Reply #89: 105 Recommendations 78 Unrecommendations Recommends Winning! Wannabe Censors Losing!

[Better Believe It]

It's a personal popularity contest isn't that right .... according to the unrecommenders?

Of course, I don't unrecommend anyones post because I don't like the poster or because I think it's too liberal or conservative and therefore don't agree with it.

Just Recs

Recommendations only -- unrecommendations are not counted (24 hours)
General Discussion
I Once Spent Almost Four Years Posting on a Right-wing Forum,
196 recs : By MineralMan

General Discussion
The Real Reason President Obama Has Let Us All Down
105 recs : By Better Believe It

Political Videos
Abused & arrested for being Democrat at Eric Cantor event
93 recs : By Tx4obama

General Discussion
What is this "both sides" BS?
79 recs : By Atticus

General Discussion
Now We Know
74 recs : By WilliamPitt

Once again.

How and why unrecommending is obviously undemocratic because of how it actually functions.

First, if this system is going to continue I believe the total number of both recommends/unrecommends could and should be listed for every post.

If this information is available for administrators/moderators, why not share this information with all DU'ers? What in the world would be wrong with that? I haven't read any objections to doing that.

However, I still refuse to use the unrecommend feature and I hope most DU'ers won't and here's why.

DU'ers who recommend a post for "the greatest" are not trying to exclude, censor or remove a post from any location on DU. DU'ers who don't agree with the "greatest" or "front page" post or who just don't like the poster, are free to criticize the post or even put the poster on ignore!

The unrecommend feature is a whole different kettle of fish. The difference between putting a post in a prominent location on a website and removing that post from that location should be clear.

The unrecommend feature enables people to remove, bump down or even prevent posts from even appearing on the "greatest page" and the front "home page" with a simple click of the mouse!

The clear objective of such clicks is to reduce the number of views (hits) of posts that they don't agree with. That's censorship, even if a few posters try to pretty it up by claiming it's a democratic form of exclusion, a peoples censorhip!

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.

Again, the undemocratic consequence of the "unrecommend" feature is to reduce the number of DU'ers who notice and are likely to read the post. And some want it that way! In the case of DU administrators it looks like the "law of unintended consequences" has struck again.

It's a simple as that.

The purpose of "the Greatest Page" was not to record "votes" in support of or in opposition to certain political views or posters some DU'ers don't like and yet that is what it is now being used for!

Democratic Underground clearly stated: "The Greatest Page lists threads which have been nominated by the members of DU as the most noteworthy." It was not intended as a means of casting "votes" for or against including posts on the "greatest page" or the homepage on Democratic Underground.

In any case, if this "greatest page", "front page" removal mechanism remains in place, I hope that the information showing the total number of recommends and unrecommends for posts is displayed for all DU'ers to see, not just administrators/moderators.