Gaming the Jury

[CC27]

Star Member TygrBright (14,044 posts)

Gaming the Jury


Reaching under my desk and rootling around to find my 'Original DUer' ball cap... brushing off the dust and an old Milk Dud... punching it back into shape.... putting it on...::

....approaching soapbox doubtfully....

....testing a little before climbing on.... giving a little test bounce....

....leaning into the mic.... tapping it... jumping back from the feedback squeal and just barely not falling off soapbox... ("Hey, Elad! Can you adjust this thing? Test... test..... OK, that's better.")

....clearing throat....

Howdy.

I see as how the time's come to trot out some Institutional Memory, and throw in a little Rousing of the Rabble.

So lemme start with a disclaimer:

No, I have never seen anything quite like the level of appalling that live-stalking a DUer through the actual paper US Mail, with DU references and claims of membership, etc., manages to reach.

That's a new low.

Congratulations, whoever came up with that one, you're doing your job superbly well and I hope that whichever higher-up-in-the-food-chain helot of our Beloved Oligarchs you report to rewards you suitably. You've been remarkably effective at sowing pain, chaos, and dissension.

But you have not shut down this website.

You have not even materially impaired its operations or function.

The Admins of this website have eaten more serious threats than your vile, puerile action for lunch without a burp, and triumphed, and this website and the discourse it enables has survived and thrived anyway.

And I hope you get a chance to think about that while you and the cheesy legal counsel your bosses accord you (if any-- they tend to cheapass stuff like that, yanno-- ) are strategizing how to respond to the US Postal Inspection Service's enquiries. My money is on "you get thrown under the bus" as the ultimate strategy, by the way. It's how your kind of 'organization' rolls.

End of disclaimer. You, Sir or Ma'am, and your employers and co-conspirators, do not get mentioned again, you are not worth my time.

I'd like to talk to some people care about, now. People who are important to me, and to a community I love. People who believe in making the world a better place, and who put their passion and their time into discussing ideas and processes and decisions and policies, and how they affect us all.

My fellow DUers, in fact.

Hey, y'all.

Gettin' a little rugged, here, lately.

Seems to happen on DU, at intervals, when two things converge in time:

Thing one is what I think of as "an evolutionary consciousness crisis." We're all here evolving together toward awareness and valuing one anothers' humanity, and building political, cultural, social, and economic systems that support equity and justice.

DU is a very big tent, just as the Democratic Party has historically been in my lifetime. (And yeah, it's a longish time and you kids stay off my lawn, okay?)

Part of what that means is that while we all share some ideals and goals about equity and justice, we're a very diverse group and we come from many levels of experience with injustice and oppression, with many beliefs about our own privilege or lack thereof. We have widely varying ways of defining the same terms, and when others' definitions and experiences don't match ours, the cognitive dissonance results in a lot of churning.

And mostly, that churning happens around the experiences of oppression and privilege that divide us. It can create frustration, passion, and sometimes conflict. It can pull us in, absorb our awareness and focus, and it should.

Because we learn from it. We grow. We evolve.

But it's not a comfortable process and sometimes it involves pain. Just ask DU's LGBTQ members. And our black members. And those of us with vaginas. The intersectionality of privileges and oppressions is rife, here. I enjoy some kinds of privilege, you enjoy other kinds. You can't understand the particulars of my experience of oppression and I can't understand yours, until we share and validate them for one another.

These are old, hard knots of injustice woven into the fabric of our culture by patriarchy and the oligarchy it created millenia ago. To keep us divided, to keep us apart, to sucker us into doing their work of keeping us oppressing each other for them.

When those issues rise up, there are usually two things happening, one of which is a genuine, organic process of examination and testing among ourselves, finding the fault lines and examining attitudes and beliefs that can divide and conquer us, and trying to grow beyond them.

The other thing happening is the deliberate shit-stirring focused on keeping us from doing exactly that.

Sometimes they look a lot alike. Neither will go away, they're part of the process.

Thing two is the calculated exploitation of a technical vulnerability in how the process of discourse is facilitated here on DU.

::...reaching up to adjust my 'Original DUer' ball cap slightly::

We've been here a while. There is a reason this is a popular political discussion platform. All you have to do to perceive why is go and look at some of the other examples out there. Echo chambers for various Oligarchic agendas, moshpits for the low-information end of the spectrum, circle jerks of hate, and well-intentioned failures abound.

::...tipping the ball cap briefly::

Our Admins actually put a lot of work into this site, not just because they make money from it but because they care about it stands for and what it facilitates, and they, too, are committed to making a better experience of politics, economics, and culture for their children and their children's children.

Part of what that means is, they're constantly having to adjust how conflict is managed here. A certain level of conflict is desirable and baked into the site DNA. We're not an echo chamber and we're not expected to agree alla time.

On the other hand, too much conflict, the wrong kind of conflict, drives people away and impairs the site's ability to do what it's supposed to do.

And, yes, there are people who want this site to fail, to go away, to be silenced, to become a mockery and/or an echo chamber. To be ineffective. To be negligible. There are people who want that, a LOT.

And they are not averse, as individuals and/or organized groups, to getting in here and trying to make it fail. Trolling. Gaming. Finding ways to disrupt the process.

They've been trying for fifteen years.

They've tried to game the process. They've tried to exploit design flaws. They've worked hard, and sometimes they've even succeeded, in short term goals. And the Admins track those efforts, and constantly refine the process and tweak the software design to deal with those efforts.

The jury system evolved because of efforts to game the old moderation/alert system.

It's not a perfect solution.

Some of the flaws are emerging now, as those who'd like DU to go away hammer at it.

And I have great confidence that our Admins will do what's needed to refine the process and the software, once again, to deal with it.

Which takes time.

And in the mean time, we have the convergence: A painful evolution in consciousness around racism and privilege and their effects among us, and a dedicated, vigorous hammering at the infrastructure of our discussion.

So, yeah, it's a little rugged right now.

But I am here to tell you two things:

First, DU's lived through this before and we'll live through it again and we do it BY GETTING BETTER AT WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO.

And second, I'm doing my damndest to check my white privilege at the keyboard. Feel free to call me on it when you see it. Black DUers matter, and they matter especially NOW, when we are dealing with a culture-wide awareness and revolution that has the possibility to evolve our culture to the next level.

So, thank you to all the black DUers who've been part of that.

Stick with us.

We DO evolve.

We will.

And thank you.

::... steps off the soapbox, takes off the hat, waves it cheerfully, and wanders off to make dinner...::

lovingly,
Bright

You must have a lot of time on your hands DUmmies to write such BS.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027158831

[Big Dog]

What kind of crap was that?

[CC27]

What kind of crap was that?

I think this letter business has gotten them extra nutty.

[Skul]

Does that DUmmie think anyone will read that?

[Carl]

Dear DUmbass mutt.

Profound does not need verbiage to achieve.

[Duke Nukum]

tl;dr

I tried to read it but the DUmmie was coming off as too clever by half.  If you have a point, make it.

Obama voters have made helots of us all. So don't go using terms you don't quite understand.  Or run your historical terms by Gnads first, okay?  You've got a trained historian on your site so make use of her.  'Kay?

[DUmpsterDiver]

The little lack of Brevitynek should take some of his white privilege to the South side of Chicago after dark and  learn the meaning of succinct.

[SVPete]

What kind of crap was that?

  I was wondering what recreational chemicals fueled that rambling rant. And what recreational chemicals it would take to swim through that pretentious verbal pomposity.

[Chris_]

Star Member TygrBright (14,044 posts)

Gaming the Jury


Reaching under my desk and rootling around to find my 'Original DUer' ball cap... brushing off the dust and an old Milk Dud... punching it back into shape.... putting it on...::

Aren't you a special snowflake.

[Duke Nukum]

Maybe it was Nadin's sockpuppet to prove to use that she can spell and that she, indeed, has better grammar?

Or is it a WRP sockpuppet, tired of standing on the sidelines while DU Berns?

[obumazombie]

I think this letter business has gotten them extra nutty.

In every steaming pile.

[FlippyDoo]

    Star Member TygrBright (14,044 posts)

    Gaming the Jury


    Reaching under my desk and rootling around to find my 'Original DUer' ball cap... brushing off the dust and an old Milk Dud... punching it back into shape.... putting it on...::

    ....approaching soapbox doubtfully....

    ....testing a little before climbing on.... giving a little test bounce....

    ....leaning into the mic.... tapping it... jumping back from the feedback squeal and just barely not falling off soapbox... ("Hey, Elad! Can you adjust this thing? Test... test..... OK, that's better.")

    ....clearing throat....

    Howdy.

    I see as how the time's come to trot out some Institutional Memory, and throw in a little Rousing of the Rabble.

    So lemme start with a disclaimer:

    No, I have never seen anything quite like the level of appalling that live-stalking a DUer through the actual paper US Mail, with DU references and claims of membership, etc., manages to reach.

I didn't read the entire thing because I had something more important to do, but I did notice the bolded. I can't help but think that it may be a dog whistle jab at nadin's little web blog that she calls a paper. You know how these DUmmies love their dog whistles. You know how much nads loves to think shes writing for the Daily Planet.

[Mr Mannn]

DU loves to play the victim.

Remember all the nooses placed about the country were placed there by the so called victims.
this was no different.

[tanstaafl]

I didn't read the entire thing because I had something more important to do, but I did notice the bolded. I can't help but think that it may be a dog whistle jab at nadin's little web blog that she calls a paper. You know how these DUmmies love their dog whistles. You know how much nads loves to think shes writing for the Daily Planet.

I'm with you, Flippy. Someone at the DUmp is gonna pay for this! But it won't be the actual culprit/culprits. It will be a member with a midsized number of previous post who has the misfortune of lacking a strong consortium of allies, thus mitigating any coherent defense when Elad hovers his sweaty palm over the DISPOSAL button. If I were the instigator of this farce, I'd be trying desperately to get in good with the Klams, the gNads cheering section, the Hilbots and even the Bernie-acs. Anything to offset the inevitable midnight ALERT when the hit-crew will be too numerous to miss a jury call.