I started out writing this as a comment in Deoliver47's diary from this morning, and ended up realizing that it's entirely too long and contains too many discrete and substantive thoughts to really effectively put into a comment addressing his diary. So I'm writing my own diary, and I think it's my first, even though the random thoughts are haphazard and disorganized in the vein of one of my pieces of light criticism. But then again the point of Deoliver47's diary was to get people to de-lurk, which I'm effectively doing by participating in this improvised soapbox about de-lurking, so... meh.
Anyway, it's some very light criticism of the site's display structure and participation formats that I hope someone might read and perhaps keep in mind when doing the next redesign. Let's get meta!
- I've really more of a Atrios-style mind with regard to politics, even though I went to college for political science and should technically be good at this more than anything else. (My mediocre GPA suggesting otherwise...) One- and two-sentence comments are my forte if I want to get something in a position where people might read it. Otherwise,
- Commenting is a first-responder's game. On anything frontpaged or anything recommended there's such a rush of comments when the diary first comes to light that if you aren't one of the first to read something and comment instantaneously, your thoughts stand a good chance of getting lost in the shuffle. Unless I have something ridiculously insightful to say about the topic at hand (which is limited to communications, comparative electoral systems, or, uh, baseball) it doesn't seem that useful to be the fifth response to the nineteenth thread when it'll show up, say, as the 218th row in the displayed order of comments and unlikely to be read by more than a handful of people.
- The commenting order system doesn't seem to me to be visually based around multiple threads of conversation. The first person to post a comment (which on this site is usually the diarist with a tip jar) will start a thread of conversation about the diary, and if popular the first 20-30 comments that show up to the non-committed reader will be responses to that conversational thread. Any other threads of conversation that address a different point or argument in the diary are relegated to display below the first, so while a thread that isn't first may be a better conversation or productive argument than the first comment, it'll only get displayed halfway down after many people lose the capacity to keep reading. (Tell me how many times you've viewed the 218th comment in a diary.)
- Diaries themselves are difficult to write, since they are (rightfully) restricted in content and style. In essence, it feels like you need to SAY something, to argue something in order for the diary to be properly and positively received by the community. It also requires you have a lot of things to say, or at least spend a lot of column inches saying it. I observed that during the election run-up period, it seemed like there was a substantial amount of popular blowback against the three-paragraph short diary, with little regard to the content or validity of the argument contained therein. So whenever I've got a point to make that won't fit in the framework of a diary/FP comment and don't have the time, or the mental energy, to expand my somewhat compact writing style into a two-page essay, I sort of just disregard it and I expect others do as well.
- The troll-prevention methods that are intended to keep the firebreathing, logic-impaired freepers at bay also have a chilling effect on the participatory urges of very occasionally participating lurkers. I've been reading this site every day since at least the 2004 Presidential primaries, but have more of a educational interest (and okay, an entertainment interest as well) than a participatory interest even though there's occasional arguments I see that I want to make or respond to. Yet one sentence kept me from even participating until two years ago, which was the "New accounts must wait 24 hours before commenting" line on the account creation form. Oh. So I won't have a chance to respond to this comment or diary and have anyone see or care about it? Hmm. Well, filling out forms is annoying anyway. Forget it." I'm not saying anyone wants to expose DKos to hate-filled and impulsive garbage from said logic-impaired bigots with brand new user accounts, which is what this policy is designed for. But this serves as a motivation barrier to both friend and foe alike (as well as stifle genuinely good arguments from the account-less casual reader that would progress the site's dialectic).