When Kos posts, he throws an excerpt from an article, a poll result, or news report up there, and lets the community at Daily Kos work out the meaning in the threads, through opinions, linked articles, additional news, and debate. This is what I love about the site, the parsing of meaning by intellectually astute participants. This is what saved me when this country went to war and I didn't know where to turn.
Sometimes Kos posts analysis, but more often than not he posts just a short comment that leaves a lot to be said, and lets the rest of us have at it. This is a very selfless act. This is why Daily Kos feels like a gift. Kos does not use it to write endless reams of his own opinion. He has given this site to us so that we can work out the meaning together. This is why Daily Kos has become so important. Not because of what Kos writes, but because of what he lets us do. That's why it matters to be here.
That's why it feels clogged to me when a guest poster uses a big chunk of space to get all of their thoughts on the page. It takes something away from the rest of us. It's not a gift to us anymore. It's a more selfish act.
(continues in the extended piece...)
Guest posters tend to do something different than what Kos does. They write essays. They essentially have the entire discussion with themselves. They leave little to respond to, other than to say, "nice work." I wish they wouldn't do this. I wish they would put up the excerpts, then let us interpret the meaning together with them. This is what makes this a community. If the poster wants to express an opinion on the piece, I wish they would do it primarily in the threads, like everybody else, so it's easy to have a dialogue.
When Melanie posted her piece on Clark, she could have merely given us his words and let us go. In this particular case, she posted her undefended opinion, which was a mistake. It turned it into a target for diatribe. But if she had expressed the very same opinion in the threads, it would have been fine, just another opinion like the others. However, the solution to the problem of Melanie's post was not for her to write a totally defended and researched essay (as some called for), but to leave her opinion out of the main post. That is what I'm trying to argue for: an emphasis on letting the participants do the work of the dialogue, with the guest poster joining in on the dialogue.
I do think there is a place for essays, and that's in the diaries. That is where anyone can empty their thoughts for all to see. You may or may not get a lot of response, but you can get your message out there (it relieves the brain). There's less dialogue involved though, so I still think it would be better to post an excerpt and let people go. But for purely opinion pieces (like this one), the diaries are certainly the place.
So, I'm interested in knowing a) what you think about my analysis of why this site is important (what it does for us), and b) whether you agree that guest posters should approach their task differently.