Hunter’s Open Thread request for Daily Kos 4.0 suggestions has already spawned four diaries in response. Ken Comer has heroically read all 1082 comments and tried to categorize them. The inimitable, metaholic dmsilev has weighed in with an expansion of his earlier seminal diary on Community and Collaboration. Abou Ben Adhem suggested turning Daily Kos into an almost organically connected Infinite Thread. And I tried my hand at doing what Hunter asked us not to do – give interface suggestions.
Here I try to keep my comments more general, but it is hard for me not to also picture how a certain suggestion might play out on the site. As always, More Below.
In the comments section to dmsilev’s piece, jotter pointedly remarked that the primary mission of Daily Kos is to promote progressive political action. I heartedly agree with this and that is the reason I’m not providing a link to my previous diary on this issue. After I posted it I realized that I had made a fatal error in trying to separate the interests of Viewers from Users.
Since I have a six digit UID I still remember what it was like to visit the site and not know what an Open Thread was. I was thinking how visually appealing Huffington Post is and that maybe Daily Kos could attract more Viewers and thereby be more effective.
But, I missed the point. HuffPo is entertainment. Daily Kos is a call to arms. If a Viewer doesn’t know what an Open Thread is maybe they will be tempted to open it and get exposed to more of the nitty-gritty of what goes on. Maybe that will encourage them to begin blogging. And then who knows what might happen. They might even get affected by MetaMania.
Collaboration
dmsilev listed some of the ways he thinks the site can help promote Community and make Collaboration easier. Since I am in the process of trying to develop a collaborative effort here at dkos, let me give some feedback on two features I feel would help that.
- Tabbed Page of Approved Projects
The first challenge I faced was how do I connect with other people who might be interested in my collaborative project. dmsilev framed the issue as Enable people with similar interests to find each other. His solution was creating Special Interest Groups on site. Jotter wanted these to be limited to only groups associated with a specified project and to have an expiration date.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to introduce social networking tools to the site. That process already occurs at various Ongoing Diary Series. It would probably be just as beneficial to simply list these in a more prominent place.
I believe that if someone has an idea for a collaborative effort s/he should post a diary describing it which includes a contact email address. (Mine will come out after the New Year). That person would then be able to request designation of their idea as an Approved Project.
If approved, the name of the group, with a link to the creation diary, would be added to the Approved Projects List for a month. At the top of the page would be an explanation that these are active projects seeking volunteers.
At the end of a month, if the project is worthwhile, enough people will have been attracted to begin functioning as a group. There are enough off-site resources for the group to interact in any way they want as described in dmsilev’s earlier piece. They can attract additional members in the future by posting periodic diaries discussing progress in the project.
It should be noted that exceedingly worthwhile projects like the Congressional Committees Project don’t even need this assistance. It would only be projects started by little known members of the community who couldn’t make the Recommended List who might need this help.
Just by lurking around the site and appropriating another member’s list of contacts I have collected over seventy email addresses of people who might be interested in my project. I intend to send out a mass mailing to announce my diary when I post it. So, with a little effort, it is possible to do this even without help. But a feature like I describe would definitely make it easier.
- Official Sock Puppet Accounts
This would be an account that could post diaries, but not make comments (no mojo). It would be available to a group of key people in the project who would be able to compose, revise, and post diaries for the group. This allows for continuity in times of vacation, illness, or waning interest and keeps one person from being overwhelmed by the task.
It also allows a reader to locate all output from the group at one location rather than rummaging through the home pages of various participants. A home page location for the project would provide a place to post a brief description of the project along with the contact email address for the group.
I think that’s all that’s needed to get a bunch of collaborative projects going. Actually, as these become more popular and more people become aware of the possibilities, the issues might work themselves out even before DK4.0 is launched. There already is a Daily Kos User Groups page in the dkosopedia. It’s just impossible to find. It always takes me five minutes to get back to it. And it’s questionable how viable some of the groups are.
Longer Easy Access to Content
The main other thing I would like from the new design is for things to stick around longer. For that I want to rescue some ideas from my last meta posting. In the comments thread to dmsilev’s diary the idea of a new website called Weekly Kos was suggested. I think there’s an easier way to do this without having a new site.
I suggested a tabbed page that would contain several of jotter’s daily High Impact Diary lists. The lists would just contain the diary name and the author, like the Recent Diaries List, rather than all of the things jotter includes. As many as possible would be fit onto the page. If there are no ads, at least four days worth would be available and even more with a redesign.
From my last piece:
[The page] would be pretty breathtaking to behold. This would be a compact, efficient way to see the best of Daily Kos for the past few days laid out right there in front of you. It would allow for easy tracking of recent trends and interests, along with giving clear testimony of who the workhorse stars of the site are.
Arrow buttons could also be included on the page that would allow you to change the lists in either direction one day at a time.
Another idea would be to have a tab dedicated to SusanG’s Diary Rescue. (When I speak of tabs I mean links running across the top of the screen that take you to a new page of the site. See MyDD or BMT for examples.) I first thought of doing this like the High Impact Diaries page, but since an introductory essay is always written, it would be better to run it in the same format as the present Front Page. This would be equivalent to filtering on the tag Diary Rescue. Having its own dedicated tab simply makes the very worthy work of SusanG and the Rescue Rangers more accessible.
My last idea for helping content stick around longer is to double the size of the screen. I’m not suggesting kos buy everyone a 24 inch monitor, though that would be nice. My idea is simply to add tabs at the top that say Page 1 and Page 2 and split the content in half until such time as each item scrolls off the screen.
Right now anyone who is reading this is saying "I don’t want to be on Page 2, you stupid #%^&*#$!" or words to that effect. Of course not. In actuality there would be no hierarchy. As diaries and stories were posted they would be assigned a designator that would distinguish them into two groups. When they scrolled off the page this designator would go away.
When someone opened Daily Kos, which group would get put in Page 1 and which in Page 2 would be alternately selected. So, you could open dKos, close it, reopen it, and possibly see an entirely different set of stories and diaries. Of course, you could then click Page 2 and see the other ones.
This is the easiest way to double the content on the site (along with the ad space.) It would create a Recommended List twice as long as the present one, thereby making it easier to get on, and you could easily track 100 recent diaries instead of 50.
Again, there is no hierarchy and as soon as an item scrolls off the screen it goes into the same general pot. jotter would still have only one list of High Impact Diaries, not an A and B list. SusanG would still have only one list of rescued diaries, not Page 1 and Page 2 lists. When you scrolled down to the bottom of the screen and clicked Next 12 on the stories page, you would get the same set of stories whether you were on Page 1 or Page 2.
The designation into groups is only effective as long as the item is viewable on the site’s Front Page. The effect of this change would be to keep content around twice as long. Your diary wouldn’t scroll off the screen as fast. If you did make the Recommended List, your time on it would be increased. The beauty of this approach is that it could be extended to a Page 3 when the site warranted it.
Filtered Viewing
Ken Comer’s first item on his compiled list was Tabbed Front Pages / Multiple Feeds. His discussion centered around forcing diarists to choose "Big Bucket" tags to select what was displayed on each tab. As dmsilev and others have pointed out, this can tend to lead to Balkanization and is also difficult to effect in practice, i.e., choosing the "Big Bucket" tags and deciding where each diary belongs.
I think a better system would be to use the present tag system to allow user-designated filter tabs. These would be two tabs that you could set up from your home page. One would be a NO tab and the other a YES tab.
At each set up point you would have two lines for entry of items separated by commas, like the tag entry space when composing a diary. The first line would be for user names and the second line for tags.
When the NO tab was set up the view that you would see would be a typical Front Page with all diaries and stories excluded that were authored by anyone in your user name list or those that contained at least one of the tags in your list. This would allow you to get rid of authors and subjects you didn’t like.
When the YES tab was selected the Front Page view would only include diaries and stories by authors in your list or ones that contained a tag on your list. If this caused the story side to come up empty it would substitute the latest diaries that met your filter.
Clearly, the YES tab is much more exclusive and you might end up with a long list of items to get what you want, but this is an easy way to allow for specialized viewing while avoiding institutionalized balkanization. Self selected viewing is what we are already doing while remaining a community.
I would imagine that the YES tab would be popular enough that people would want two or three of them to highlight their special interests. If that was the case then it would probably be good to just present them like a diary preview list rather than trying to turn them into alternate Front Pages.
Both of these tabs would ignore the Page 1 and Page 2 designators mentioned above. I would imagine that many people would opt to turn those off and just open up in the NO tab Front Page mode, with two or three YES tabs available for quick browsing of diaries by whatever categories they created. Which would make a lot of sense. It shouldn’t be a problem to make that possible.
[UPDATE: 1/5/07] After ek hornbeck's comment below and his referral to dmsilev's diary Sipping From the Firehose, I have to agree that a folder of kos favorites on your browser would eliminate the need of what I called YES buttons. However, I still like the idea of a NO button, and I bet a lot of other people would also.
But, I also think the Approved Project List is also unnecessary. Since I wrote this it finally hit me that sending out mass mailings is spamming. (Duh!) If someone wants to build a project they lurk on appropriate diaries, find others with common ideas, and individually write them about his/her idea. That's how you build a group, even if you're not a big star. When I started doing this I was humbled by all the wonderful responses I received.