When so many (good) ideas exist for technologically assisted solutions to the community problems at DK, how do we find ourselves in Bam-Hammerville? Flagging should become the norm. And HR should disappear.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of potential solutions to the Community break-down at the DailyKos. It is a response to the heavy-handed, responsibility-free version of moderation being currently proposed.
First, a question: If you are attacked by a clique who abuse HR, recs, etc, how do you fight back? After your third courteous request to engage in civil debate is HR'd, what then? It seems you have two options: Join a gang, or TTFN. Or flame back and risk a collateral damage Ban-Hammer. How, exactly, does this benefit the community?
I see a lot of people commenting: "who cares? It's just anonymous bile, let it go..." Anyone ready to comment is not going to let it go. These people have something to say. These are real people, who really show up at events and volunteer time and money to our collective cause.
It's not fair for them to be devoured by a web-clique, especially if we can do something about it.
I understand that traditional moderation takes money, or exposes one to certain liabilities, etc... But how much brainpower is collected here? I myself am a developer. I'd love to get my hands on the DK back-end and see what I could do.
So, my recommendation is this: Get rid of HR, and create a Flag. 7-10 Flags hides the comment and sends it to volunteer moderation (free subscriptions?) by active Kossacks with minimal or no Flagging history. If the flag is legitimate, the comment is removed, the author is dinged (some number of dings leads to time-out). If illegitimate, the FLAGers lose their Flagging privileges on a progressive scale, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, forget it, you're done, no more Flagging.
I didn't come up with this idea, I've seen it floating around now for awhile. Surely it's better than throwing a grenade into a room of people who are fighting when you don't know, or have the time or interest, to find out who is responsible? Maybe we could keep some of our valued members who put a lot of time and effort into this community.
Maybe no one would need a Ban-Hammer...
I would love to see a working-group create a list of reasonable community-moderation concepts and to take up donations to fund it. We might have to pay for this ourselves. I'd donate right now.