Daily Kos Beta Site
Recent Changes
This past week was one of big behind-the-scenes stability changes. The comments are now more usable, fewer error messages (though they still have a ways to go). The front page HTML is actually faster loading than this current version of the site. That doesn't mean that the new site loads quicker, there's more than HTML on a modern web page, but it does mean that speed is becoming less and less of a hindrance.
We made some tweaks to the user interface, such as removing the all-cap headlines. I definitely think it looks better that way. We also brought back the bolded orange hyperlinks in the main body text. It actually looks better unbolded, but we may be stuck with the bold for usability issues for those with poorer eyesight.
A headsup --DK4 has a lot of mouseover goodness. While most icons are labelled at some place or other on the site, they are not always labeled. It makes for a cleaner interface. So if you want to know what a particular unlabeled icon does, just hover the mouse over it, and the label will pop up. Much the same way, on any story list, just mouse over the headline, and the first sentence (or so) will pop up so you can get an idea of what the piece is about before you click on it. It's a crazy cool feature.
We also added a new version of a rec list, this one listing every diary with at least one rec. It's currently a test. If this list survives, the formula would likely be tightened upon launch. Your feedback on this and other features are not just appreciated, but necessary as we refine.
Finding New Writers
Some people are still concerned about whether the new site will encourage the discovery of new writers. Let's go back to the reasons for the re-engineering of the site:
- Make it easier for content to be found
- Make it easier for good content to rise to the top
- Make it easier to retain good content for future reference; and
- Make it easier for good writers to make Daily Kos their blogging home, tapping into its large community.
If new writers and new content aren't being found, then the FIRST reason for the change will not be panning out, and we WILL make changes.
However, I'll continue to argue that the current recommended and recent lists are broken, and a shitty way to find content.
- The recommended list is dominated by a relatively small number of voices. Celebrity diarists have a leg up on being read. Now that may always be the case, but I'm working to lessen that advantage. Everyone deserves to be read.
- The recent list requires you to be on the site at the time that great diary is posted. If you're ten minutes too early or too late, too bad, especially if the piece doesn't make the rec list (which is statistically most of the time).
- The current lists require you get lucky -- you better hope your great diary wasn't posted right before big breaking news, or wasn't posted during the latest tiresome flamewar.
- The current lists require a diary limit. I know some of you think the diary limit should't be listed. To me, that's the most ludicrous argument against DK4. Thank heavens no one was telling me to STFU when I first started diaring, posting up to 20 posts a day. Good thing no one told Atrios to STFU, or Digby, or Aravosis or Benen or any number of great bloggers who are more than capable of producing quality AND quantity on a daily basis.
- The diary police are a necessary evil, but still evil. Really, telling someone with a unique viewpoint on a breaking news story to "delete this diary" because someone else already diaried that breaking news story is obnoxious, as is telling them that they haven't written enough. Good thing Atrios didn't try to get started on Daily Kos. I won't miss them.
- You want "serendipity", DK4 will be a million times more serendipitous than the current site. I know many of you don't believe me. But I certainly have found MUCH more new content and new writers clicking through people's diaries, their "recommended by" boxes, tags, and my Stream. If you want a complete list of every diary written, you can click on diaries on the nav bar.
Groups
As everyone beta testing at DK4 knows, nothing on the beta site will survive the transition to the new site. Yet people are already playing with starting new groups. And what I'm seeing on there has got me really excited over the possibilities of the new site. Book and music groups. Groups focused on issues like Alzheimers, or food, or geography.
Tags
Forget tags on the current version of the site. They were neglected and generally unusable. If you want to get a sense of what's important to the community on DK4, the new tag page rocks.
Latest Feedback
Twigg:
Principal among my concerns is, and always has been, this:
I write great Diaries. My Diaries deserve to be read here, in the White House, and they should be on the Reading List of every High School in these United States, and a few in Europe too! I am, in this respect, just like every other Kossack who ever wrote a Diary. It's what we all want.
As my Diary history shows, it doesn't work like that. It never did. Some of my best Diaries have been ignored, and I am okay with that. Others, less good but possibly more immediate have soared, and I am okay with that too. Right up there though, in my mind, has been the Recent Diary List.
I have watched it like a hawk while my masterpiece has been steadily pushed south by Diaries that are not much more than incoherent comments. I have watched it while those Diaries around mine have received one, two or three comments, when mine has fifty, and just hit the Recc. List. Bye suckers .... It's my turn today; and sometimes despaired while a good piece of writing has languished. This might not have been mine, I have watched other Diaries worthy of wider fame sink forever, and just hoped a Rescue Ranger might happen along soon.
My basic point here is that, thus far, all we have had is the Recent Diary List. Imperfect as it is, and it is far from perfect, it's all we've got and we are damn well not going to give it up now. Not without a fight. Not without killing a few sacred cows first. Not without going to the mattresses.
Unless .......
Exactly. That's what DK4 does. It replaces your ONE shot at getting read with dozens of ways for people to find you.
Miep:
Many people are unhappy about the full new diary thread not being on the front page. Instead, a link to the full new diary thread is on the front page, plus you can filter it in a whole bunch of ways.
I think that's interesting; some people seem to be really attached to the idea of the whole shebang of new input being on the front page; the fact that the new format is much more agile seems irrelevant to them.
That seems a visual thing to me, to some extent. I have known people who never put anything away. They leave everything out, in piles. If you mess with the piles, they can't find anything. Otherwise, they're fine. They know exactly where everything is, because their visual memories are right there, like card catalogs, to remind them.
I can't handle that. I don't have visual memory. I have organizational memory. I have to put things away. I have systems about where things go. I work well with such. I like my hotlist, and I use it a lot.
So maybe that's part of the split here on the new front page layout conflict; some of us are system memory people, some of us are visual memory people. Something like that, anyway.
Very interesting diary, which might explain some of the attachment to a recent diary list that is truly broken.
Richard Lyon:
The case I wish to make here is for a speedy conversion. I don't see any bugs that are serious enough to prevent the site form functioning.
The bug list is still a mile long, and the site os broken for an entire browser (IE 7) which accounts for at least 10 percent of site visits.
EtiKos:
Dear Miss Mayta,
All this social networking stuff has me very nervous. Will I need to have "friends" to blog with? What if no one invites me to their Group? What if everyone invites me to their Group and I have to choose?? What is a Group??? And this "following" stuff --- I thought Meteor Blades said we couldn't do that. Is it okay in DK4?
Signed,
Just Plain Skeered
~~~
Dear Skeered,
Don't be alarmed. You can continue to have no friends at all and, in fact, for some groups you might find that to your advantage. For example, the "Does Not Bathe" group and the "Hoards Cheetos" groups should be perfect for the friendless.
As far as the "following", I think it is less like "stalking", the banned activity, because you do not even have to move off your "Streams" page to know what the object of your strange obsession interest is doing. (Btw, may I make a suggestion about the word "streams", powers that be? Something about it seems a little too, how you say, medical). I believe you can't get in trouble unless you actually "follow" them instead of metaphorically "follow" them. Although the little heart you click to "Follow" someone did make me pause.
Miss Mayta jokes, but apparently this is a point of principle for several people outraged at the new site. How dare anyone ask them to FOLLOW someone! They follow no one! They march to their own beat! They are ICONOCLASTS!
Yeah, whatever. You don't have to follow anyone if you don't want to. Or follow everyone. Or follow tags. Or follow groups. Or not. I'm not sure why this sets some people off, but whatever. "Follow" means you keep track of the material written by that person, published in that group, or tagged with that tag. I "follow" Newt Gingrich on Twitter, not because I'm a fan, but because I like to follow his inanity.
Bob Johnson:
Okay, I have been one of the very few folks afforded the opportunity to travel to the future in the Kosatron 3000™ and pre-pre-pre-beta test DK6.
Before I go too far, let me state for the record that I was afforded this opportunity because I am one of kos' favorite posters -- mainly because I drive thousands of page hits to his dump site every day. That's how he can afford to have his place in the Swiss Alps, the smaller place in Monaco (along with the yacht), the beach house/compound (13 fucking rooms!) in Tahiti and his shack in Berkeley.
So, sure, I'm one of the so-called "Kos Kool Kidz" who gets recommended much of the time for no good reason other than people want to touch my loins. Or something.
Anyway, read on for my initial take on DK6...
It's not a favorable review...
DawnG:
I've been here a long time and there have been many times, especially lately, where I have been hanging on by my mental fingernails. I have been disgusted and disheartened by some of the garbage I see here. The pie fights, the ego stroking, the brilliant flashes of inspiration that smell more like a dirty diaper.
But I've never thought of packing it all in. And now we have DK4 on the horizon, and it promises to be different. It promises to be easier to find good content and easier to avoid bad content. Whether it lives up to that promise, at the very least what it will be is NOT set in stone and it still has the power and promise to be whatever the hell YOU want it to be.
Be a leader. Be a follower. Be a producer. Be a consumer. You can do it however you want it. And people are leaving because they don't like the fonts or the color or think it's going to get MORE clicquie (is that even really possible at this point? Really?).
Be a follower if you don't have time to be a leader. Be a consumer if you don't have it in you anymore to be a producer. But leaving entirely? It just doesn't make sense to me. There is so much here, and that is not going to change with DK4. It will be more than politics. It will be pooties and gardening and photoblogging and discussions and debates and everything else. But it will be whatever YOU want it to be. you are being given the power to govern what dailykos is for you.
As I've noted before, every major change to this site has shed people. It's inevitable. I find it ridiculous that people would announce their exit before they have even given the new site a shot, but it's a free world and a really big internet. I even predict an effort by some people to recreate Daily Kos elsewhere, as many others have tried before. Who knows, they may even finally succeed. But those who stay will have a much better site to work with than this creaky, old, broken site.
Launch Date
Right now, I'm thinking February 1 looks good. I reserve the right to change my mind, however!