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

[MannyGoldstein]

131. Some juries feel that calling a poster a "ratfucker" is OK.

I was called a "ratfucker" a few months back, which a jury allowed 4-2. I'll be happy to post or send the link if you'd like, but won't do it now as it might cause trouble.

While I believe that these changes are generally quite good, the ratfucker post underscores two problem, I think:

First, I think we're in agreement that calling one-another ratfuckers, along with the other personal attacks that show up from time to time, is simply wrong and shouldn't happen. We should attack ideas, not people, of course.

Second, it points to the "scatter" present in the DU jury system - I'm confident that most juries would have hidden the ratfucker post above, but occasionally there's a jury that deviates substantially from "typical". Many folks seem to feel that this scatter caused one big hullabaloo on Sunday night, as you're likely aware.

Because of this scatter, under the new rules it's reasonably easy to game the system - let's just alert on anything we don't like, and occasionally we'll get it hidden. Unless there's a significant penalty for this type of behavior, I fear that this will become an issue. For example, a user's profile could show the percentage of their alerts that have been successful, and/or the percentage of jury votes that agreed with their alerts.

As always, thanks for providing this forum for ideas and discourse. I realize that it's really difficult to do a good job at what you do, but you guys manage to do a darned good job.