Democratic Underground is changing. It's time to change the way we run it.

[Skinner]

As you know, Barack Obama is the first Democratic President since DU was created back in 2001. Nearly a year-and-a-half into his administration, it is apparent that having a Democrat in the White House presents new and difficult challenges for the DU community.

The DU Administrators have long been frustrated with the persistent undercurrent of negativity and conflict here, which has been exacerbated by the lack of a common villain in the form of George W. Bush. But we have been reluctant to make changes to the way we run the site out of fear that we might do more harm than good. The problems we face are extraordinarily complicated, and despite (or perhaps because of) nearly a decade of administering this site we tend to be fairly skeptical of our own ability to effect broad-based changes that will improve DU for the majority of our members.

So we have been banging our heads against the wall for a long time trying to figure out what we can or should do to try to make DU "better." We are committed to maintaining Democratic Underground as a community that welcomes a wide range of Democratic and progressive viewpoints. Now that we have a Democratic President, we will remain open to members who are generally critical of him, members who are generally supportive of him, and the majority of members who do not fall neatly into either camp. We considered many possible approaches -- from adding lots of new rules to getting rid of most of them -- and eventually came to realize that the DU rules we already have are actually pretty good. But we do not all share a consistent view of what they mean or how they should be enforced now that the larger political environment has changed.

So, our goal is to get everyone back on the same page. To be clear, we are not promising that all the discussions here are going to be "nicer," or that you will no longer have to read stuff on DU that you find annoying -- in fact, some of that stuff (depending on your point of view) might get worse rather than better. What we are trying to do is to make it more clear where the limits are. In practice, this means moderating will likely be more aggressive in some areas and less aggressive in others. We have no illusions that this approach will make everyone happy. But we hope by managing expectations and better explaining limits, we'll have a few more satisfied people here than we have now.

So after a great deal of consideration we've come up with a proposal to try and make DU a community again.

To be clear: These changes have not been implemented yet. Hopefully we can phase them in over the next couple weeks.


1. A clear, concise version of the DU rules will be pinned to the top of the two General Discussion forums, and will appear whenever someone clicks "Alert".

We believe that most of the DU rules are just common decency and common sense, and if everyone just tried to participate in the spirit of mutual respect it would not be necessary to post a list of rules. Of course, that is just a dream. Here in the real world it is necessary to have some concrete standards so people understand what is expected of them.

With this in mind, we have "boiled down" the DU rules to remove all the explanatory filler and provide a straightforward list of violations. That list is below. This will hopefully make the rules much clearer for everyone -- members, moderators, and even administrators -- and get everyone on the same page. Unfortunately, there will always be some level of subjectivity when deciding what is within bounds and what is not. But we have made every reasonable effort to be both clear and concise, and remove unnecessary gray areas.

Here is the official "list of violations" from the DU rules:

LIST OF RULE VIOLATIONS

{ } Personal Attack - When discussing individual DU members, the following are considered personal attacks:
        - Personal attacks, name-calling, or other insults.
        - Telling someone to "shut up," "screw you," "go away," "fuck off," or the like.
        - Calling someone a liar, or calling a post a lie.
        - Calling someone a conservative, disruptor, or similar.
        - Calling someone a bigot.
        - Belittling someone for being new or having a low post count.
        - Negatively "calling out" someone who is not participating in the discussion.

{ } Broad-brush or Extreme Group Attack - When discussing groups of DU members, the following are considered broad-brush group attacks:
        - Broad-brush attack - intended to paint all people belonging to a particular group in a negative light. (The word "all" can be explicitly stated or implied.)
        - Name-calling - Referring to any group of DU members by names intended to paint them in a negative light.
        - Suggesting that any group of DU members are conservatives, disruptors, or similar.
        - Belittling people who are new or have a low post count.
        - Suggesting that any group of DU members are not Democrats, liberals, or progressives.
        - Suggesting that a particular point of view is required in order to be a Democrat, liberal, or progressive.
        - Note: As a general guideline, if it is possible to identify specific individuals who are being attacked, then it is against the rules. But if the attack is against a vaguely defined group of "some but not all" people, then it might be permitted.

{ } Insensitive - Includes bigotry, hate, ridicule, stereotyping, or insensitivity based on:
        - Race or ethnicity.
        - Gender (women or men).
        - Sexual Orientation.
        - Religion or lack of religion (Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, etc.).
        - Geographic region or place of origin.
        - Disability (mental or physical).
        - Weight or other physical characteristics.
        - Use of insensitive terminology ("cocksucker," "cunt," "bitch," "whore," "retard," etc.).

{ } Inflammatory, inappropriate, or over-the-top
        - Any post which is, in the consensus of the moderators, too rhetorically hot, too divisive, too extreme, or too inflammatory.
        - Advocating violent overthrow of the government, or harm toward high-ranking officials.
        - Broad-brush smears toward law enforcement or military service members.
        - Advocating the defeat of the US military, attack against the US, or other overtly anti-American sentiment.
        - Sexually explicit content.
        - Graphic violence, gore, pain, or human suffering (except with a legitimate political purpose, and with a clear warning in the subject line).
        - Asking for medical advice.
        - "Gravedancing" or "gravemourning" when someone is banned.
        - Signature line/avatar image violates DU rules, is controversial, or is likely to cause discussions to go off-topic.

{ } Inappropriate attacks against Democrats
        - Insults against prominent Democrats, such as "Fuck Obama."
        - Name-calling against prominent Democrats. Calling Barack Obama "Barry" or some other name.
        - Repeating Republican partisan attacks against Democrats.
        - Broadly suggesting that there is no difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush, or that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. (Arguing that specific policies are the same would be permitted.)
        - Suggesting that President Obama has perpetrated a "con job" or "fraud," or similarly over-the-top assertions of bad faith.
        - Advocating voting against Democrats, or in favor of third-party or GOP candidates.
        - Broad-brush smears against Democrats generally. Broad expressions of contempt toward Democrats generally.

{ } Harassment or threats
        - Any type of threat against another member of this community, either explicit or implied.
        - Any action intended to harm another person -- physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise.
        - A sustained or organized effort to demean, belittle, bully, or ostracize another person.
        - Digging up or posting personal information about any private individual, on DU or elsewhere.
        - Stalking someone across discussion threads or forums.

{ } Rule enforcement issues
        - Publicly complaining about rule enforcement.
        - Publicly accusing the moderators/administrators of bias.
        - Publicly "calling-out" the moderators/administrators over specific enforcement action.
        - Continuing an argument from a locked thread or from a thread you have been blocked out of.

{ } Spamming
        - Posting the same message repeatedly.
        - Personal fundraising, for-profit advertising, or selling products or services (except in the DU Marketplace forum, or if given explicit permission from the DU administrators).
        - Posting entirely in capital letters.

{ } Off-topic/Wrong forum
        - Any discussion thread or post that is off-topic for the forum or group in which it is posted.
        - Non-news items posted in the Latest Breaking News forum.
        - Highly speculative "conspiracy theory" topics outside the September 11 forum.
        - Discussion of the Arab/Israeli conflict outside the Israel/Palestine forum.
        - Discussion of purely religious topics outside the Religion/Theology forum.
        - "Rallying the troops" in a forum or group to disrupt elsewhere on the website.

{ } Inappropriate source
        - Websites with a focus on disrupting Democratic Underground and/or smearing DU members.
        - Websites with bigoted content (Holocaust skepticism, Jewish conspiracies, and the like).
        - Note: Linking to right-wing websites is usually permitted, provided the intent is to expose their agenda rather than agree with it.

{ } Copyright violations
        - Excerpt exceeds 4 paragraphs, or does not have a link to the source.

{ } Other (Please explain)

Please note that in this effort, we gave special consideration to what can and cannot be said about prominent Democrats. As you know, the DU rules explicitly state that "Constructive criticism of Democrats or the Democratic Party is permitted." But that comes with a caveat: "When doing so, please keep in mind that most of our members come to this website in order to get a break from the constant attacks in the media against our candidates and our values. Highly inflammatory or divisive attacks that echo the tone or substance of our political opponents are not welcome here." I know many of you believe that any attack against Democrats, no matter how inflammatory or divisive, should be permitted here, but that is not what I believe and it is not what the DU rules say.

Now that we have a Democratic President, I do not think it is unreasonable to expect that he be shown more respect here than the illegitimate, incompetent asshole who previously held the office. He should be referred to as "President Obama," "Barack Obama," or simply "Obama." Calling him derogatory names (including "Barry"), attacking him with content-free insults, or parroting partisan attacks from the McCain/Palin campaign, are all disrespectful to this community as a whole. If you think that is unreasonable, then you are going to have difficulty here going forward. But if you are among the vast majority of people who criticize President Obama in a constructive and respectful manner, you have my appreciation. You are a valued member of this community.


2. When a post is deleted, the author of the post will be able to see the text of the deleted post, and the rule it violated.

When a post is deleted, most people will still see the same old "Name removed/Deleted message" placeholder, but the author of the post will be given access to the full text of that post, along with specific rule it violated. We fully expect that this will cause some consternation from members at first. But it is obviously the right thing to do. Most importantly, it will help educate our members about the DU rules and how they are enforced. Over time, we hope this will help those of you who want to be constructive members figure out how to do so. In addition, it will let the author review the post to see the violation -- we know from experience that people will often forget the stray personal attack they added to the end of an otherwise appropriate post. And finally, it gives a powerful incentive for the moderators and administrators to double-check our work and make sure we are justified in removing a post.


3. When a member has a post deleted from a thread, that member will be automatically blocked from posting again in that thread.

We understand that this idea may upset some people. We understand that nobody wants to be blocked out of a discussion thread because of an honest posting mistake, and we do not want to do that to any of our members. But we believe blocking one person out of a thread is a less draconian solution than locking the entire thread so nobody can participate.

We know many of you are tired of threads getting locked when the original post does not break the rules. We are tired of locking those threads. Members have long complained that under our current approach, a determined person (or group of people) can get a thread locked by repeatedly breaking the rules in the thread so it is almost impossible for the moderators to clean up after them.

If someone is blocked out of a thread after their first deletion, then they have a disincentive to break the rules in the first place. Furthermore, it provides an incentive for other people to alert on rule-breaking posts so the author of those posts can be stopped from causing further damage.

Would this always be fair? Of course not. But our sincere hope is that we could completely stop locking threads when the original post does not break the rules. We also hope that we could completely stop the practice of deleting entire sub-threads -- which often results in "innocent bystanders" having their posts removed unfairly.


4. A uniform approach for dealing with frequent rule-breakers.

Earlier this year we made a number of upgrades to our behind-the-scenes moderating system which allow the moderators to respond much more quickly to alerts. But moderators still do not have a uniform system for dealing with members who repeatedly break the rules. This needs to change.

Going forward, members who break the rules repeatedly will be automatically brought up for regular reviews in the Moderator Forum. When this occurs, the moderators will take a look at the member's recent activity to decide whether it is appropriate to take any additional enforcement action: sending a private message, sending a warning, handing out a suspension, or banning someone outright.

When deciding what action is appropriate, special consideration will be given to determining whether we believe someone is, overall, a constructive and valuable member of our community. Does this person seem to like DU and its members? Does this person act as if they want DU to be a better place? Are this person's deleted posts innocent mistakes rather than malicious and deliberate? Do we think this person makes DU better for the vast majority of our visitors? Does this person have an inclusive attitude toward other members and viewpoints -- freely expressing when they disagree, but doing so with the understanding that their own point of view is not the only one that is valid or welcome here? Do we think this person is likely to improve their behavior?

If the answer to these questions is no, then we are going to ban that person. We aren't going to waste our time with pointless warnings and suspensions to malicious malcontents that will almost certainly be ignored. If, however, we believe that someone is worth trying to "save" we will do what we can to keep them around, including handing out warnings or suspensions in hopes that the person might change their behavior.


We hope that everyone will consider these proposals in the spirit they are offered. We believe this approach will make it easier for everyone who wishes to be a productive member of this community to do so, regardless of ideology. We all know this place is never going to be perfect. But we do have an ideal that everyone should strive for: A Democratic Underground where thoughtful discussion can take place among a broad range of progressive viewpoints, where everyone accepts that disagreements are both necessary and appropriate when they are expressed in good faith, and where problem people are dealt with in a fair and timely fashion. That is the type of community that we wish DU could be. If you agree, we'd love to have you here.


So, what do you think?