From the Net Nanny: Some thoughts about incivility on DU. [View All]

[Skinner]

Without a doubt, the most difficult job I have on DU is encouraging people to be civil to each other, and avoid personal attacks. There is a persistent myth that "disruption" on Democratic Underground is primarily caused by freepers and low-post-count newbies who are here to cause trouble. Not only is this myth untrue, but is also makes it difficult for us to address the real problem on DU, which is fellow members who deliberately ignore the rules and treat other members badly.

The truth is that we don't actually have very many freepers here. But we do have a lots of rude progressives. Are you one of them?

We have been logging all of the messages removed from DU by the moderators since early July. Many of these are insignificant, such as duplicate postings. But the vast majority of removed posts are violations of our personal attacks rule, our bigotry rule, our "respect the moderators" rule, or some other civility rule. These are serious violations which make this place unpleasant for all of us.

Consider the following statistics:

During the last 30 days, there were a total of 410,520 messages posted on the Democratic Underground message board. Of those, exactly 3,262 were removed by the moderators. In other words, less than one percent (0.8%) of posts are removed.

The 3,260 deleted messages were posted by 945 different people. Here's the breakdown for the last 30 days...

30+ posts removed: 6 people
20-29 posts removed: 11 people
10-19 posts removed: 58 people
01-09 posts removed: 870 people

THE WORST OFFENDERS

We then picked an arbitrary cut-off point of 15 removed posts in 30 days and took a look at our list. Who are the worst offenders? We aren't going to list names, at least not now. (However, I will note that the names on the "worst offenders" list remained relatively consistent over 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days.)

There are 41 people who had 15 or more posts removed in the last 30 days. Out of those 41 people, 11 had been banned as disruptors, leaving 30 "worst offenders" who are still members of DU. Here's where it gets interesting. Out of those 30 people...

26 people out of the 30 worst offenders have 1000+ posts. Four people have less than 1000 posts. The average number of posts for the 30 worst offenders is 4826, and the median is around 2700.

24 people out of the 30 worst offenders were members since before July 6, 2003. Four more of them registered in July, and the other two in August and September.

If we banned all 41 worst offenders, instead of just 11 of them, we could decrease the number of deleted posts by 871 -- A 27% decrease in deleted posts!

So, what's the moral of this story?

It seems pretty clear to us that our incivility problem could be improved significantly and immediately if we just got rid of the long-term members who refuse to follow the rules. But we don't think that would be fair.

Over the next day or two, I am going to send private messages to the 30 worst offenders, to notify them that they are causing a disproportionate number of problems on the message board. Hopefully, this knowledge will provide an incentive for these people to do better in the future.

Also, Elad is currently programming an automated warning system to inform members when their posts are deleted, to make it easier for the administrators to keep track of members' histories of deleted posts, and to better identify who the persistent problem people are.

We are not sure when the new system will be finished. But our hope is to have it finished in the next two to four weeks. You can use that time to practice being more respectful to one another.

Finally, I want to say one last thing: It is really not very difficult to follow the rules. If you are trying to treat other people with respect, then you won't EVER break the rules, and you will have no problems here. But if you are the type of person who is looking for ways to be rude to other people, then you will have problems.

It's very simple. The vast majority of DU members don't have any problems at all.

Skinner
DU Admin