We've seen announcements of the upcoming DKos 4.0 beta; it will likely be starting later this spring. It looks to be a controlled rollout of a completely new platform, with invited users, load testing, etc.; all the usual things you do during a proper software beta test. It's made more complicated by avoiding break in continuity: the diaries and stories and comments written over the past six and a half years since Daily Kos started on the Scoop software platform will be retained and accessible.
By contrast, the move of Daily Kos from Movable Type to the Scoop platform was very different. Scoop was an established blogging platform with community features, and there was no attempt to retain or retrofit the sixteen months of posts under Movable Type. Daily Kos had outgrown the Movable Type platform earlier in 2003; even when a dedicated server was purchased by Markos out of user donations, the handwriting was on the wall.
On October 13, 2003, Markos posted MT version of dKos is now obsolete at 6:33pm on the Movable Type site, and cross-posted it as the first story at 8:01:05pm on the Scoop site. The beta test was about to launch.
If you think I'm talking about a formal beta test, it was anything but. The announcement, made at 9:17pm EDT, was as follows:
Sneak peek
For those who can't wait to check out the new Daily Kos:
http://69.22.180.52
Meteor Blades has stated that he signed up for an account immediately after the above post went up, and he snared UID 6. Right after him was a regular commenter on the site, n97n, who got 7; Cogito, who was 8; PaulDem, who was 9; and PrometheusSpeaks, who snared UID 10.
The first five accounts were taken by Scoop (the system account, UID 1), Grant (UID 2, who helped set up the system), kos (3), test (4), and Jerome Armstrong (5). I don't know that Jerome's account was created during the alpha testing, but it seems a reasonable guess, given that the two were partners in a political consulting business at the time, and Jerome was Markos's blogfather.
Markos posted Getting Started on the Scoop site at 8:16pm, an hour before posting the Sneak peek URL on Movable Type, which explained about signing up (and needing an email to receive a temporary password for the newly created account), and mentioned that people could create their own diaries. There was also a nod to the testing side of things:
If you see any weird-looking pages or anything breaks, please send me a detailed email and I'll work to squash such bugs. I don't doubt things will go wrong, so please help me fix them as quickly as possible.
There was one early bug: Roastbeef reported at 10:07pm that the New Diary feature wasn't working, giving "Permission Denied". That bug took under three hours to solve: at 12:52am on October 14, the test account posted the first diary entitled Test:
This is Kos testing this feature.
It took Skubwa forty-four head-spinning minutes to post the first non-management diary, though its title makes it sound as if it was going down for the third time: Sub blog-blog. daniel's effort seventeen minutes later was even more concise.
There were more front-page posts on the 13th, including the fourth one, which finally mentioned the "b" word: Staying beta, keep suggestions flowing was posted by kos at 11:15pm, and many suggestions did indeed flow. There was also an inadvertent bug demonstration, as clyde changed the font to courier in the middle of his comment, and it, and the rest of the comments, remain in that font to this day.
The First poll: keep titles in comment headers? post demonstrated, among other things, problems with polls.
Testing continued into the next day (even Markos must sleep sometime), but at 4:52pm on October 14, after nineteen hours and thirty-five minutes, the beta test was completed and its end announced in Making the change:
We have initiated the DNS change. That means both this and the original Daily Kos site may act weird. Your cookies may break. The site may be down for a while. The Cubs may win a pennant.
In other words, the frabric of time and space may rupture. I'll see you guys on the other side. Thanks for your patience.
Anyone want to bet that the DKos 4.0 beta is going to last longer than nineteen hours and thirty-five minutes? Heck, more than twenty-four hours?
Note: I would be remiss if I failed to point to my two earlier diaries on The Road to Scoop and the first days of Scoop, aka Daily Kos 2.0. Some of the material is recycled from there. Note that there is an error in the former, which claims that the DNS change started as soon as Markos first posted the address of the new site on Movable Type. I was almost twenty hours premature in that statement.
~~~~~
It seems odd to say that today was a slow day after looking at the first day under Scoop, where 133 comments were posted in the two and a half hours before midnight, and only 674 during the whole first day (October 14, 2003), but these days 12,726 comments in a day is slow indeed. Despite this comparative scarcity, Daily Kos readers came through with half a dozen submissions to the Top Comments mailbox today, and I thank everyone who made time to send along a favorite in advance of the 9:30pm Eastern Time deadline. The address of our mailbox for top comments submissions remains:
TopComments AT gmail DOT com
(change " AT " to "@" and " DOT " to ".")
Anyone can send great comments to our address. Be sure to include the direct link to a comment—the URL—which is available from that comment's date/time; we need that to find your choice. Please always include your Daily Kos user name in the body of your message, so we can credit you properly. I say again: both link and username are important; someone today forgot the latter, though I was able to do some sleuthing and determine the proper byline. If you send a writeup with the link, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit if desirable to do so.
From emmasnacker:
G2geek strongly recommends against digital diverticulitis.
From Jan F:
This comment from theKgirls in Sunday's Morning Feature perfectly describes why "think of the children" is an excellent argument...just not the way the right-wing intends it to be used.
From bronte17:
ivorybill deftly demonstrates that when spilling words... their consequences have actions in Mike Stark's diary FOX station refuses to air brutal racist police video.
From anodnhajo:
In this morning's GUS (Giving Up Smoking) diary by bgblcklab1, the posted NSFW YouTube of a Jimmy Dean Sausage complaint call inspires bsmechanic to a comment: I have seen the tribulations of sausage man.
From ScottyUrb:
One of the pictures in blackwaterdog's photo diary shows President Obama eating at a restaurant called KOMI, giving citizenx the perfect setup to say this!
From pantherq:
As snafubar notes, the bigots don't understand that what is good for the goose will some day be good for the gander.
From sardonyx (your alpha beta Sunday diarist):
Diogenes2008 tells the story of a recent, basic demonstration of ingrained racism and sexism in this country.
Sun dog has an interesting perspective on big transformations.
~~~~~
Finally, we have today's top mojo using my revision of the cskendrick-devised mojo-to-Excel process.
First, Top Mojo excluding miscellaneous cute animals, search-identifiable tip jars, and first diary comments:
1) Vampires by DarkSyde — 159
2) Unknown, but reading between lines by Mike Stark — 115
3) What a powerful diary--my heart goes out to you-- by boofdah — 97
4) Fox reports on how wonderful by ivorybill — 89
5) thanks. just thinking, no deterrence by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse — 86
6) Please never leave us. by XNeeOhCon — 86
7) Thank you... by msgalnca — 82
8) Overall, Pres Obama has done an exellent job by Jeff Y — 81
9) Seizure of all assets by Edger — 71
10) Constant rant: by Crashing Vor — 70
11) Fox likes to cover things up by Dakit — 68
12) This pie has been hurled countless times, by XNeeOhCon — 66
13) yes RICO by soothsayer99 — 65
14) The cover up is becoming a local story by crystal eyes — 64
15) It's simply amazing by GN1927 — 64
16) Good for them (KIRO & reporter, not FOX) by Hayate Yagami — 60
17) not a word about the physical abuse by Mike Stark — 58
18) The answer is so obvious. by funluvn1 — 57
19) Corporate death penalty by ssmt — 56
20) I think these BWD diaries help us take a by XNeeOhCon — 56
21) I saw the video earlier by Angie in WA State — 54
22) Interesting analogy by ssmt — 54
23) Makes me want to puke. by StepLeftStepForward — 53
24) This is not blind worship by GN1927 — 52
25) This is our Darwin moment by beltane — 51
26) My mother died a long time ago, but I still think by BardoOne — 49
27) He is not perfect, not even close by blackwaterdog — 49
28) Coporations have the same rights as people? by Edger — 48
29) Bravo! by Julie Gulden — 47
30) For a while after Katrina, I had this wild hope by emmasnacker — 47
31) Absolutely! by GN1927 — 47
Top Mojo with No Exclusions:
1) Tip Jar by Mike Stark — 332
2) Tip Jar by msgalnca — 328
3) tip jar by Stranded Wind — 278
4) Tip Jar by ericlewis0 — 274
5) Tip Jar by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse — 249
6) Tip Jar by blackwaterdog — 236
7) The answer, my friend. . . ? by Crashing Vor — 214
8) Tip Jar by indiemcemopants — 209
9) Tip Jar by buhdydharma — 176
10) Vampires by DarkSyde — 159
11) Thanks for reading these grisly stories. by rb137 — 131
12) Tip Jar by Old Redneck — 117
13) Tips by whoknu — 116
14) Unknown, but reading between lines by Mike Stark — 115
15) Tip Jar by Onomastic — 100
16) What a powerful diary--my heart goes out to you-- by boofdah — 97
17) Tip Jar by downwithtyranny — 97
18) Tips... by WarrenS — 96
19) Fox reports on how wonderful by ivorybill — 89
20) thanks. just thinking, no deterrence by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse — 86
21) Please never leave us. by XNeeOhCon — 86
22) TIPS by Trix — 84
23) Thank you... by msgalnca — 82
24) Overall, Pres Obama has done an exellent job by Jeff Y — 81
25) Tip Jar by jimstaro — 80
26) I'm hoping you enjoy after the week we have had by pantherq — 78
27) Oh, and I spotted this kestrel.... by lineatus — 74
28) Seizure of all assets by Edger — 71
29) Constant rant: by Crashing Vor — 70
30) Tip Jar by kid oakland — 69
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