I was wondering what others thought about the new unrecommended feature here at DU.

[wisteria]

IMO, it just allows for the anti anythings to shoot down any posts they disagree with. And we know there are a lot of knee-jerk personalities here at DU. It makes you think twice about posting anything about Senator Kerry, whom we all know has taken an lot of unfair knocks here at DU.

[karynnj]

1. It could go either way - we could have also unrecommended the op's by

the very few people posting the Fox news and unsourced HP threads had it existed a bit earlier.

I don't think the amount of comments is likely more significant to the number of people seeing things than the number of recommends, though that is important. I noticed that few people actually followed those OPs in hitting Kerry - but those people repeated themselves ad nauseum - without appearing to confince many others.

I've used search on many of them and most seem to be either Nader people, who really will not agree with ANY Democrat and who we can't win over and some former Edwards people. (As more and more truth comes out, these people may become less hostile.)

The treatment of Kerry is unique - and not all negative. He is held to standards that no one else is, but part of that is an expectation that more is expected of him. To use the recent example, there was less outright anger at Schumer, who actually spoke positively of co-opts and was clearly working with Snowe - but, there was very very little defense and what negatives there were were (wall street tool etc) were not disputed. It is true that DU has their brief periods of adulation for politicians - Whitehouse being the current one, but those fade. (I never thought I would see negative Feingold posts - but there have been many.)

I think the impact of all the last 4 plus year Kerry posts, is that more people view him positively than negatively - and many now list him when they create short lists of "good" guys. In general, his honesty, integrity, seriousness and the quality of his work are pretty much accepted - except by a few outliers. Other than the Obamas, there are very few people who are - overall - treated better.

[wisteria]

2. Perhaps, you are right. I had not considered that you can only unrecommended once.

And,I had forgotten that the few Kerry bashers just post over and over. And, in the end, what does it really matter if a DU post doesn't get recommended and receives negatives.
Thanks for your opinion.

[karynnj]

3. Thanks for you bringing it up - because I was annoyed

when it was used on a recent Kerry related post. Your post made me think about what it does.

One place where it could help is when there is a post (like the HP "10 year trigger" one) that initially angers some people enough that they recommend it - that is later shown to be dishonest or poor journalism. People seeing something like it could unreccommend it - to get it off the greatest page, if it was there.

(I like it mainly as it is doesn't take you to another page as the old one did.

[BlueIris]

4. I think it's juvenile and encourages more hatefulness here.

I give it about another week before Admin scraps it due to unpopularity.

[wisteria]

5. I can also see where it could create more hatefulness-something that we have an abundance of already

here at DU.

[sandnsea]

6. I think it'll do the opposite

I think the crap that we're all sick of seeing will get unrecommended to the point the posters will stop with their spamming and disrupting. I'm always surprised at how many people PM me privately to tell me they agree with me but are afraid to bring down the wrath on their heads. This is about simple stuff, like posting the entirety of a comment that has been distorted. I'm not even talking about going way out on a limb and daring to post the legal process on things like the DOMA brief. I think there are more people who are informed and logical who are afraid of confrontation but will use the unrecommend as their voice.