I made this comment in another diary and was asked to write it up so here you all go.
Short, sweet and to the point, I'm out for a week. I've been a long time participant in Black Kos diaries but have also made friends online with many folks that I often am in disagreement with. None of them are the enemy. We can disagree without smearing each other. We can disagree without disparaging each other. We can disagree with mocking and calling each other names.
It hurts my heart to see the way that the entire moderation situation, which has been wildly out of control for months, is now being handled. We users begged, pleaded, emailed Admin, and begged some more, for months on end, for the owner of this blog to get involved before the feuding between fellow progressives devolved into all out warfare.
We got nowhere with our requests. We lost Meteor Blades, which still hurts my heart. His contributions to this joint, in my opinion, were literally invaluable. And I can't help but wonder if part of why he left was because of dealing with this shit and getting nowhere fast with no back up from the owner of this blog.
So, in a nutshell, when I look at the banned list, I see some names that deserve to be on it, and more names that don't along with user names that have their ratings ability pulled. Posters who have lost their ratings ability who happen to be some of the most thoughtful posters on this site.
And the bottom line is this has occurred simply because Markos no longer has a clue who most users are at his own site because he is too busy (and rightfully so) trying to build up Daily Kos 4.
But rather than find a middle of the road approach, he went for an all out purge and that sickens me, because in the process of trying to fix a very real problem, he has compounded the problem, further divided the community and made the problem worse. Not his intention, I'm sure. But that's the end result.
So here's the comment I made in another diary and am reprinting here at sberel's suggestion:
I said this in Robin's diary and I'll say it here--I'm in [for the boycott] and will be off for a week, starting at midnight.
And I'm a white, 44 year old woman. And I have officially have enough of this purging bullshit. I love this site. I love many of the writers here for a variety of reasons, many of them folks that write things I rarely agree with. And I'll miss reading their thoughts and hearing their voices but I will not click on this fucking blog for a week.
I think it's important for folks that agree to do this to understand that even if you are logged off, if you click onto this site, you are driving up traffic and feeding the machine. So for a boycott to hold any meaning, you need to lose Daily Kos's number for a week, literally.
God, I am actually looking forward to all the shit I might get done this week staying away from here. Maybe I'll make this a permanent break.
I can just about forgive the Brits for starting our revolutionary war and burning DC to the ground during the war of 1812 for giving us Led Zeppelin.
That's it, folks. That is all.
I'm out at midnight and if I haven't been banned for expressing my opinion, I may or may not see you all in a week.