There should be a sacred element to the individual decision whether to click the recommend button. If community moderation is to be sacred, so to speak, it necessarily must rest on respect for the individual voter. A recommend is the end of a decision process. An exception is made for providing information or pointing out what seems an obvious mistake, as I have seen before. After imparting this information, the integrity of the other person would be assumed, and any responses from the recommender would be accepted.
It is my sense that at one point a campaign was mounted to pressure people concerning their recommends--demanding explanations, drawing far-fetched conclusions, and making critical remarks. I believe this tactic can be effective at isolating kossacks because bystanders feel that just by clicking the recommend button they have cast a vote in a global war.
This also converts the recommend decision from a private internal process to an other-directed process, while introducing fear of public disapproval, thus making the decision-making process less rational. Opinion-makers need outer-directed types for their manipulations, advertisers target outer-directed types because their behavior is subject to manipulation.
The outer-directed kossack is mentally rehearsing the reactions of others when making the decision whether to recommend, and fear can make the process irrational without the user even being aware of it. Perhaps some groups are even consciously aware of having this effect and conspire to blast criticisms or coddle with persuasive techniques, sometimes even toward agreed-upon individuals just to influence their recommend decisions wrt specific kossacks whom they wish to build up or tear down.
Whether or not the corruption runs that deep, the independence of the decision-maker is corrupted just by the process of making the decision subject to ridicule or praise. The decision whether to recommend can become internalized as a public decision. Sacred, in this case, means the decision whether to recommend is a private, personal one--both an earned right and an obligation. Sacred means that even insane people who manage to become trusted users get their one vote. Their right to that vote, and the way they use it, is not questioned other than through the procedures in place for doing so.
If a person is a trusted user, his integrity is assumed. There are procedures in place for challenging whether a person should be a trusted user. They should be followed. I won't mention hides, because apparently they are going away, but the same thing holds. Damn, but I did mention them.
I think it should be forbidden to discuss the recommend decisions people make. A recommend is like a vote, it is a part of the democratic aspect of community moderation. We do not have a curtained voting booth, but we can forbid a pressure group from standing around outside the booth heckling. Decisions whether to recommend (or hide) should be matters of personal integrity much as a vote in a meeting room would be. After discussion, people vote. Arguments do not break out during the voting. People are not taken to task for the decision they made, unless you happen to be in a dysfunctional organization in which people lack basic respect for one another.
Less enthusiastic suggestions
Other less certain suggestions are to outlaw accusations concerning outside groups in the absence of evidence that such a group appear to be violating specific rules, such as stalking or outing someone. In the absence of evidence of wrong-doing, known or suspected membership in groups would be treated with the same level of respect as all personal information. (Sorry to say, this isn't always such a high standard either, but that is a different discussion.)
Although any rules governing behavior of off-dkos groups are laughably unenforceable, I am in favor of putting them in place at least to clarify public conversation, and on the outside chance there would ever be evidence. Here are two suggestions for rules governing behavior of people who discuss dailykos away from the site.
There should be one golden rule, which would make conspiring to get specific kossacks banned an offense carrying the penalty of permanent banning. Banning is the province of dailykos administration. Rules of community moderation are put in place in order to assist them in their chosen method of making these determinations. So far, they have chosen to involve the entire community to a certain extent, and the procedures put in place are publicly known. The people who make the decisions are publicly known, though their discussions must necessarily take place in private. We agree in concert to accept these decisions.
None of this is so when banning is the product of off-site gaming of the ratings system. No other abuse is so egregious as using the rating system to bypass the recognized banning procedure. To the extent that Markos allows his site to operate democratically, attempting to subvert the public process of community moderation is undemocratic in both spirit and effect.
The second suggestion, probably too problematic, is a rule against targeting specific kossacks for any kind of group behavior with the exception of casting votes, i.e., recommending. The hope would be to prevent conspirators from following someone around replying to their comments, for example. This prohibition would be against behavior on dailykos, not against any discussions or public record keeping of behavior or anything else in the privacy of the group. Naturally, research and sharing of results is a foundation of citizen involvement. Using research to target kossacks for specific treatment on dailykos by a group is what would be forbidden. As stated, voting should be a sacred private matter. How people determine their votes is their business. Beyond that, conspiring to harass, or challenge, or threadjack, or derail the dailykos activity of any specific kossack could be forbidden. That would take my proposal to protect the democratic nature of community moderation on dailykos to its strongest, unless someone has even stronger ideas. [Shudder]
*****
This diary offers a proposal, and the invitation of the diary is to discuss whether any of these rules would be of any benefit. Some people may not agree with my description of a problem. It is unimportant to this discussion whether my description is accurate. I would hope the discussion will not focus on defining the problem except as needed to argue for or against implementation of any of these suggestions. I would strongly prefer that zero energy be wasted on determining blame for anything. The question is, would such a rule as proposed make community moderation more effective in protecting discourse on dailykos?
I'll stay out of the discussion. I am not drawn to advocate for any of the guidelines proposed.
*****
That didn't take long. Here is triv33's "stronger" idea. I wish this were in the poll.
Well, I think who
recs a comment should only be seen by who made the comment