Welcome, New Users, to The Daily Kos. This Diary is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
In the 'Extended' Section you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in the 'Extended' Section this week is a discussion of Reading and Recommending using The Daily Kos (dKos) interface.
After that you can ask me any question you want. I don't know all the answers so if you stump me, you do. I invite those wiser than I to contribute and correct (or raise a ruckus, just don't scare people).
Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic mirror, tell me today, have all my friends been good at play?
I can see AV Hawaii (#109337) and scottinnorva (#110095), the first and last users to join the week of 10/27/06 to 11/2/06, and all of you boys and girls out there in DailyKosland!
No permission slips needed, join us at the deep end of the pool for adult swim.
Hello Devil. Welcome to Hell.
Recommended Links-
Frequently Asked Questions
Highlighted FAQ Areas/Rules for polite conversation-
I have written some diaries you may find useful-
Other Useful Diaries-
Here are some other Diaries that address the needs of new users-
Here are some older takes on what the well informed user should know-
Other diaries in the Welcome New Users Series. The Welcome New Users dKosopedia page.
Reading and Recommending
We'll skip Diaries for now because here you are, I mean, you found me somehow didn't you?
But before we talk about Comments I'd like to direct your attention to the button at the bottom of the Diary that says Permalink. Sometimes you find Diaries behind Links. If there are a lot of Comments and the author is considerate, they will set them up so you see the Diary only, not the Comments. In the URL (that jumble of letters and numbers in the 'Go' bar of your browser) the difference between these 2 ways of looking at a Diary is that one of them says 'story' (with Comments) and the other 'storyonly' (without).
When you click on a Diary title you get taken to the version with Comments (usually). When you click on the Permalink button you get taken to the 'storyonly' version without. If you go to the bottom of the Diary and click the button that says View Comments you get taken to the version with Comments.
Got it?
Because we love reading dKos and just can't get enough meta we're going to read Comments.
Different ways of looking at Comments
So we're at that line at the bottom of the Diary that starts Permalink (or now we are) and the other thing that's on it that we care about is the check box next to 'Autorefresh'. If it is off, new comments will not show up on the page until you push the 'Refresh' button on your browser. If it is on, every minute or two the page will check for updates and if new Comments are found a small notification tab will pop up in the bottom of your browser window and say '## new comment(s): from handle, handle, handle ...'. If you click on the handle in the notification tab you will be taken to that new Comment.
Thank you peeder. peeder is the handle of the dKos user who wrote the Comment interface code we're using now, so expect to hear about him a lot. If you talk with a more experienced user they may refer to the current interface as 'New Comments' because there was an older system (you can still use it, but I won't talk about that today) or as 'Ajax Comments' because of the language it's written in.
Just below that line that starts Permalink is the one that starts Comments:. The first thing after that is 3 radio buttons and a checkbox that says 'Always'. The first radio button says 'Expand' and if you have it selected you see the 'Subject' of each comment as well as the 'Comment' part of it. I know, I should have said 'body' of the Comment, but I'm trying to stick with the label choices you see. I just work here, I don't set policy.
The next radio button says 'Shrink' and if you push it all you see is the 'Subject' or title of each comment. I don't find this particular view very useful myself, people's titles are often deceptive or uninformative or meaningless ("asdf" stands for- "I can't believe scoop makes you give every Comment a stinking title!). The one thing that it is useful for is (when used with 'Indented') helping you determine which Comment is in response to what in a large thread. Push it and see what happens, I'll wait.
The last radio button is 'Hide' and if you push it, all the Comments go away. Again, I like reading Comments, but if you find yourself wishing that every Diary was a Permalink Diary, push the 'Hide' button and check the checkbox that says 'Always'.
What the 'Always' box does is make your current settings the default settings for the next Diary you visit. If you fuss with your settings you will notice the box unchecks to show that you have.
The next 2 radio buttons are 'Indented' and 'Flat'. If the 'Indented' button is on, each Reply will be indented from the Comment it is in response to. If the 'Flat' button is on, each Comment is flush against the left margin. It's hard to think of any utility for the 'Flat' view, it used to make some sense when you could sort Comments by time for floating the most recent comments to the top, but you can't do that any more except by using some sophisticated searches I won't get into right now. As always, checking the 'Always' checkbox makes whatever you have now the default choice.
I would say that 98% of dKos users have the values for these controls set to 'Expand' and 'Indented' 'Always' (or at least I do) so let's set them that way and continue.
Comment Controls
Each Comment has some controls that are not obvious, the first one is that Grey Triangle to the left of the Comment 'Subject'. If you click on it, the display will switch between 'Expand' and 'Shrink' for that individual Comment only! Again, I don't like the 'Shrink' view much so I use this mostly to 'Shrink' intervening Comments so I can see the parent of the Comment that attracted my attention. The other utility of the Grey Triangle is this-
When a Diary exceeds 100 Comments AND you are actively looking at it, any new Comments that are detected by 'Autorefresh' will display in 'Shrink' mode until you click on the title. This is to ease the burden on the dKos servers under the heavy traffic of large and popular Diaries. You can use it to determine what new Comments have turned up since you started reading.
Wait ek! What about that big red * [new] label right next door?
Glad you asked, that gets updated every time you refresh the whole Diary, either by hitting the 'Refresh' button on your browser or leaving the Diary and coming back to it later.
Also on the same line as the 'Subject' are the Ratings for the Comment, this is a button at the end of the line that looks like this (0 / 0) or ( #+ / #-). The zero zero display means the Comment has not yet been 'Recommended'. The numbers of the number plus number minus indicate how many times a Comment has been 'Recommended' on the plus side and (more rarely) designated as unsuitable by the community moderators (Trusted Users) on the minus side.
I'm sure all your Comments will get plenty of pluses and no minuses because you are a Do-Bee and not a Don't-Bee.
If you click on the Ratings you will see a list of the handles of the people who 'Recommended' your Comment. To hide the list click on the red 'x' in the upper right corner.
On the bottom of the Comment are 3 buttons, Parent, Reply to This, and a checkbox- 'Recommend'. The Parent button moves your browser window so the Comment that this Comment is in Reply to is at the top. The Reply to This button opens up the 'Comment Creation Window' which I will talk about in another Diary.
We will cover the 'Recommend' box in the next section, but I'd like to discuss the last 2 controls before we do. The first control is the Diarist's handle. Pushing on that will take you to the Diarist's dKos home page where you can see their Diaries and their Comments and their Comment Ratings. The next control is the 'Time and Date Stamp'. Pushing on it takes you to a window where you see that Comment and all it's Replies isolated from the rest of the Diary. Pushing on the button that says View Story will take you back to the Diary (you have to scroll to the very top or bottom to see it).
Comment Recommends
I think what you had to say was highly intelligent, well reasoned, and beautifully put. I can't write a Comment in Reply saying so because I don't have time and ek hasn't taught me how to do that yet. What can I do to express my opinion?
You put a check in that 'Recommend' box, in fact, it's the perfect reason to do so.
Aside from just feeling that a Comment is excellent in every way, there are some other 'Do-Bee' reasons to 'Recommend' one-
- "Very witty Mr. Hornbeck."
- "Good Effort."
- "I agree."
- "I don't agree, but I don't want you to take what I'm going to say next (which is going to devastate your specious argument- Bwahhahhahhahhah!) personally."
- "I read what you said, but I don't have anything to add to it (optional 'now')."
'Don't Bee' reasons to 'Recommend' a Comment-
- "You are my dKos Krush and I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ everything you say."
- "Did I mention I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you?"
I'm not begging you to turn off the love, but not everything I write is great. As a matter of fact I have taken the Poet's Pledge to write a ton of crap for anything good I do write and you're just piling up my Karmic Krap deficit. Have you seen my Katrina Diary?
And this is not about me or my friends and fans (I'd rather die first), it is for you New User, to help you develop your own system of what is good enough for a 'Recommend'. Whether you grade easy or are a strict teacher, abusing the 'Recommend' box is not likely to get you into much trouble around here except in the following 2 cases-
- Self abuse. Getting another account so you can stroke yourself is called sockpuppetry and is not tolerated.
- Recommending something stupid.
Stupid? I loved it. That Comment was all the good 'Do-Bee' things.
Sigh.
If a Comment has 1 or 2 of those minuses we talked about before, and a bunch of pluses it's probably just as good as you think it is and you can 'Recommend' away.
If on the other hand it has a bunch of minuses, there's probably something going on that you don't want to get involved with.
I will not hijack this Diary with a deeper discussion of things only a community moderator should be concerned about. It's not that I can't or won't, it's that it is it's own topic.
Reading Lots
Reading lots of Comments is another topic that deserves its own Diary. I am amending my Course Outline to include it. Reading lots of Diaries has its own Diary, Speed Reading dKos, as a matter of fact two- Pig Wings.
Recommending Diaries
The 'Diary Recommend' button is a grey button at the top right of the Diary that says 'Recommend' oddly enough. Push it and you have Recommended the Diary, and it changes to say 'Unrecommend'. Push it again.
- Are you sure you want to Unrecommend?
- You can't re-recommend once you unrecommend.
If you persist in your folly (sorry GregPalast) and push OK the 'Unrecommend' button is greyed out.
Why 'Recommend' a Diary and what does it do?
Your Diary was highly intelligent, well reasoned, and beautifully written. More than that I think everyone at dKos should read it.
Bravo.
Your individual 'Recommend' is nothing more than a pat on the back for the diarist. If it was good but not great look around for a Comment by the Diarist (usually labeled "Tip Jar" but I call mine "Vent Holes") and put a Recommend there instead.
As a bunch of 'Recommends' pile up from different users 2 things can happen. The most common is that the Diary gains 'Impact' and shows up higher in certain Searches including the one that jotter does for High Impact Diaries. The other thing is that it can end up in the 'Recommended Diaries' List.
Some people who use dKos never look at any Diaries except the 'Recommended' ones, which is ok. I find it hard to participate in the discussion in them because there are so many Comments (did I mention I was going to cover that?). A Diary can stay on the 'Recommended Diaries' List for days as long as it keeps getting 'Recommends'. Both Diaries and Comments can only be 'Recommended' for 24 hours from the time they are posted, but Diary Recommends are not the same as Comment Recommends.
Just like there are Comments you should not 'Recommend' as a New User, so too there are Diaries you should not 'Recommend'. One type is Controversial Diaries, but another type has become more and more common.
There are people here at dKos who consider this site a news source and are concerned about our credibility, especially in Diaries that are prominently featured like the ones by the 'Guest Bloggers' (Front Pagers) or those on the 'Recommended Diaries' List. Sometimes our community endorses what I call a 'Gullibility Diary', a story that we so badly want to be true or that tugs at our heartstrings so much that we suspend our natural skepticism and promote it even though it turns out to be mistaken or misguided. It is a flaw not easily addressed by programming, user interfaces, or rules. Here are some Diaries by prominent users posted in the last month that discuss these issues-
One rule to always follow, if a Diarist requests that you 'Unrecommend' their work, it is the polite thing to do.
There are other things to talk about. Let's get started.