DailyKos is a nice size now, but I can envision it becoming too big. How many diaries can be created before it's just too hard to participate and the signal to noise ratio goes bad?
Here are some specific proposals. Please comment on these or make your own proposals in the discussion.
I'm not a fan of the linear rating system of zero to four.
If a post contains a personal attack on another member of the community, it should be masked. I would be comfortable with comments that half the evaluators think is a personal attack are masked.
Then there are comments that are negative, distructive or overly disrespectful to candidates or ideas. These comments are sometimes made by trolls. Sometimes people are just getting too excited. Often these comments lead to the personal attacked referred to above. Evaluators should be able to rate comments constructive criticism vs. destructive criticism. Alternate words could be respectful vs. disrespectful. I wouldn't mask these comments unless a supermajority (7/10?) found the comments disrespectful.
Also, there's the issue of comments that violate the standards of the community. Markos has said people should lay off the negative comments about Dean and Clark. It's conceivable to me that some comments just violate the standards established. The threshhold for masking comments that violate the standards of the community probably should be 50%, but maybe this requires "trusted users" to evaluate.
Also, the ratings system probably should be used more. Maybe trusted users should be required to evaluate a certain number of posts to keep trusted user status. Perhaps 200% as many as posts they make themselves?
Finally, many people have raised the possibility of rating diaries. This would be useful in masking diary entries by trolls. But I would like entries to be categorized: "presidential primaries", "media", "Iraq War", "Congressional elections", "economy", etc. As dKos grows there will be some people that want to use dKos to keep up on some subjects, but not others.
What suggestions do you have about improving the Daily Kos?