Da boss has posted his
list of Rules for diaries. But these were just intended for consumption by the clueless and unwarshed masses. The
real rules for diaries on Daily Kos are listed below; you should Hotlist this diary to refer to them from time to time.
- If it isn't inflammatory, don't bother posting it. It had better be at least provocative, if not outright controversial. Post boring kum-ba-yah to dev/null.
- If you don't have a unique style, you'll probably be overlooked. ALL CAPS and BREAKING and Numerous Exclams !!!!!! are very good ways to set your diary apart from the masses.
- Profanity, when used expertly, is your friend. If you're a fucking clueless douchebag, go whine somewhere else moron. This isn't a family site, it's a site for informed outrage leading to further informed outrage, and we are not playing croquet.
- Ad hominem attacks are fine as long as they're accurate. Just a tip: your breath stinks, and you'll be better staying online rather than trying to be a political candidate or knock on doors.
- Harmony is overrated. Much better for us to tear the shit out of each other daily and emerge stronger and wiser for it. Plus it makes the site interesting... What's the one sport that's on pay-per-view more than any other? Boxing. Chew upon that sherlock.
- A thick skin is the most valueable asset you can have in life. The party with the thickest skin prevails in politics. It's a contact sport. We shouldn't distinguish ourselves so much on sensitivity...that's for Kucinich hippies...as we should on our ability to take the heat and return it tenfold. This site is a marvellous place to thicken that skin and any efforts to tone it down will cripple us.
- Democrats are fine targets for attacks. If they can't survive our own criticisms, then they have no chance against a much better attack machine than this site could ever be. See thick skin, above.
- Ego-driven attention craving is absolutely fine. Whatever motivates you to write content here is more than welcome...your plaintive cries for recommendations and your offense at being downrated will just indicate your maturity level...but has no bearing on the value of your content, or the value of the discussions you might have instigated. We don't always recommend you, you know...sometimes troll and gbcw diaries make the list because they are so fun.
- Whatever works, works. Again, rules are just for pussies and terminally misguided. If you are in either of those categories, your diaries will be mercifully deleted anyway, if anyone bothers even looking at them.
- Repeat diaries are fine. If we ignored something the first go-round, you are more than welcome to bring it back to our attention. Unless it's not interesting, in which case you will be banned instantly.
- Just informing us of important news is more than welcome. A sentence, a small quote, and a link are all that most front-page posts are anyway, and you should emulate the front-pagers including the boss as they exemplify the paragon of success in the political blogosphere (I'm serious). Many of us use this site as our main source of news, and there's no need to delay such reportage with analysis that is probably wrong anyway. It's great to be able to discuss and flesh out breaking stories, and the faster we get them up here, the better.
- Don't recommend people for the work they've done in the past. If someone is a "star" diarist and they're slacking off but still getting recommended anyway, it brings them and the whole site down. Make them work even harder for your recommend.
- Don't delete our comments. Even if your diary ought to be deleted, if there are good comments attached to it, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just apologize in an update to the diary and time will bury the story anyway.
- Conspiracy theories are fine when there's a real unexplained conspiracy. When there's no evidence of an actual conspiracy, take your theorizing over to booman or somewhere. But with Plamegate, Gannon and NSA wiretapping, we have real conspiracies, and it will be very interesting to read well-crafted theories of what's really going on: that will help direct us where to look. Otherwise, you better be an entertaining writer: georgia10 can write about vote fraud all she wants but most of you idiots can't. And for damn good reason. It discredits us as a bunch of lunatics and is boring as stale piss.
- Usernames are fine in diaries, again if you've got a good point. Doing so helps make celebrities out of a bunch of shut-ins pecking at their computers in response to what they see on TV. Armando has to be in diary titles at least once a week or he will fade to irrelevance. Knowing that we matter, even if it's just that we are hated, grants us a smidgeon of relevance in our little pee puddle.
- Site sanitation is purely for anal retentives. On one hand, we have people crying about how fast diaries scroll by, and on the other, we have people crying that so many diaries are worthless. The site heals itself from the worthless crap precisely by scrolling it away so quickly; the best solution is to advocate the wheat rather than decry the chaff.
- If we lose one kernel of "wheat" in our efforts to purge chaff, we've all lost terribly. Long rules lists will discourage shy people from writing. It's a great thing there are so many shitty diaries written here; none of us would feel able to write at all if everything was on the level of Hunter's prose. You start somewhere, get the hang of it, and emerge over time.
- Disagreeing with all of these is fine too. Again, conflict is the entire point; and struggling to find consensus with our own brethren, and developing tolerance, perhaps even accomodation, will only help us. But the best answers at any given moment shouldn't be banned out of loyalty, tradition, or a desire for harmony. The best answers, however many feelings are hurt in arriving at them, are the only things that will lift us from the certain self-annhiliation the current republican cabal is steadfastly forcing us toward.
Enjoy the site, in your own style, and whether you need to lighten up, or toughen up, isn't it wonderful that this place is big enough and designed well enough to support all kinds?