We made some changes to the Forum Hosting system today

[BainsBane]

34. It is the role of the administrators

to look at alerts. They do so already. They look at alerts to see if someone needs to be PPR'd, and they have PPR'd jurors over comments. Also anyone who receives the jury results can alert on them, so those alerts would go to administrators as they do now. Compelling people to write something makes them at least think about an explanation. I know of cases were jurors have confided, after the fact, that they didn't have a good reason for voting to hide. That should never occur. One should always know why they voted to hide or leave. If you can't think that through, you aren't doing the job responsibly.

2a combined with c would discourage jurors from voting for reasons other than the content of the post. As it stands, people will say "I don't like so and so," Or "he deserves to be told to fuck off." That is unacceptable and it should be made clear that it is unacceptable.

Names could be substituted with letters (poster a, b, c, d, etc...) or colors.

This change puts more control in the hands of jurors because anyone with a hide is exempt from hosting. If jury verdicts actually reflected fair determinations on civility that would be one thing. They do not. They serve as personality contests, and some members are quite open about using their votes that way. Some people can say virtually anything and not get a hide, whereas others get hides for saying "bullshit" or posting a laughing emoticon.

The current system is built around popularity, with no protection for the rights of minorities, not just in minority in terms of POV but also literally minorities in terms of people of color. I believe some changes could help encourage greater fairness and more just outcomes for jury decisions. With the requirement that hosts have 100, that means those same standards of popularity will control the content of the website. We have already seen where some hosts will act according to who the alerter or OP is rather than the extent to which the thread fits the SOP of the forum. I fear that will only increase.