Welcome to New Diarists! As community members and volunteer mentors, our mission is to help relatively inexperienced Daily Kos bloggers who want to post a diary story. Way back when we established this group in 2011, stories were known as diaries, but they’re usually the equivalent of brief articles or blog posts elsewhere. At this site, most successful stories are more substantive than most comments, without being long-winded.
If you’re looking for some pointers before you post your first story here, New Diarists uses our group queue as a sandbox where you can play around with a draft and have a more experienced writer look at it and make a few suggestions before you publish your story to DailyKos.com. We can offer no guarantees that your diary will be a hit with our assistance, of course, but some writers still find it helpful to get some private input before posting to the general audience of Daily Kos readers.
How does this work? After you join the New Diarists group, you will be able to submit your draft to the group queue for feedback. To join the group, just log in to Daily Kos, then go to the New Diarists profile page, click on Send Message (Figure 1), then send a request to join our group.
When you have a topic for a story that you’d like to post, just write a draft, add it to the group queue, then send us a message and ask for assistance. We will put you in touch with a volunteer mentor—a writer who has experience publishing stories at Daily Kos—who will help you. Sound good so far?
Let's take this step by step below:
Step 1: Join the New Diarists group. Just send a message to our group (Fig. 1 above) and request an invitation. Please note that we are volunteers (not paid staff), so it may be a day or so before anyone checks our group messages and sends an invitation through the site’s message system (aka kosmail). After you have accepted the invitation to join our group, you will be able to submit a draft to the New Diarists queue for feedback.
Step 2: Write a draft story when you have something to say that merits considerably more attention than it would receive as a comment. (Before doing so, though, please familiarize yourself with the site’s community guidelines!*)
Just click on the orange Blog It! (look at the top of the DailyKos.com main page), then type or copy-and-paste your draft while periodically clicking Save Draft (in the orange section of the sidebar to the right of your draft). Images are optional but can be helpful (we can help you add an image if desired).
Step 3: Add a tag. When your draft is complete, click Add a tag (below your draft). Type a tag (draft works for a draft), then click Enter. Your tag will appear in a gray box like so: #draft
Note: The platform that this site uses (DK5) automatically adds a hashtag (#) and dictates that tags cannot include separate words. So to tag a diary with New Diarists, for example, just type NewDiarists (as one word) in the tag box, then click Enter to get the #NewDiarists tag.
Step 4: Click Save Draft. Do NOT click on that tempting white Publish button unless you are ready to post your story to Daily Kos (Fig. 2)!
Step 5: Add your draft to the New Diarists queue. In the black section of the sidebar to the right of your draft, click Add a publish group (Fig. 3), then select New Diarists from the dropdown menu. If you’re successful, the group’s name will then appear in a box below the Add a publish group box. (Note that you can only Add a publish group for groups that you’re a member of.) Again, do NOT click Publish!
Step 6: Remove your tag. As a precaution, scroll down and click on the X to delete your tag so that your draft cannot get accidentally published. Then click Save Draft again.
Step 7: Leave your draft. Close your browser tab or window to leave your draft. Note that it is best to avoid having more than one person working on a draft at a time. When you’re ready to work on your draft some more, you’ll just click on your Drafts, which can be found under the dropdown menu associated with your username (in the top right corner on the site’s main page).
Step 8: Send a message to the New Diarists group (Fig. 1) letting us know that your draft is in our queue and requesting assistance (help with things like formatting, adding an image, or focusing your content).
Step 9: We will try to find a mentor to help you with those requests. Please understand, though, that we are a group of volunteers, so we cannot promise immediate or extensive assistance.
Step 10: Check your messages periodically, make any changes you wish, add tags, then publish your story when you’re ready.
* Disclaimer:
The New Diarists group reserves the right to refuse to publish any story under the group's banner that violates the site’s community guidelines. This includes stories that infringe on copyright, stories that promote conspiracy theories, or stories that advocate for third parties, among other issues. You are free to publish any story on any topic under your own username, but if it violates site rules, site moderators may warn or even ban you.
Addendum: We will also refuse to assist with stories that seem designed to start pie fights by, for example, attacking Democratic presidential primary candidates or their respective supporters. Basically, you’re on your own if you’re determined to post inflammatory material here.
That’s it! Please note that new writers are, of course, more than welcome to publish stories without hands-on assistance from us. If you’re just looking for some instructions, site staff has posted tutorials, and belinda ridgewood and I are in the process of updating our New Diarists resources diaries as well. We’ll add them here as we post them.
Update: New Diarists tutorial for formatting drafts, adding tags, publishing options, and editing covers most of the basics:
- How to add links, blockquotes, story breaks, horizontal lines
- How to tag and publish your story
- How to edit your story after it has been published
Questions? Other helpful tips?
Community helping community is the heart of Daily Kos for so many of us. So feel free to ask questions and to pass along other helpful tips in the comments (while the comment period remains open) or to send our group a message!