Please Take the Time to Make Comments When You're on a Jury [View all]

This is a cross-post from Meta where it might have been more appropriate as commentary on DU and its processes. However, I don't feel it got the review of enough people there so I'm posting it here as a plea to DU members. As my plea to help us all make DU a great place. One of the great places I visit every day.

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I know it takes time to make comments when you volunteer to serve on a jury and you've already given of your time by participating on a jury. Thank you for your service.

What people may not realize is that taking time to comment on your thoughts for why you voted to Hide or Leave a post is very helpful to people upstream of that jury service. The admins and the MIRT team get sent alerts on hidden posts with the TOS violation box checked. They take your comments into account when evaluating whether or not to revoke posting privileges for a member.

Your comments could be important to cause the admins or MIRT to see things from a different angle than they might otherwise and, as a result, allow a member to continue to have posting privileges because that member may have simply inelegantly stated a post but is still a good DU member. Conversely, your comments might help confirm their suspicions that the member is a troll, racist, misogynist, bigot, spammer, or other type of member who should have their posting privileges revoked.

Finally, your comments serve to inform the alerter and the member whose post was alerted on about how other DU members perceive their alerts and posts. This is true for all posts including ones that don't have the TOS box checked. So it serves as a means to help educate other members and to guide newer members on what is considered appropriate at DU.