way to improve social software is you leverage "problems" into "opportunities" by altering the "software" instead of heaping more non-software-based rules on users and mods.

The "problem" (or "opportunity") here is dupe threads that crop up when a topic is hot.

The "workaround" is already "sorry - duped - locked".

The negative effects are:

(1) A great alternative thread may get locked and then drop into oblivion.

(2) The person who STARTED that thread may be pissed.

The "solution" presented by Skinner is "outlaw dupes" - which is sort of the rule we already have - then sort of mitigated by saying "outlaw dupes on the front page".

The simplest solution is a kind of merging of threads. This allows multiple viewpoints, no disgruntled locked posters, shows when a topic is important, and - if threads are simply grouped into a category rather than appended into a monster thread - avoids the problem of slow-downloading threads.

Let's celebrate our diversity and not abolish it! Take a lesson from complex decentralized systems!

When a thread is locked as a dupe a html is given to the duplicate thread so the discussion can continue there.

It seems to me that a lot of people have egos the size of Bush's and want THEIR name on the thread.

And as far a censoring.....remember this board belongs to admin. They don't have to ask your opinion at all. But they are always willing to listen and try to resolve issues.

Vote yes on the new rules.....gd will be much easier to navigate. Vote no on egotistical posters who want to have their own name in the only lights they can find.....here at DU

I don't view duplicate threads as such a bad thing, except for in Breaking News. I see nothing wrong with being able to start a new thread to examine an issue from another angle.

..and I see nothing wrong with that. I'm surprised anyone else would...

It's a guideline for thread-locking and the suppression of new angles on existing topics.

That's what this amounts to, IMHO. But why not? Ordinary Ta has it correct. If Skinner would just come clean and say "I am caving to the whims of a few vocal, thin-skinned individuals who donate to this board and don't like the tone in GD so I'm going to give them what they want" INSTEAD of this phony vote (yes I'm bitter because it's not going my way) those of us who oppose might have a little more respect for him and we could leave the site knowing the truth instead of feeling extremely let down.

Just look at the language -- non-inflammatory manner, exceptions may be allowed for threads about our political opponents and/or policies which we generally oppose, you are forbidden from starting a new thread...

Our political opponents?? This is exactly what I DO NOT come to DU looking for. The chorus line of lock-step opinion and uniformity that is more often fit for the Republican Party. I concede that the Democratic Party is in dire need of some real arm-locking and grass-roots support, but the kind of ideas that Democrats traditionally get behind are ones that come from fierce debate, thoughtful analysis and cross-examination, and in-depth dialouge about the issues at hand.

These ideas don't pop-up in perfect shape and form. They take serious debate. Tempers flare, mud is slung, sometimes it gets insulting, other times real bridges are formed. Granted, some are not as prone to serious debate as others, but the only way to sift through the upstarts and muckrakers and get to the essence of the issue is to allow as free and open a forum as possilbe.

This is coming from someone whoe RARELY posts in GD. I come to GD to learn because the breadth and depth of knowledge that is on display here is truly staggering. Yes a percentage of the posts are pointless flamebate. The question is does Skinner trust those who donate to decipher which are the important posts and which are not?

General Discussion was such a place. I hope it will remain so.

Luke
aka
Hiphopnation23

The administration isn't made of granite. If it turns out to be a bad rule, then it can still be altered. Personally I think many people here are misjudging the rules intent. The way I read the rule is that "topics" can be vastly different, although from the same story.

Take Rush's firing from ESPN: Rush being fired from Espn is a topic. The freepers reaction to Rush being fired is an entirely different topic. The black communities response to Rush's firing is yet another topic. In each of these threads the commentary will be vastly different. There is still plenty of freedom to discuss the multiple topics that come from the same story.

What is forbidden,(and that is an off-putting word), is multiple viewpoints on the SAME topic. Basically if there is a thread already, then why make a new one- unless, out of respect to dial-ups, the thread is already crowded. 'I think Rush was wrong to be fired.' 'No, I think Rush had a right to free speech and shouldn't have been fired.' These are examples of different viewpoints on the SAME topic. They belong in the same thread.

Creating unnecessary threads clutters the board and overall hurts the quality of discussion significantly. I am glad this issue was addressed.

This is my interpretation at least. The rule of thumb being if you could cut and paste the same post in a constructive, coherent response to two different threads, then the threads are most likely redundant. The trade-off is that the thread starter might not be framed in a way in which you might like. No one said there wouldn't be trade-offs. IMHO, overall, this is an excellent rule.

The very format of this rule-vote could use our structure and experience as an on-line community so much more to our advantage. Here are three suggestions on how we could use our software structure and community experience better to deal with the problems the proposed 5 rules are aiming to solve.

This is an amazing example and an important opportunity here! This is DemocraticUnderground.com holding a vote! We are free to structure this vote any way we want to. This can be an excellent proving ground and bully-pulpit for showing the world the right way to design a voting system. If Democracy.Underground (with its large following of BBVers) doesn't put together a "stellar" example of a voting system, then... who else will?

Why the short polling time?
(1) As I mentioned earlier in my longer post above, limiting the polling time to 24 hours seems to arbitrarily narrow the enfranchisement - was that intended? I would think a wider franchise would give us a better reading. If arguments are to be made about deliberately limiting the franchise or weighing different people's votes based on experience (measured in time, posts or some yet unquantified "reputation") or other contributions, we can make those arguments explicit. If anything, the current 24-hour vote structure probably works against people with jobs either making money or organizing.

It would be ironic and unfortunate if people like WillPitt or Bev Harris or MatCom or SymbolMan or Eloriel because they were speaking to a VA convention or flying to see a Secretary of State or on TV or doing a performance or doing research - or at the office or driving a bus or tending to the family or at the gym - while perhaps the flood of recent arrivals coming here for the past few weeks had proportionally more say.

Who knows if the very reason we're NOTICING problems (with style/content and frequency of initial-posting, basically) could mean this is not a good time to trust ourselves to vote. Some people have thought something different is going on at DU lately - lots of new users (the growth rate will probably accelerate once it hits a certain critical mass), big events lately (Clark announcing throwing a scare into the other camp and sending over many suspected "freepers" - is this really the best time to have a straight-line vote? With the high number of deleted threads and obvious plants lately, it wouldn't seem like the best time to just roll out an anonymous vote.

A certain type of voting pattern is probably more likely to emerge now - probably more conservative. The old-timers may be feeling the urge to pull up the drawbridge - and the newcomers may be (1) hoping that DU will do that and (2) the very reason WHY they're doing that.

This may be getting reflected in a more-conservative voting patterns - both from incoming more-conservative types (who would be expected to vote for more centralization and "rules" and decorum anyways in the view of most sociologists) as well as from frightened long-time lurking and posting liberals, alarmed by the very same onslaught of Clark-bashing and my-candidate-is-better-than-your-candidate threads.

We know quite well that a flourishing community, when wounded by an onslaught, is in danger of

A better approach would be to lengthen the rule-vote window.

Why a monolithic, all-or-nothing set of rules?
(2) A structured set of separate polls (one for each question) might gather more information than a single yay/nay on a single set of rules. Take 'em or leave 'em. Yes there are growing pains with DU now, and there will therefore be a tendency to do something, anything, to rectify the problems. Passing a "package" of perhaps unrelated rules might backfire, if one rule nobody likes is "baked in" but people feel compelled to just vote the whole package through because it's "better than nothing". Just because our politicians like to just throw us a bone, and just because we're used to it, doesn't mean our on-line voting systems should be so uninspired.
Other, longer-duration polling systems with more choices than a single 'YES/NO' might gather better, richer input: we could propose different rule-sets, have a primary to nominate a small set of rule-sets, and then vote on the best rule set. The familiar primary/general voting sequence might engage people's attention better, because holding some debates and primaries would be clearer and more "official" than just having some threads up and then a poll.

As someone else mentioned, it should also be possible to have a trial period. In the same vein, why not try out a few different rule-sets. This is one of the advantages of the virtual world: you can implement different alternatives very easily and have some real-time experience before you finally choose among them.

There is a lot of wisdom already in this on-line community as to what needs to be done - was this wisdom tapped in a structured fashion for this vote or just via some threads?

For example, there already seems to be a lot of splintering based on rule 5. Maybe we could explore what this means, and maybe a different rule 5 is needed. Right now Rule 5 is just a problem - people are voting for a package they don't feel entirely comfortable with. Could Rule 5 be an opportunity? I see it as an opportunity to discuss the splintering of topics into multiple threads. The solution being proposed is structurally the most drastic: locking and pruning. Even just consolidating would be better than that (and that is sort of what we're already doing ourselves when we lock a thread and at the end give a pointer back to the main thread.)

In this humble "workaround" - locking a thread and redirecting everyone - lies the seeds of the solution. We want a way to allow multiple threads to not only split, but also to combine. This could be so easy to implement more "officially" in software, say by "grouping" threads into a category.

This is what I mean when I say "we have the experience". We know what the problems are. If we persist in viewing our software as static, as engraved in stone, we lose the benefits of being a virtual community. We should accept as a given that our software needs to evolve. The evolution should not fall 100% into "give more work/power to the moderators" or "forbid the users from doing certain things". Let's put the software to work for us and turn these "problems" into opportunities. I for one would be very fascinated, both as a new or experienced user, coming to a bulletin board where there were several hundred threads on the topic of "Treasongate" or the "Plame affair". Some would be talking legal strategy in DC, some would be talking vis-a-vis the impact to our WMD program (as Ms. Plame was an WMD specialist), some would be talking Novak, some would be talking history the CIA, and some would be talking Whodunnit. This is an amazing opportunity for "self-organization" if we just add a "category" for our threads and figure out a way to maintain a small, but evolving set of categories. So much less work for the mods anyways if it's just a question of "Let me stick this Treasongate thread in a category" versus "Alas, such a wonderful thread but I have to lock it" - knowing that it will then drop to the bottom of the bulletin board!

We know what the problems with this bb are (and how to "game" it). Couldn't we have a monthlong "Forum" devoted to "Evolution of DU" so we could all propose some ideas on this? The idea of this type of meta-forum is well-established in on-line communities.

Gather more info from the voters
(3)Isn't anyone curious to see how the proposed 5 rules RANK among each other? Instant Runoff Voting is discussed so much by many people here - and we can implement it and show how well it works. As a "social software"-based community, it would be really cool if we could show leadership and innovate and see if better voting structures yield better systems. If we were to demonstrate that, it would be a strong piece of evidence that could help advance important political debates we care about.

Why show me the results before *I'VE* even voted?
(4) Seeing how everyone else voted the minute you come to the page is a bit disconcerting. For people who are accustomed to NOT officially knowing how everyone else has voted the minute they step into the booth. Could a more private approach be implemented? Even the web-pollers we're familiar with like CNN don't offer the results until you vote. It would seem that could subtly or unconsciously influence the voter.

Yeah, I was gonna vote NO and I was depressed when I came in and saw it was 2:1 in favor of YES.

- S

#34 in particular persuaded me.
"Rules", like rulers have to be clear and precise. It would be hard to write a "Rule" more ambiguous than # 4?
I've found that factual history about the Catholic hierarchy infuriates several supposedly Liberal Catholics at DU, not because it is untrue, but because they think their church is entitled to the immunity from criticism and prosecution it has enjoyed for years in America's mainstream media and polite society (but not in Europe, where Europeans know that history better). So is truth inflamatory when it isn't flattering to your sacred cow?

And here you are, pulling it in this thread.

No wonder I'm always having to defend my faith . . .

every DUer should send just 2 or 3 personal messages to other DUers who they believe may not have voted. Ask them to vote no, and state your case. Many have still not voted...we can still defeat these rules with just a tiny amount of effort!

It's kind of funny though. I remember seeing things posted on http://atrios.blogspot.com (a very respected political blog) which are pithy to the point of bodyless - just a subject line.

Sort of a "No comment". Or "untitled".

A very valid form of expression, probably also exploited (more out of necessity) by photographers and probably many visual artists. Quite flattering to the viewer if they "get it" - quite prophylactic against some cases of "verborrhea" as well.

The work is certainly already quoted once. One rare occasions, that framing may be quite sufficient commentary.

In short, the Zen-like, "empty" message can be quite eloquent at times. Yes, confusing to newbies or the naive - but perhaps that's not such a bad thing. There have after all been some arguments on this thread nostalgic for a bygone "quality". Allowing bare quoting as a rhetorical device would probably only enrich our expressiveness - while arbitrarily outlawing it is probably unnecessary.

In short. This question of "style", Rule 3, is oddly out-of-place in a list of other rules which address much weightier issues.

I'm too many years old and I am not sure that I know US papers well enough to be sure which are considered conservative and which aren't.

Unfortunately this rule does allows too much to the Greens. Frankly I don't see anything new about these rules now that the part that forbids Green campaigning has been scrubbed. I don't have a problems with Greens posting, but I do have a problem when they try to use this board to defeat Democrats.

Thus I vote no.

...whew...how the prejudices sneak out at the most unlikely places.

but Jiacinto I think you are carrying this green thing way to far....Do you have bad dreams about greens or something????? It seem a bit far fetched to me.

that the point of these new rules was something other than easing your mind concerning the DU Green Menace.

Aye.

Help your buddy Ralph reform the whole system?

OOPS! I forgot!

...only because I have read the rules, and read what everyone is saying about the rules and have to agree with everyone who is voting no.

I feel rule number 2 is too harsh. We all have a different style of writing and trying to rein in someones punctuation is being a little too excessive.

I do feel however that cutting the use of profanity in the subject line of a thread is all fine, but telling someone to cut it out in the thread itself is again, going overboard.

I also feel with rule number 2 that you guys are going to actually make DU something it shouldn't be. I mean, we see rhetoric and flame wars on a daily basis, but it is those threads which make DU unique, because we are all expressing our different views, and threads will get heated. If a person doesn't like what he/she is seeing, then simply walk away. If we are all adults around here, then we will walk away.

As for the other rules, well everyone else has truly said how I felt, and I really don't need to express on that.

"Category Tags" at Start of Thead Headlines Would Allow Meaningful Sorting/Bundling with Existing Software

Elsewhere on this thread I have proposed a solution to the overproliferation problem by "bundling" messages into categories.

Unfortunately, this would be a software change requiring adding a new "Category" column to the bulletin board, and would take some time programming.

For the moment, this concept of "Category Tags" could be piloted WITHOUT changing the software at all - by instead "shoehorning" the Category into the first part of the Subject field, like some offices do with their email systems.

If we agree, by convention, that thread SUBJECTs should start with a generic heading in curly brackets (braces), which we could then sort on to get threads categorized, then it would avoid many of the thread-overproliferation headaches, while not squelching people's freedom to post a radical new angle to a topic.

These subject categories could even be sort of self-policing, designed in a grassroots way: When you feel the urge to post something, sort the threads BY TOPIC and take a look at what's out there. If you want to end up in the right group of threads, you better make sure you prefix the right Category onto the start of the subject.

For example, look at the following thread headlines, each of which incorporates a new "category tag" at the beginning in curly brackets (braces):

{Recall/Arnold/Women-Admits} Why I'm not satisfied with Arnold's admission of
{Recall/Arnold/Shriver} NBC is going to give Maria Shriver back her job!
{Recall/Arnold-Arianna} Check out this really funny animation Arianna did!
{Recall/Arianna-Dropout} Why I think it's a good thing Arianna dropped out
{Recall/Arianna-Dropout} I can't BELIEVE Arianna isn't running any more!
{Recall/Arnold/History} The Repubs must be so furious a "social liberal" Repub is running
{Recall/Arnold/Issues} Why isn't Arnold talking about his stand on any issues?
{Recall/Issa/History} Was this guy really a car thief who also sold car alarms?
{Recall/Arnold/History} Arnold's father was a Nazi!
{Recall/Arnold/History} It doesn't really matter who Arnold's father was

{Limbaugh/ESPN-Resign} HAHAHA
{Limbaugh/ESPN-Resign} ESPN made the right choice
{Limbaugh/ESPN-McNabb} I like how McNabb handled himself on this
{Limbaugh/ESPN-NFL} Here's the address to the NFL! Tell them what you think!
{Limbaugh/ESPN-Sponsors} Here's the list of sponsors of ESPN! Tell them what you think!
{Limbaugh/Drugs} Who wore the wire? Any guesses/rumors?
{Limbaugh/Drugs} Is this a ploy to distract us from Plame?
{Limbaugh/Drugs} Here's Limbaugh complaining about the SCLM on his show today!

{NYTimes/Dowd/Plame} Maureen Dowd's column on the Plame Affair (NYT)
{NYTimes/Brooks} This guy is such a loser, why did the Times hire him? (NYT)
{NYTimes/Friedman-French} Wow Friedman's really cracking up now! (NYT)
{NYTimes/Friedman-French/Palast} MUST READ "French-Fried Friedman" by Gregory Palast!
{WaPo/Pincus-Plame} Why hasn't Walter Pincus weighed in yet on the Plame affair?

{BBV/Intro} Summary of basic issues involved in Black Box Voting
{BBV/GA/SoS} Meeting with Georgia Secretary of State Today
{BBV/Diebold/GEMS} This is why the GEMS system sucks
{BBV/Diebold/GEMS} Actually the GEMS system does what it's supposed to do
{BBV/Diebold/ATMs} Why do Diebold's ATMs give reciepts and their voting machines don't?
{BBV/Diebold/CA/SLO} San Luis Obispo County votes were modemed to Diebold HQ!
{BBV/Diebole/CA/SLO} Who is "sophia"?
{BBV/SAIC-Report} SAIC report released
{BBV/SAIC-Bechtel} SAIC's tie's to Bechtel
{BBV/SAIC-Rubin} Comparison of SAIC and Rubin reports

{Dean/Issues-Environment} Dean's environmental record in Vermont
{Dean/Issues-Gay} Is Dean really so hot on gay marriage?
{Dean/Bush/Yale} Are both Dean and W "Skull and Bones"?
{Dean/Campaign-Internet} How Dean is harnessing the Internet
{Deam/Campaign-Fundraising} I think Dean's setting his 3Q targets too high
{Dean/Issues-Iraq} Has Dean's Iraq position evolved?
{Russert/Dean-Cheney} Why is Russert so hard on Dean and so easy on Cheney?
{Clark/Dean/Issues-ForeignPolicy} Clark stronger than Dean on Defense
{Clark/Dean/Issues-ForeignPolicy} Dean stronger than Clark on Defense

{Plame/Novak-Legal} Lock up Novak!
{Plame/Novak-Legal} Journalistic privilege is more important - Don't lock up Novak!
{Plame/Novak-Legal} Back in 1997 Novak REVEALED a source
{Plame/Novak-Whodunnit} Who told Novak?
{Plame/Cheney} This HAD to come from Cheney's office
{Plame/Ashcroft} Ashcroft's NEVER gonna get an independent counsel
{Plame/Ashcroft} Strategies for getting Ashcroft to name an independent counsel
{Plame/Gonzales} Why the 11-hour "shredding" delay?
{Plame/Other} My theory on HOW it got to be general knowledge all over DC
{Plame/Ashcroft/Recusal-Rove} Rove used to campaign for Ashcroft - Ashcroft should recuse
{Plame/Ashcroft/SpecialCounsel-History} In 1997 Aschcroft was in FAVOR of a special counsel to go after Gore on ONE alleged issue
{Plame/Ashcroft/SpecialCounsel-Strategy} Which GOP senators might cross the aisle??

What I'm getting at here is a little more discipline in naming threads - discipline as much as possible from the BOTTOM-UP, not the TOP-DOWN. Skinner surely doesn't want the headaches and we don't want the annoyance of him having to battle against an overproliferation of threads that need to be locked or merged or appended. Let's do the categorizing ourselves as much as possible.

Someday we might get an additional column in the threads to store one (or more) categories/subcategories in, if the software can be modified.

Until then, there's nothing stopping us from imposing this simple discipline ourselves, and reaping the benefits of MEANINGFULLY SORTABLE THREAD HEADLINES.

A very GENERIC heading at the start, in curly brackets (braces), could be a sort of category. If we follow this discipline, (or impose it as a rule: "Put a very dry, simple, formatted generic category in curly brackets at the head of potentially dupe threads on GD") it would leave the power and the responsibilty for managing threads in the best place - in the Poster's hands.

Just like we're willing to have rules on posting new threads, we could have rules on formulating Category Tags. Proper nouns up front, generic nouns at the end. Skinner or mods allowed to rejigger the order of the Category Tag elements if it messes up the Sort order. (Alphabetic rules might help here too. Threads comparing 2 candidates could start with their names, alphabetized, separated by a slash.

Or just do an intial Supercategory

{RECALL:}

and then do persons - people's names (alpha) and then places (alpha) and then concepts things (alpha) after that.

{RECALL:Arianna}
{RECALL: Davis}
{RECALL:Arianna/Arnold}
{RECALL:Arnold/Women}

The point is, if we come up with a category-tagging system that's easy enough to use that most poeple can figure out how to tag their thread, then we can sort the threads into groups and navigate through the whole thing better.

Probably a main tag at the front with the remaining tags alpha-sorted would give a simple system that people could use easily.

{RECALL:___/____/_____}
{LIMBAUGH:____/_____/_____}
{PLAME:_____/______/_____}
{BBV:_____/______/_____}

{DEANvsCLARK:______/______/______}
{CLARKvsKERRY:_____/______/______}
{DEANvsKUCINICH:_______/_______/______}

This format would be easy to learn and would really help organize our growing bulletin board - with no additional programming required. And this format would mostly fix what Rule 5 is trying to fix!

...we only post here. The owners of the board can make up any rules they wish. It's nice of them to use a democratic process to get the posters involved.

- The problem is that the BIGGER the board grows...the more difficult it becomes to maintain some semblence of order. Thus...rules are born.

while allowing us to convince other DUers to do the same. Thus...unnecessary rules are blocked.

(1) I did use the word "our" when referring to this bulletin board. That was not an act of appropriation or arrogation - it simply reflects a sense of "belonging" to a community.

I think it is a real compliment to the founders of this board that people are referring to it as "our" board. This indicates a real sense of involvement, of being "stakeholders". Skinner and any other people who have done so much work designing and implementing this board aimed at promoting participatory democracy should be mighty proud people are reflexively referring to it as "our" board.

(2) I am not an anti-rules person - in fact, my proposal for a better way to implement rule 5 - via CATEGORY TAGS - is really a faily complicated rule.

I think the rule of prefixing each thread-headline with a curly-bracketed "category tag" like so:

{Plame: Novak/Sources}
{Plame: Novak/Rove}
{Plame: Ashcroft/Recusal}
{Plame: Cheney}

{Limbaugh: ESPN/Resign}
{Limbaugh: ESPN/McNabb}
{Limbaugh: ESPN/NFL}

would be a better way of solving the thread-overproliferation problem, without introducing a new problem of people feeling hemmed in by not being able to post, or pissed off because their posts get deleted or merged or appended or re-titled.

The "anything goes" approach where "there should be no rules" is way too simplistic, I agree. Just because I am against the rules currently proposed does not mean I am against rules in general, as you can see by the rule I proposed. I agree that rules are necessary to manage the growth of this board. This doesn't mean that we should simply run out and embrace just any new rules without carefully considering the alternatives and the impacts.

Skinner says:

"The moderators have the authority to aggressively lock or remove threads which violate these rules. Admittedly, the determination of which threads are inflammatory is completely subjective. When a thread is shut down, members have a responsibility to respect the decision the moderators make."

Subjective decisions may favor a candidate I oppose in the primaries and MAY harm one I favor.

I think that is probably true for ALL candidates.

I may actually prefer the results if the YES votes win. But if a moderator favors someone I oppose then their candidates may get more leeway or preference.

It might be good to have a poponent of EACH candidate as a moderator and have a majority vote of the mods to delete.

I prefer locking to deleting as at least the reason or rationale for the locking can be clear.

when posts are disappeared it is impossible for many of us to know what flies and what does not.

In any case -- I hope whatever happens MY preferred candidates are not the victims of subjective locking and especially subjective deletions.

Restraint by the mods is encouraged.

first, a bunch of crybabies get this vote thing to happen

second, the vote thing happens but with a new set of rules

third, the vote gets worked over

fourth, the crybabies win with the minority margin

fifth, i begin a lecture series in gd about how limiting the paradigm is....

i voted no

I like the new rules; the Administration on DU is great, as are the Mods. You are wonderful people for providing this forum and making it work.

and with just 250 more votes, we will be the landslide victors! :thumbsup:

"The Commitee have found you, Number Six, Unmutual and Disharmonius and
have sentenced you to undergo Instant Social Conversion by perminent
dislocation of the agressive prefrontal lobes of the brain"

Sad. That anyone who dislikes what I have to say and the way I say it can
"turn me in" to a moderator and have my post deleted.

.. and then we ask why Bush assumes he can take away freedoms in benefit of 'security', but this is indeed the symptom of a national sickness that spreads quickly. Everyone is eager to be restrained under the subjective restrictions of an elite.


Thats not democracy. Just an agreement dictatorship

in everything and everywhere not this free for all, everything goes it only invites the opposition and making most not want to be here anymore so we all need a YES!
A Big Yes To Go For It! :-)

but if you follow Skinner's advice at the top of the new rules:

If you treat other people with respect, and if you frame your messages in a way that will facilitate quality discussion, you are unlikely to run afoul of these rules.

you need not worry at all about restrictng your freedom of expression.

DemEx

What I just heard: "If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be bothered a whit by any silly worries about your civil liberties."

Knee-jerk reaction? Yes. But you sent a genuine chill down my spine, D-Ex. Literally. Honestly.

privately owned and operated!

What is so spine-chilling about them having some rules to TRY to keep the board operating in the manner in which they intended it to be used?
:eyes:


DemEx

Please excuse the ALL-CAPS! But I worked really hard on this and I'm posting in-thread and I want to get your attention! That's not a violation of the new rules I hope!

If you're pressed for time, scroll to the end of this post and check out the {Plame} and {Limbaugh} and {Iraq - WMD} sections and tell me if that doesn't obviate the need for Rule 5!

These are the top 200 hot (latest updated) GD topics (from today's forum), and many have lots of subtopics.

Rather than collapsing the threads together (and making super long threads) or locking them (and annoying some poeple and making some perfectly good threads sink to oblivious), the ORIGINAL POSTER has the responsibility of prefixing the thread headline with a "Category" so it sorts in with the other threads. Order is achieved, chaos and overwhelmingness are mostly eliminated, diversity is preserved without sacrificing "hotness".

We are currently in the midst of a vote (closing Friday Noon I hear) regarding new rules for the General Discussion forum. One of these proposed Rules, #5, has been a "dealbreaker" for many people, who say they like the other four rules but they can't live with Rule 5.

Rule 5 tries to address the problem of "overproliferation" of similar threads by telling users not to create a new Discussion Group thread if an existing one already is on the first page. Although this may seem like a good idea at first glance to many people, it does have some serious drawbacks. People are concerned about the potential loss to diversity in GD, about discouraging participation and involvement, disgruntlement among thread-initiators who feel their thread shouldn't have been locked or subordinated to another thread or deleted, etc.

Below is a real-life example of an alternative proposal to fix the "thread overproliferation" - category tags. The idea is to add a very generic description of the thread, falling within a limited number of broad categories. You can think of this as "filing this thread under" a particular category.

It would be great to see this new "category tag" as a full-fledged column, next to the existing columns Title, Author, #Replies (and the old columns Avg Rating and #Views). However, in the meantime, we can simply adopt the convention of "filing threads under a category" by sticking on a "category tag" of the headline on all new tags.

Yes this eats up some space in the Title, and yes there may be some confusion about what category to file a new thread under. One way to deal with this would be to look at the existing threads out there (once a few have been categorized) and see where your new thread might best fit in. Another thing might be to allow the moderators to "recategorize" a miscategorized thread after it's been posted. This would certainly be a lot less drastic that other solutions being bandied about, such as locking, merging, or appending.

I've made a more extended argument about this new idea of "category tags" in the top thread to GD, where the vote is currently taking place. Below, I've categorized some actual threads (over 200 of them, out of the 400 currently on pages 1-20 of GD).

Take a look and see if this would help you to navigate the growing complexity of DU better!

This is a counter-proposal to rule 5 in the current rules vote, going on till noon Friday. Therefore, I voted AGAINST the whole set of rules. Many other voters also feel that Rule 5 was preventing them from voting for the overall package of rules. The "category tags" suggestion is an attempt to resolve the problem rule 5 tries to address, without causing other problems such as overlong threads, confusion, or annoyance.

Please look at the real-life example below for a suggested alernative solution to the problem cites in proposed Rule (5) of this voting thread.

Below are revised Titles for the first 200 actual threads now in the DU General Discussion forum. These Titles have been modified to include a new Category Tag at the start.

{04 Dems - USA | Endorse | CPUSA} Communist Party USA endorses democrats in 04!

{04 Dems - USA | Graham} Graham to be the first to fall?

{04 Dems - USA | What if no Dean, Clark?} If you took Dean and Clark out of the equation who would you vote for?

{04 Dems - USA | What if no Kucinich?} If you took Dennis Kucinich out of the equation, who would you vote for?

{Appointees, Gov | Indust Rel, Sex Harrass} Governor appointees/ Industrial Relations/ Sexual Harrassment

{Arnold | Con Con} Anyone else cringing a bit at the Sliming of Schwargenegger?

{Arnold | Pro} I hate to say it, but Arnold gave the right response

{Arnold | Pro?} Why are there two posts on the front page that seem to mitigate the Arnold

{Arnold | Women | Admission} So Arnold has admitted to many acts of forcing himself onto women now?

{Arnold | Women} Arnold: "Have you ever had a man slide his tongue in your ... ?"

{Arnold | Women} Arnold:"I want to... be... CHAMPION OF THE WOMEN"

{Arnold v Davis | Survey} 2003 SurveyUSA Election Polls - Davis in freefall, Arnold surging

{Bartcop | Hot} Bartcop on fire today!!!

{BBV | CA | Mendocino} BBV: Updated voting system on its way (Mendocino CA - Diebold TS)

{BBV | Cartoons | Troubletown} BBV: making the CARTOONS now.... enjoy Troubletown

{BBV | DIY | Congress Book} BBV: A Book For Every Person in Congress- We Can Do This!

{BBV | Media - Ithaca Times | Polls} BBV: Poll Perils (Ithaca Times NY)

{BBV | OH | Licking} BBV: Board moving forward with e-voting (Licking Cnty OH picks Sequoia TS)

{Biden-Kerry Amdmt} will the Dems be able to pass the Biden amendment?

{Bush Admin | Scott Ritter | Rove} Did the Bush Admin screw with Scott Ritter? It smells like Rove and Co..

{CA Recall | Arnold | Home Repairs} Arnold's Home Repairs: quite the expose...

{CA Recall | Arnold | Motives} Arnie looks at the CA prize as his one-way ticket to Hedonism Valhalla

{CA Recall | Arnold v Far Right} California's far right campaigns against Schwarzenegger

{CA Recall | Davis} So, Do You Think Davis Will Get Recalled?

{CA Recall | Ralph Nader} Ralph Nader opinion on California ?

{CA Recall Arnold | Future | Bush Money?} Anyone else think Bush will infuse California w/money after Ahnold wins?

{California Recall | Impact | BBV, 04} Arnold wins...Bush takes California in '04 (via BBV)

{California Recall | Shriver | Insensitive?} Insensitive Shriver?

{Cartoons | Mike Luckovich} Great Cartoon from Mike Luckovich

{Cartoons} incoming TOONS!!!!!!!! (heads up, they're **leaking**)

{Carville} Gotta love Carville

{China | Currency | Bush} * doesn't like China's currency?

{CIA Operative | Quote} Great quote from a senior CIA operative

{CIA v WH} thoughts on CIA vs. WH

{Clark | Democrat?} Did Clark lie about being a democrat? Consider this:

{Clark | Rebub?} Why it is just fine that Clark voted for and recently praised Repukes.

{Clark | TPM} After reading TPM's interview with Clark today, I'm switching to Clark!

{Clark | TPM Interview} After reading TPM's interview with Clark, I Cannot Support Clark!

{Clark v Kerry} I'll vote for John Kerry before I ever vote for Wes Clark

{Clark v Lieberman} Clark? Why not Lieberman?

{Clark-Biden} My dream ticket: Clark-Biden 2004

{Clinton v Limbaugh | I Feel Your Pain} Clinton felt other people's pain while Rush felt no pain.

{Congress - Votes | Partial Birth | Dems} Will any Dems skip the partial birth ban vote?

{Coulter} Is Coulter next?

{Coulter/North | Boy Scouts} Coulter and North talk to the Boy Scouts - really

{Dean | Democrat?} Hey, Hey,Govenor Dean, show us your registration as a democrat!

{Dean + Clark | Lovefest?} What happened to the Dean/Clark lovefest

{Debates | Nader} Since the DNC Allows Non-Dems in Debates, Ralph Nader Should Join In

{Dem Nomination | Definition} What is the 2004 Democratic nomination battle really about?

{Dems | Definition} The Democratic Party is a MODERATE party

{Dems | Personal} Yea for me!!! I just voted Democrat for the first time in my life!!!

{Do-Not-Call | Day in the life} A Telemarketer's First Day On The Do-Not-Call List.

{DU | Clark} Have most DUers jumped of the Clark wagon?

{DU | Mods | Jeffords, Skinner} Carl Jeffords to replace Skinner on WLS

{DU | Trifecta} Hey DU -- WE HIT THE TRIFECTA

{DU | TV} Hey! Anybody thinking about pitching a DU show

{DU | Vote | GD} RE-VOTE! Do you support the proposed rules for the GD forum?

{DU - GD | Rules - Vote | Turnout} if there are 30000 of us, why have less than 600 voted?

{DU-GD | Rules} The "new rules" discussion thread.

{Econ | Doom} The end of the consumer economy is approaching... OR

{Election 2000 | Status} Nothing has changed since the terrible rt-wing coup 'election day'

{Energy | Free} No more electric bills?

{Energy & Trans | Cheap Hybrids | Toyota} Hybrids Can Be Cheap to Make, Toyota Says

{Enviro | Deforest & Politics} Deforestation and politics

{EPA | Leavitt | Confirm} Can the senate just PLEASE affirm Leavitt to the EPA?

{ESPN | Sucks} ESPN SUCKS TOO

{Eureka | Repub to Dem} My Political Transition from GOP to Democrat

{FR | 9/11 Victims} Do Freepers mourn/honor the liberals who died on 9/11?

{FR | Boycotts | Campbells} Freepers now trying to boycott Campbell's soup

{FR | Funny} More Freeper frothing. So funny I had to share it.

{FR | Moods} Freepers in despair!!

{FR | Rush | Hillary} This is a whopper. Freeper on a Rush thread with exclusive Hillary info

{Gays | Canada v US | Couple Barred} Lawmakers Demand Answers To Gay Couple's Refused Entry To US

{George Will | Admin is wrong} George Will says Administration should admit it was wrong

{Guns & Drinking | Legislation} Victory for drunken gun-toters.

{Help! | CA} Fellow Californians, help a baby Democrat, please?

{HollywoodLibs | ABC | Threat Matrix} Hollywood Liberals "attack" ABC's Threat Matrix

{Iraq | Budget | WMD} * wants 600 million more for his WMD search

{Iraq | Budget | WMDs} Should Congress give Bush another $600 Million to hunt Iraq WMD's?

{Iraq | Personal} "I just came back from Iraq, it's a disaster......."

{Iraq | War | Personal} I helped kill American soldiers in Iraq!

{Iraq - Intel | Flawed?} "it will be unfortunate" if intelligence used to justify war was flawed

{Iraq - WMD | Doubters} To all who Doubted the WMD Claims....

{Iraq - WMD | Jay Rockefeller} Jay Rockefeller's Comments on David Kay

{Iraq - WMD | Kay | CNN} David Kay is on CNN

{Iraq - WMD | Kay Report} David Kay Reports!

{Iraq - WMD | Rumsfeld | "We know where"} Rumsfeld quote: "We know where WMDs are. Tikrit & Baghdad"

{Iraq - WMD | Where?} $900 million to search for WMD and they have found nothing

{Karen Hughes | Speech} More BS From Karen Hughes' Speech This Week (She Gets Her Rep Wrong)

{Kobe Bryant | Media - Timing} Here Comes Kobe Bryant Again - Right On Time!

{Kucinich | Electable} Kucinich is not "unelectable" and deep down you know it

{Labels | Liberal-Elitist} am I being a "liberal elitist" if I really, truly believe . . .

{Larry Johnson | Interview - 09/2003 | Transcript} Transcript of Buchanan & Press interview w/ Larry Johnson

{Letters | Ashcroft | MoveOn} Your letter to Ashcroft (add your text to MoveOn's)

{Letters | LA Times} My letter to the LA Times - let's see if it's printed

{Letters | Printed} OH YEA!!! My LTTE is getting printed

{Limbaugh | Clark, Dean} Clark, Dean Urge Rush Limbaugh's Firing (AP)--AND WHY THIS MATTERS

{Limbaugh | Clear Channel} Clear Channel/Rush question

{Limbaugh | Drug Bust | Coverage} Are the news stations mentioning Rush's drug problems?

{Limbaugh | Drug Bust | Dialog} Will the Rush story change the national dialogue on drugs?

{Limbaugh | Drug Bust | Housekeeper} Limbaugh E-MAILED his housekeeper about the drug deals!

{Limbaugh | Drug Bust | Housekeeper} Limbaugh's housekeeper supplied the drugs... now I wonder...

{Limbaugh | Drug Bust | Housekeeper} The Maid Made Me Do It!

{Limbaugh | Drug Bust} Rush Limbaugh on drugs

{Limbaugh | Drugs - Legalization} Limbaugh on Legalization

{Limbaugh | DU | Email} Didn't I just see a thread about Limbaugh's E-mail?

{Limbaugh | FR} Freepers and Rushbo

{Limbaugh | Hearing Loss | Drug Bust?} Rush's hearing loss: Drug related?

{Limbaugh | Pro} In defence of Rush

{Limbaugh | Replacement | Sean Vanity} Wonder If Sean Vanity is salivating over becoming the new Rush.

{Limbaugh | Sched} Rush hosting talk show tonight?

{Limbaugh | Sched} Rush is supposedly going to do a show TONIGHT from 6-8

{Limbaugh | Strategy} Although I love the Rush develpments, we can't lose focus

{Limbaugh | Victim?} Rush and the 'victim' card

{Limbaugh} As long as we're piling onto Rish Limbaugh...

{Limbaugh} Don't you all think that Rush should get some of that special treatment

{Limbaugh} Rush has caught it! He's caught the WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH!

{Limbaugh - ESPN | Resign | Timing} Rush and His Timeing?

{Limbaugh - ESPN | Humor} Limbaugh: A Color Man Who Has A Problem With Color?

{Limbaugh/Rove} STOP POSTING ABOUT LIMBAUGH. This is what ROVE, LIMBAUGH

{Lingo | Frog March} What's "frog marching"?

{Live - Bill O'Reilly} AHHH! - Listening to Bill O'Reilly on the radio right now.

{Live - CNN | Terry McAuliffe} Terry McAuliffe (sp) On CNN

{Live - Congress | Vote | Biden-Kerry Amdmt} Biden vote at 3:45pm! Speaking now. Watch Rethugs vote it down...

{Lingo | -Gate } Whats your favorite gate?Leakgate,Pillgate,Gropgate,McNabbgate

{Live - NPR | Fresh Air} anyone listening to fresh air on NPR?

{Live - CSPAN | Biden} Biden is on C-Span 2 now

{Live - CSPAN | Hillary | Biden-Kerry Amdmt} Now Hillary is on C-Span talking about the Biden Amendment. She is,

{Live - CSPAN | Kerry | Biden-Kerry Amdmt} Kerry speaking now on C-Span2 on Biden-Kerry amendment...12:38PM now

{Live - CSPAN2 | Leahy} Leahy HOT - - under the collar. C-Span 2 NOW

{Lucianne} Just Returned From Lucianne.Com

{Media/Truth/War | CIA Propaganda} first casualty of war is truth in media. CIA propaganda

{MemeAlert | Family Values} It's not about family values anymore.

{MemeAlert | RW | Haters} The New Right-Wing media scam: "Haters"

{Michael Moore | Book} Wow! Just finished Michael Moore's upcoming new book...

{Misc | Personal} Fell asleep at my desk, had this strange dream

{Misc} By what right?

{Misc} I Don't Know if Anyone Has Posted This

{Misc} Just read this...

{Misc} This poor bastard has the worst job in the world

{Movie | SymbolMan} Dressed like Cheney I take over Santa Barbara - A New Flash movie!

{NH | Libertarians} YO NH, look out for moving trucks. Incoming Libertarians !

{Norquist | NPR - Fresh Air} Grover Norquist interview on Fresh Air NPR

{NRA-Repubs | Mailing List} NRA sells (gives?) mailing list to Republican Party!!

{O'Reilly - Clark | Bashing} Anyone see O'Reilly bash Clark?

{Patriot Act | Chicago City Council} Chicago City Council says "no" to Patriot Act.

{Plame | Background} What lies behind CIA leak scandal

{Plame | Bush | Humor} Will Bush Plead for his Life Like Karla Faye?

{Plame | Bush | Impact} Don't tell ME that the Wilson/Plame affair will destroy Bush.

{Plame | Cheney} White House Leak? Maybe it was Cheney...

{Plame | CNN | Coverage} CNN - there is a cancer spreading in this administration

{Plame | Crossfire} Crossifre: Leaks, Probes & Politics

{Plame | Investigation | Prediction} Leak investigation is likely to expand

{Plame | Legal | Sentencing} Is ten years and 50 grand adequate punishment for outing Plame?

{Plame | NatSec v Politics} This is National Security Not politics

{Plame | Probe | Scope} Leak Probe May Expand Beyond White House

{Plame | Skull & Bones} W's Skull & Bones brother to oversee leak investigation?????

{Plame | Spec Pros | Strategy} ***Three Quick and Easy ways to Demand a Special Prosecuter

{Plame | Whodunnit?} George Bush is looking for the real leaker.

{Plame | Whodunnit | Cheney} It Was Dick Cheney!:

{Plame | Whodunnit | Cheney} Wilson was said to have been sent by VP. Who would Novak call?

{Plame | Whodunnit | Perle} Would Richard Perle know Mrs. Wilson's CIA status?

{Plame | Whodunnit | WH} Last night, graphic on CNN: "White House Tries to Flush Out Mole"

{Plame - Gonzales | Warning | Whodunnit?} Who Warned Gonzales of the FBI Investigation

{Plame - Novak | Revealing sources} Novak revealed a source in 1998 -- Robert Hanssen!!

{Plame - Novak | Whodunnit | Obvious} Identity of Novak's 1st (leaker) source under our noses all along!

{Plame - Novak | Journ Priv?} Does this mean that Novak can be put in prison until he reveals his source

{PNAC | Clark | TMP, Sun} The New York Sun, PNAC, Josh Marshall, TPM and CLARK

{PNAC | Clinton & Monica} PNAC and Clinton and Monica

{Poll | Clark | Moles} 39% of DUer's responded that they too are wary of moles around Clark

{Poll | Clinton | Humor} WWBCD? What would Clinton Do and a poll to DU

{Poll | Spectrum} Poll:Are you a Centrist, Liberal or Far Left Whacko?

{Pope | Illness} Pope nearing death

{Protest - LA | CA Recall | Anti Arnold} LA Protest against Arnold!

{Rally - CA - Oakland | Stop 9/11 Coverup} Stop the 9/11 Cover-Up Rally - Oakland CA - 10/7

{Real Life | Conv with Repub Classmate} My conversation with a Repug Classmate today, FUNNY!

{Right Wing | Moods} Right Wingers are SO FORGIVING

{Rove | Media | Attacking} All of the major news channels are creaming Pigboy...

{Rove | Prediction} Do Dreams Come True?---Karl Rove in Deep Do-Do

{Rush | Bone in Nose | Regret} From the Daily Howler: Rush felt guilty for saying "take that bone out of

{Saudi Fundamentalism | US} Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in U.S.

{Sean Hannity | Pig Boy} Is Sean Hannity drooling over PigBoy's corpse?

{SF Gate | Changes | Dems} SF Gate omits dems and changes stories.

{Sports | Sox-Cubs | Mariner Fan} This sentimental Mariner fan is sappy enough to wish for a Sox-Cubs Series

{Steve Kangas | CIA Atrocities} A Timeline of CIA Atrocities, by Steve Kangas

{Strategy | Collaborate with RW?} Is it ever right to collaborate with the right wing??

{Strategy | Dems} Dems haven't fought back because...

{Trends | Dialog | Bad News for RW} IsnÕt it fascinating how the dialog changes when thereÕs bad news for *.

{Trends | Good Week} Has This Been A Good News Week For Us Or What.

{TV - West Wing | Fair Time} Did you catch the new "rightwing fair time" last night on West Wing??

{USA | Misc} Only one politician in America today could survive...

{Video | Mellencamp} Watch the new Mellencamp video here!! AWESOME

{Video | Smoking Gun Website Name} A video with the smoking gun website name

{W | President?} HEY! Is George W. Bush "The President"?

{WaPo | Coverage} I can't believe this isn't a bigger story. Wash Post story...

{Web Page | White House | Photo} Photo on the White house page

{Web Resources | Senate} Does anyone know of any sites that rank members by seniority in Congress?

{Wesley Clark | George McClellan?} Wesley Clark -- another George McClellan?

{Wesley Clark | No Fly List} Wesley Clark and the "No Fly" List

{WMD v WMD Programs | CNN-Mowbray | RW Shill} RW Shill Mowbray on CNN: WMD Programs SAME AS Actual WMD

{Women | Feminism | Who} WOMEN DEMOCRATS: Who best represents your view of feminism?

{Women} Let's let women rule the world.

No problem really with 1 through 4 as long as they are not enforced TOO LITERALLY (i.e., the spirit in which they are meant should mean more than absolute compliance). But #5 is a problem for these reasons:

1. First, and most obvious, is that the borders of an issue cannot be defined accurately. Also, spin is very important (see #3).

2. Second, it is legitimate for someone to want to start a new discussion around a specific point or proposal, even if the general issue that is already being discussed. This won't work as post #52 on an already existing thread.

For example:

"9/11 Documents Must be Disclosed"

is a different topic from

"How to Get 9/11 Document Disclosure"

There is no way to measure how subtle the difference must be before it is considered the same topic.

Therefore you should give people a chance to start their own topics and let the community decide how quickly a new thread drops out of sight!

3. The title of a thread gives a spin and determines much about how the discussion goes. Two threads may be about the exact same topic but appeal to entirely different groups within the larger community. Thus two different thread titles produce entirely different discussions, although they are about the same issue.

Examples:

"Schwarzenneger's Affairs Irrelevant"

will produce something very different from

"Will Schwarzenneger's Affairs Doom His Candidacy?"

Etc. Etc.

SIMPLE ALTERNATIVE THAT MAY SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF TOO MANY POSTS:

LIMIT THE NUMBER OF POSTS ANY ONE MEMBER CAN START ON GD TO ONE OR TWO A DAY...

"2. The subject line of a discussion thread and the entire text of the message which starts the thread may not include profanity, excessive capitalization, or excessive punctuation."

Are you HIGH? What are we, all childern? Define profanity. Define excessive capitalization and punctuation too. Looks like y'all are begging to have one REALLY boring forum!!!!! And let's just nuke that First Ammendment like we're John Ashcrack, uh oh, could that be construed as PROFANITY? I mean, the word CRACK could very well be interpreted to mean BUTT CRACK!!! Uh oh, the word BUTT too...can't have that. See how REDICULOUS and CHILDISH THIS IS? WE'RE ALL ADULT HERE! I think...

"5. No duplicates or same-topic threads. If there is currently an active thread on the first page of the General Discussion forum about a particular topic, you are forbidden from starting a new thread about the same topic -- even if your new thread provides a different viewpoint or new information. Occasional exceptions will be allowed when an active thread has a large number of posts."

So, lemme get this straight: if there's a breaking story, and two or more people are posting a thread about it, then who's thread wins??? Again, this is just totally assinine.

Pass these rules, and I'll never post here again, and I'll be darn sure to tell every last person I can to not post here as well. Oh no, I said DARN! Another cuss word.

I've just voted no as the only proposed rule in the list that I completely
agreed with is #1 (accurate subject line).

I'm mainly a reader with occasional postings but I've read all of the entries
in this thread (at the time of writing!) and most are reasonably presented.

My disagreements with the other rules are

#2. I agree we should keep the subject lines clean but let the content
stand on its own two feet - excessive swearing/profanity/CAPSLOCKing
or "punctuation"(?!?!) should be politely ignored by adults as an
unfortunate symptom of computer-bound Tourette's syndrome.

#3. Nobody wants to read entries from PNAC fanatics here but the existing
rule 3 would still allow it (post a pro-Rove article and express your
opinion that "it's nice that the truth gets out eventually" ... it's
not desirable but it would be "legal"). A rule that doesn't work is
worse than no rule at all.

#4. I thought the Lounge was the place for vanity threads ... why are they
being allowed in GD too (conditionally or otherwise)? Or was this
intended to mean that contrasting opinions are expressions of vanity?

#5. As stated elsewhere in this thread, identical first posts (e.g., both
referencing the same article URL) are a waste but there are few subjects
of import that do not merit separate threads for distinct aspects.
(e.g., Can you imagine a *single* BBV topic?)
There again, keeping to one topic per candidate would tidy things up
a bit ...


Suggestion: Re-word the generic "Rule #0" and keep to it:

"Treat other people with respect and frame your messages in a way that will
reflects this."

This should be all that sensible people need to keep the forum working.
It is then purely up to the mods to determine if posters (or other mods)
are meeting the spirit of this rule and take appropriate action if necessary.

The first action should always be to contact the poster(s) involved as the
perceived problem may be an innocent error or misunderstanding (remember,
this is a forum with people from a whole range of backgrounds, cultures,
first languages and even countries). If further action is necessary, let the
mods do it. The umpire's decision is final.

Nihil

In any community there must be rules if there is to be civilized behavior. A community may allow uncivilized behavior, but would seek to restrict it to certain circumstances. I think the proposed rules are seeking only those restrictions.

GD is being designed to generate serious discussion of political issues. How can this be unfair, unwise, or undesirable?

The rules apply to GD only.
The rules apply to thread starters only.
The rules are not even overly restrictive anyway.

There would still be many places within DU where one can post any friggin thing they want (almost).

Without the rules, we upset members who desire a civilized conversation.
With the rules, we upset members who desire to, what? Inflame and smear?

I think that all that is being done is to ask members who START threads, to recognize that there is a bit of responsibility that goes with that, and to accept that responsibility and respect the forum and the community that we have here.

:hi:

that is the fallacy of Laws and Rules. Need an example? Just look at our current legal system. The more rules you make, the more rules you need to make to enforce and/or justify the previous rules.

To quote Dire Straits (from Telegraph Road)

"First came the churches,
Then came the schools,
Then came the lawyers,
Then came the RULES,
And that dirty old track, was the Telegraph Road."

It is only enlightened people who intuitively 'do the right thing' that will solve problems. Rules solve nothing, except to drive the enlightened away, and make the lawyers rich.

DUers away.....
I would guess that a more respectful GD will invite more to participate....

DemEx

No rule has ever worked in any way, ever? Seems a bit sweeping to me.
The Professor

Where in my post did I say that no rule has ever worked in any way?

I said they never have the desired effect, which is to alleviate a problem. The problem is people being uncivil, in this case (Please look up my posts, you will find that I am a very civil poster in this regard).

Rules are not a means of curing the problem. That's all I was saying.

on edit:

Name one rule that has a desired effect (removing a problem).
We have laws covering everything from minor offenses to capital crimes. If any of these had truly worked, that is, solved the problem, how come there are still people who are convicted of violating the rules? Do you think that implementing these rules will solve the problem? That is, do you think that after these rules are implemented that there will be no more uncivil posters in GD?
Just curious.

It was in your post title, so i think you did say it. So, i've shown you where you said it.

You repeated it in your reply. The sweeping generalization is the word NEVER. Never is, by definition, an ALL inclusive term.

I don't even disagree with your sentiment, but to suggest that Skinner, et al, try nothing because it may not work is a lot different than to say it will NEVER have the desired effect.

Never is long, long time.
The Professor

and it is pretty unusual for me to make a sweeping generalization, because you're correct in that sweeping generalizations are almost never (there's that word again) true. I think in the case of Rules and Laws, though, that to date it would be applicable. In 5,000 years of documented civilization, even the most totalitarian society, with the most severe punishments for breaking the rules, have not succeeded in eliminating the problem.

I'm a firm believer in social reformation through education. That is, I don't think that Rules and Laws will be the saviours of humanity, but that collective enlightenment is what will be necessary.

I don't deride Skinner, and having been a moderator, I understand the difficulties encountered. I just don't think that trying to enforce civility will work.

Just my two cents.

Actually i was just tweaking you over the "never" thing. In spirit, i concur with your assessment of rules.

However, it can't hurt to try something, given the cesspool GD sometimes becomes. It's not like we all have to have the rules tatooed into our necks. If they don't work Skinner, Elad, and EarlG can just drop them. No harm done.

Sorry for the tweak. I just couldn't resist.
The Professor

<pout> Sure wish I could change my vote.

#5 Needs to be reconsidered. Many valid reasons to vote NO.

I asked Skinner about having a trial period in the Ask Admins forum. His reply:

"I wasn't planning on having a trial period.
But I will say this: If the rules suck, then I'm not going to keep them in place."

I say give it a shot and if the experiment fails, he'll revert back to the current free-for-all. I will note, however, during this voting period, everyone seems to be on their best behavior and there are much fewer flamebaiting posts that led to the consideration of the new rules in the first place.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence. ;-)

Do you support the proposed rules for the General Discussion forum?

Poll result (796 votes)
Yes. (512 votes, 64%)
No. (284 votes, 36%)

Give me a minute. I'll post the rules shortly, and I'm going to post a thread about them.

Please be aware that one of the rules is going to be narrowed significantly -- so make sure you read them after I post them.

I hope that now can be a time for healing some of the anger that has surfaced this week over this issue.

I'm locking this thread.

Skinner
DU Admin