I've been here about five months now, gone through some stuff, and I thought I'd post a meta diary. It was going through my head some over the last month, and I thought it would be fun to see what other people might add.
Let's just say...this diary could easily be more about the comments than the diary, y'know?
Other than that, I have nothing to add to this preamble other than a general thank you to y'all for being there.
Best,
Miep
Rules of Kossacks:
This site has a mission statement, and that is to elect Democrats and then better Democrats. Keep that in mind when you post. Do not come here and go about suggesting that the Democratic Party be pushed off the cliff. But do feel free to criticize Democrats who are in office, and Democrats who are vying for candidacy in any given race when they are competing with other Democrats. Once a Democrat is running for office, unopposed by any other Democrat, you may not expect leniency here, when criticizing such candidates.
This site is also construed by the owner and editors as being reality-based. This means you should not blog here about scary political things when you have no evidence. It’s generally more acceptable to be suggestive about such possibilities when you comment, but if you’re going to post a blog about your own private terror, without any reasonable cites, be prepared to be flamed.
Read the daily diary rescue front page post that comes up every evening. The diary rescue people find a lot of great stuff that doesn’t ever make the rec list.
Try to be gracious, it helps a lot.
Teach when you can, learn when you can.
If you get so angry that you swear you’re going to leave this site and never come back here again, don’t blog about it. Give it a few days. People who blog about how they are going to leave this site and never come back here again, are fair game for more mockery than you ever want to experience.
Be careful about whom you befriend. People who are unpopular sometimes are for very good reasons. But once you’ve checked out a blogger’s history, and you like their work, don’t be afraid to support them. Sometimes supporting unpopular positions is a Kossack’s obligation as well.
Watch out for popular waves. Just because everyone seems to be happy about something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing.
Watch for bloggers who publish lots of well-researched information and don’t push too hard with opinions. They are rare and worth keeping an eye on.
Kossacks have huge numbers of in-jokes. We sometimes spell things funny, we talk about pie, we have many odd names for cats and dogs and we are very long on acronyms. There is history for all of this, and much of it can be googled. When in doubt, feel free to ask. Kossacks generally are very happy to answer questions about Kossacks.
You can’t get to be a Trusted User (TU) until about 3 months or so after you join the site. After that, you can hide rec comments and you can read the hidden comments, and you can edit tags. You can lose your TU status off and on, depending on how active you are on the site and how much of a pain in the butt you’ve taken to becoming. People who get a lot of hide recs on their comments lose their TU status, for varying amounts of time, depending. Sometimes people get HR’s (hide recs) for inappropriate reasons; other times they are just trying to stir things up and trash the site. Generally if you are fairly active on the site and try to get along you can keep your TU status indefinitely, but the algorithm for how this works is kept intentionally secret by the site owner.
Don’t hide rec people when you are angry at them. If you want to use your "donuts" (hide recommendations) it’s much better to use them on people who are "trolling" other people. Trolling means disrupting the site dialogue with no productive intent. Trolling means personal assaults. It does not mean vehemently disagreeing with another Kossack’s viewpoint about some legitimate debate on dKos, which includes all political debates and all debates about warfare.
Kossacks don’t always read answers to their comments. If you write a comment to a Kossack and the Kossack doesn’t answer, don’t take it personally. This is a big overwhelming venue here and sometimes it gets too much even for people who’ve been here a long time.
Try not to be mean. Somebody may be having a bad day, and it may be you.
If you get inspired to compliment someone, do it.
Read the FAQ’s. They explain a lot and you’ll learn some history of the site, as well.
When you post a diary, don’t just criticize. Say what you want to happen instead.
If you fight with someone, try to let it go.
Never show fear.