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We had them in NYC, too, when I was a kid! And it was a name synonymous with affordable AND good!!!

I dunno, MAD. According to Alexa, DU has been in a downward spiral for years - especially since last October, when it dropped from just under 6,000 (in world-wide ranking re website traffic) to 13,000 in January. Although DU's traffic declined slowly after 2008, it always fluctuated no more than 2,000 points in any given year - a drop of 7,000 points over three months was unprecedented. It's taken seven months to go from 13,000 to where it is now at 11,000 - not a good sign.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/democraticunderground.com#

And you can see it. There was a time when I had to sift through pages and pages of Latest Threads to catch up if I'd been off DU for several hours. Now I only have to go back a page or two to find where I left off.

I note that more ad space has now appeared in the past few months - again, not a good sign. Did the ad revenue drop so drastically it was necessary to sell more space? It would appear so.

Again, it's just one of those things that makes you go hmmmm. When you have an incredibly popular discussion board and make changes, and then see its popularity wane, isn't that when you decide the changes made were to the site's detriment and it's time to re-think those changes?

I became friends with a lot of the old Mods outside of DU. They loved the site, and loved being a part of its operation. Despite being unpaid for their time and effort (which was considerable), they felt they were contributing to something valuable and worthwhile. Why they were all summarily dismissed is beyond me.

Had the jury system been based on following/enforcing the TOS, it might have worked far better than it has. But telling jurors to "leave" or "hide" based on whatever criteria they feel like using is - well, insane.

I've had several "hides" where a juror said, "I can't stand NanceGreggs, so I'm voting to hide." I've seen these types of "decisions" with respect to other posters as well. There's also the opposite tack: "I always agree with ___, so I won't vote to hide anything they say."

How does that equate to "community standards" being reflected and/or enforced?

It amazes me to see Skinner insist that everything is just going swimmingly; that there is no alert-stalking going on, that personal biases against posters have no impact on jury decisions, or that only Democrats with "differing opinions" post here.

DU has become "fair and balanced" in the same way FOX-News is "fair and balanced". When alleged "Democrats" post links to RW sites/writers/pundits in order to make a point about how terrible Democrats are, isn't it time to recognize that they are NOT now, nor have they ever been, "Democrats"?

One would think so ...