Jury not working on these Hitchens insults....

[Logical]

I have alerted a couple and the jury ruled they were OK. One jury member even said "I 100% agree with the comment". Wow, what a fair jury.

If Billy Graham died tomorrow, I do not think many Atheists would be grave dancing. And if they did and they were alerted I guarantee they would be locked.

A little bias no doubt.

The jury tends to fail when the minority is being insulted. At least moderators of old tended to be more fair.

[knowledgeispwr]

1. Not surprised.

As atheists, we are an unpopular minority.

[awoke_in_2003]

15. there was a poll not long ago...

asking about whether or not you would vote for a muslim, gay, etc, person for president. Atheist was the lowest rated group.

[knowledgeispwr]

18. I saw that poll.

Good thing I have no interest in the job!

[awoke_in_2003]

21. no doubt...

you have to sell out your principles to have it.

[frebrd]

23. "Atheist was the lowest rated group."

I figure that says a lot more about this religion-ridden country than it does about me.

[knowledgeispwr]

24. Completely agree. n/t

[awoke_in_2003]

26. no doubt at all...

I work with a bunch of religious folks, and I wouldn't want to associate with most of them in my private life. Most are warmongers, and I know one deeply religious guy who is divorced and the when he ever talks about a woman you can count on it being misogynistic.

[rexcat]

2. Bigotry transcends political lines...

when it comes to atheists. No real surprise here.

[MarkCharles]

3. I would like people who start threads like this to ...

actually give us links to the real events.

Without this, although I certainly would kick out any person who posts something negative about Hitchens, or anyone who serves on a jury and thinks it's OKAY to allow such insults and grave dancing, please be specific.

Give us something to sink our teeth into, please.

[Logical]

4. Well, I cannot call out a specific DU member via the rules. The post was not on this forum.....

I also do not know the jury members name as they are not given.

[rexcat]

5. In previous version of DU...

you could send a PM. My guess is you could send a message via DU mail to an individual if you wanted.

[dmallind]

6. Cut paste and save please. Robertson, Graham etc will not live forever. nt

[DissedByBush]

7. Atheists are the last acceptable group to bash in this country n/t

[laconicsax]

8. Except for Mormons, Muslims, Women, LGBTQers...

[darkstar3]

12. Yes and no.

I agree with you that there is some serious hate out there for those groups and more, so don't get me wrong here, but I think that each of those groups has a large number of people in society saying it's not OK to hate them.

The same cannot be said of atheists.

[iris27]

29. True. There's no Anti-Defamation League

standing up for atheists.

[DissedByBush]

33. Maybe Mormons

But Muslims, Women and LGBTQ...XYZers aren't considered appropriate to criticize, much less poke fun at.

I've already found out that telling the truth about Islam and its historical and modern practice can get a post hidden by a jury on the new DU.

But apparently both the right wingers and the left think it just fine to attack atheists.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. I am not sure the jury system is working on a lot of posts.

It is true that jurors are allowing their own prejudices and opinions when ruling. Then there is the problem with one group of DUers who are tolerant of most posts, and another group who are offended by everything. I tend to be more tolerant, and have often wondered in DU2 why a post was locked after reading it. It is amazing how diverse a group we are.

[awoke_in_2003]

16. I just served on a jury a few minutes ago...

I have served as a moderator for three terms, and have now participated in a jury. While I think the jury system will be easier to administer, there doesn't seem to be much accountability. As a moderator, you are a known entity. As a juror you are anonymous.

[Curmudgeoness]

30. Do you think the jury system will be better than mods?

Since you have experience with both, which do you think is better? Do you vote the same either way?

[lazarus]

31. I think the mod system was much better for minorities

even though the mods were as biased as any humans are, they worked hard not to be.

An example: saying "Mann Coulter" used to be just fine on the boards. The LGBTQ members worked and worked to educate the mod team and admin about how bigoted a statement that is. We got it, and through constant deletions we taught the board that it wasn't acceptable.

How is that supposed to happen now? How is education supposed to happen in the new system?

[Curmudgeoness]

34. That is probably true---as a mod, you would try harder to be unbiased.

Knowing that I am anonymous on a jury probably means that I am not too concerned if I don't get it right. And it is true that we will not be educated on some "inside jokes" or slap-downs. That is too bad.

I do not know what "Mann Coulter" means, so I can see the problem if I were on the jury---but my suggestion to the alerter would be to make sure that the point is made that this is derogatory.

I hope we can make this work. It will take the jurors and the alerters working together to get as much info as possible from the beginning, since there is no deliberation.

[iris27]

37. "Mann Coulter" is one of many insults used to imply that

Ann Coulter looks like a transvestite or male-to-female transsexual. It is deeply demeaning to women and to actual trans folks because it's policing what "acceptable femininity" looks like, and implies that being trans is a negative thing acceptable to use as an insult against someone you don't like. It's also unnecessary because Coulter's words and deeds provide so much more fertile ground to insult her with.

Just in case someone whips that out in the future and you end up on their jury.

[Curmudgeoness]

38. Thanks, and I am now educated on this.

You never know where the jury system will lead me next. I got pulled into a sports group jury and I have no knowledge of sports. None. Who would know that the use of "cowgirls" in reference the the Dallas team would have everyone in an uproar? Isn't trash talk between the sports fans normal????

[awoke_in_2003]

32. I don't think it will be better...

because it is too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction. There were plenty of times that I, or another mod, totally misread a post. On initial read, it might have looked hateful. But it was brought into discussion, and another mod might say "no, they are making a humorous reference to this". I have also seen things I thought were humorous, but after discussion realized that the post was indeed malicious. Like I said, you had a discussion, saw different points of view, and sometimes changed your opinion. Sure, there are indeed posts that are no doubt, black and white, malicious. But there is a lot of gray area out there. In my 3 terms, I would say that maybe 60% were pretty obvious, with the other 40% being gray.

[Curmudgeoness]

35. No discussion or deliberation is a definite problem.

Every jury I have been on so far has been very gray. Snarky, but not malicious to me. But I may have missed something.

[awoke_in_2003]

36. during my tenure as a mod...

I was surprised at the amount of malicious things that get posted. I saw the dirty underbelly of the beast, and really opened my eyes up about some people here.

[MrModerate]

10. No need to dance on Graham's grave when it's dug . . . and filled.

But a warm feeling of "good riddance" will no doubt sweep over me.

[laconicsax]

11. The juries are going to continue to not work unless...

The admins do something about it.

[trotsky]

13. Yup, the same shit continues.

And the two worst things I've observed is that:

1) Other DUers are applauding these results, or at least brushing them off as "kinks" to work out of the system. But they aren't working out. Not at all.

2) the admins have been completely silent on these blatant abuses. This disturbs me even more than #1, because it makes it seem like the admins are perfectly OK.

DU3 was supposed to be about openness, transparency, and increased civility. What I have seen instead is a significant tiliting of the table toward the majority groups on all issues.

I will give things a while longer, maybe until my donation runs out, but if there haven't been big changes by then, I will no longer be a DUer.

[madmom]

14. Although I have not been here as long as you have, I was thinking along these same lines.

[awoke_in_2003]

17. I have only been on the new and "improved" DU...

for a couple of hours, but I am not liking what I am seeing.

[Odin2005]

19. The bigotry againt Atheists on this site is disgusting!

[trotsky]

20. We can't speak up for ourselves anymore.

And good Christian DUers are applauding and approving attacks on us.

Amazing how they kept telling us, "don't lump us together with those mean right wing Christians, they aren't True Christians. We are different!"

And lo and behold, when push comes to shove, they act exactly the same. Mean, vindictive, judgmental, and holier-than-thou.

[MarkCharles]

22. Well said, great point! n/t

[Odin2005]

25. Yup.

[Warpy]

27. A lot of people were furious at him for his stance on the Iraq war

I know, I was one of them, wondering how anyone that intelligent could be so wrongheaded about that issue.

That's really what this is about.

However, it's tacky. I refrained from negative comments about Reagan until they finally planted him. They should be able to do the same about Hitchens.

[PassingFair]

39. "That's really what this is about."

Nope. Almost half our our Democratic Senators
actually AUTHORIZED that war.

This is ALL about Hitchen's atheism.

He had to AUDACITY to have a bestseller
titled:

"God Is Not Great"

It it unbearable for some of them.

Especially one of them.

[iris27]

28. The jury isn't working anywhere, period.

Sexist bullshit is left to stand in threads here (by juries...hosts will probably deal with it eventually).

Mildly inflammatory comments in a back-and-forth on a particular Religion thread get alerted on, and the theist's post is left to stand while the atheist's is hidden.

At this point, it's only my stubborn "Fuck them all if they think they can force me out" attitude that's keeping me here. I'm starting to approach this place like it's the Rapture Ready boards.

[muriel_volestrangler]

40. Why would insults of Hitchens be a problem worth sending to a jury?

If they say "like a typical atheist..." and then proceed to insult him, perhaps; but you've just referred to them as "Hitchens insults". Grave dancing for a public figure is often allowed on DU. You must remember that a lot of Hitchens' political opinions in the past 10 years or so (the ones DUers are most likely to be familiar with) are very much against the vast majority of DU opinion - his support for the Iraq invasion, and his advocacy of voting for Bush in 2004.

"I 100% agree with the comment" is not necessarily any problem with 'fairness' at all. What was the comment, and what was your objection to it in the alert? Really, this thread remains pointless unless you show us the comments you think should have been hidden. Worse, it looks like it's developing into a pity party, to me.

[LeftishBrit]

41. To be fair..

many of the people who insult Hitchens are not doing so because he's an atheist, but simply because he supported the war in Iraq.

Some of the allegations are fairly ridiculous (he hardly *caused* that war!), and might be seen as tasteless so soon after his death; but I don't think that they necessarily represent anti-atheist prejudices.

[Deep13]

42. Juries are deliberative bodies.

Are DU juries deliberative, or do they just read and vote? They are also supposed to be unanimous one way or the other.

[laconicsax]

43. DU juries don't deliberate, they just vote. Sometimes they read.

[MarkCharles]

44. Sometimes they don't read, often they feel freed by their religion NOT to

think.

So "deliberation" is rare, indeed.