Welcome, New Users, to The Daily Kos. This Diary is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
In the Body you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in the Body this week is a discussion of Welcome New Users Diaries using The Daily Kos (dKos) interface.
After that you can ask me any question you want. I don't know all the answers so if you stump me, you do. I invite those wiser than I to contribute and correct (or raise a ruckus, just don't scare people).
No permission slips needed, join us at the deep end of the pool for adult swim.
Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic mirror, tell me today, have all my friends been good at play?
I can see Ectoras (#117462) and NJprognosticator (#118381), the first and last users to join the weeks of 2/9/07 to 2/22/07, and all of you boys and girls out there in DailyKosland!
Hello Devil. Welcome to Hell.
Recommended Links-
Frequently Asked Questions
Highlighted FAQ Areas/Rules for polite conversation-
I have written some diaries you may find useful-
Other Useful Diaries-
Here are some other Diaries that address the needs of new users-
Here are some older takes on what the well informed user should know-
Other diaries in the Welcome New Users Series. The Welcome New Users dKosopedia page.
Baker's Dozen
Well, yes it's a clip show, but it's prompted by a real complaint.
I have convinced several people here in the north that joining dKos might be informative, instructive, and entertaining. Because I was around they thought they'd zoom right in to last week's The Treachery of Images and tell me how wonderful I was.
Instead I puzzled the heck out of them.
When we started out we were much closer to the side of the pool.
1.0 Reading and Recommending, 11/3/06 (230)
1.1 Permalink / View Comments Views
1.2 Comment Notification Tab
1.3 Comment Display Settings
1.3.1 Always Hide Comments
1.4 Comment Controls
1.4.1 Expand / Shrink
1.4.2 [new] label
1.4.3 Ratings
1.4.4 Parent
1.4.5 Reply to This
1.4.6 Handle
1.4.7 Time and Date Stamp
1.5 Comment Recommending
1.5.1 Reasons not to Recommend
1.6 Recommending Diaries
1.6.1 Effects of Recommending
1.6.2 Reasons not to Recommend
2.0 Posting Comments, 11/10/06 (87)
2.1 Comment Posting Window
2.1.1 Main Comment / Replies
2.1.2 Moving the Window
2.2 You Can't Edit Comments
2.3 Subject: / Comment:
2.4 Comment Etiquette
2.5 Cancel / Preview / Post
2.5.1 How to avoid duplicate Comments
2.6 Formatting Buttons
2.6.1 Bold / Italic / Blockquote
2.7 Links
2.8 Politeness
3.0 Fancy Formatting, 11/17/06 (210)
3.1 Font Effects
3.1.1 Bold
3.1.2 Italic
3.1.3 Blockquote
3.1.4 Underline
3.1.5 Strikethrough
3.1.6 Monospace
3.1.7 Superscript
3.1.8 Buttons, HTML, and Autoformat
3.2 Ordered and Unordered Lists
3.3 Links
3.4 Special Characters
4.0 Posting Diaries, 11/23/06 (123)
4.1 New Diary Entry
4.1.1 Posting a Diary Entry
4.1.2 Diary Rules
4.1.2.1 Duplicate Diaries
4.1.2.2 Conspiracy Diaries
4.1.2.3 Diary Titles
4.1.2.4 Troll Diaries
4.1.2.5 Smiting Diaries
4.1.3 Editing Buttons
4.1.3.1 Intro / Body Box
4.1.3.2 Formatting Buttons
4.1.3.3 Help Button
4.1.3.4 Add Poll
4.1.3.5 Tags
4.1.4 Preview / Edit / Publish
4.2 Tip Jar
4.3 Diary Save
4.4 Deleting Diaries
5.0 Searches, 12/8/06 (95)
5.1 Search Controls
5.1.1 Find:
5.1.2 Sort by:
5.1.3 Results:
5.1.4 From: / To:
5.2 Database / Indexed Searches
5.3 Keyword Queries
5.4 Logical Operators / Order of Evaluation
5.5 Restricted (meta) Queries
5.5.1 sid
5.5.2 author
5.5.3 site
5.5.4 Image
5.5.5 title
5.5.6 tag
5.5.7 subject
5.5.8 cid
5.5.9 ntroll
5.5.10 nrec
6.0 Tags, 1/5/07 (112)
6.1 What are Tags?
6.2 Front Page Sort by Tags:
6.3 Search on |tag=""|
6.4 The Tag Cloud
6.4.1 Most Popular
6.4.2 All Tags
6.5 Tagging Best Practices
6.5.1 Tag Tips
6.5.2 Re-using existing Tags
6.6 Tag Proliferation
6.6.1 Diaries on Tag Proliferation
6.7 Tag Graffiti
6.7.1 Diaries about Tag Graffiti
6.8 Other Diaries about Tags
7.0 History, 1/13/07 (42)
7.1 User Histories
7.2 Your Page
7.2.1 Subscription
7.2.2 Drafts
7.2.3 My Profile
7.2.3.1 My Profile / Account Info
7.2.3.1.1 Public Email
7.2.3.1.2 Homepage
7.2.3.1.3 Bio
7.2.3.1.4 Comment Signature
7.2.4 Ratings (Given) [Hidden Comment]
7.2.5 Comments
7.2.5.1 Ratings (Received)
7.2.5.2 How Comments are Hidden
7.3 Search and History
7.4 User ID
7.4.1 What is?
7.4.2 Finding
7.4.3 When did you register?
8.0 Speed Reading, 1/19/07 (71)
8.1 Recent Diaries / Show: '50' / Set
8.2 Morning, Noon, and Night
8.3 Recent Diary List
8.3.1 The Window of Time
8.4 The Magic Bullet
8.4.1 &story_view=long
8.5 100 Comment Display Transition
8.6 Using Your Comment Tab to Track Responses
9.0 Bookmarks and Tabbed Browsing, 1/26/07 (76)
9.1 General Purpose Bookmarks
9.2 My Blogs
9.3 Blog Specific Bookmarks
9.4 Grouping Bookmarks for Opening in Tabs
9.5 Opening Groups of Bookmarks in a New Window of Tabs
9.6 Keeping a Search History
10.0 Power User's Tips II, 2/2/07 (102)
10.1 jotter's High Impact Diaries
10.1.1 Impact and Connections
10.1.2 Sources of Technical Support
10.2 Embedding YouTube Video
10.3 Copyright Rules
11.0 Emotional Honesty, 2/9/07 (171)
11.1 Pseudonymity
11.2 Blogging on Other Sites
11.3 Spelling and Grammar
11.4 Hoaxes
11.5 Civility
12.0 The Treachery of Images, 2/16/07 (99)
12.1 Copyrights
12.2 JPeg Compression
12.3 Cropping
12.4 Approved Image Hosts
12.5 <a href="" title=""
12.6 <img src=
12.6.1 "http://..."
12.6.2 width and height
12.6.3 align="left"
12.6.4 align="right"
12.6.5 hspace / vspace
12.7 <table >
12.7.1 table elements
12.7.1 table alignments
12.7.1 center alignment
12.7.1 cellpadding=
13.0 Baker's Dozen
13.1 Summary to date in Chapter Section Outline format
13.2 How to use the Summary
13.3 Future Directions
Anyway, I'd like to pretend there's some larnin' going on. In an ideal world (meaning one in which I was not quite so lazy) my up to date entries would be posted in the dKosopedia with hyperlinks to each Section.
Alas I am exactly as lazy as I am so you get links to the Diaries instead. If they're not listed here they're pretty much not worth reading. If you find a topic you're interested in, look it up in the Diary. Yes, sometimes the topic is labeled differently here than in the Diary.
The order in which the Chapters are presented is not random at all. The natural progression of a New User learning the site should exactly be from Reading to Recommending to Posting Comments to Posting Diaries. Searches and Tags are the two most important ways to find content. If you wish to argue that History and Speed Reading are of equal importance you may have a point.
When I got to Power User's Tip's I felt that I had covered most of the basics and branched off into some productivity tools and the refinement of community norms on Copyright issues. Emotional Honesty is all about recent evolutions in the standards of discourse not worthy of the FAQ, but of general interest. My confusing Treachery is about placing Images in your Comments and Diaries.
So it all makes perfect sense you see.
I will continue to pursue advanced topics not of specific interest only to community moderators in the Welcome New Users series, but one of the primary utilities of a Diary like this to the community is to provide a forum to talk about how to use the site. I'm happy to review anything.
I have some ideas of things I'd like to cover and a long, long list of things I should cover but haven't yet like the 'New' Tabs for your Blogroll and Diary Recommends, and your 'Hotlist' and why it's superior and not at all confusing.
It will be just as exciting for you as it is for me to discover what subversive thing we can do next.
There are other things to talk about. Let's get started.