I know to many of you, this may sound silly...
I believe that for the next 1 1/2 years (until the Democratic presidential nominee is declared) in the interest of the website's viability, Kos should set more stringent rules about what is appropriate discourse. As in no name-calling OF ANY KOSSACK, or something to this effect.
It just seems like we're still so far away from 08 and yet we already have people going absolutely nuts over who should get the nomination. We lose real credibility here when the place turns into a name-calling festival--and we've gotten to the point where Daily Kos actually does have clout to protect.
I've been reading Daily Kos since early 2003; had I known it would've been fashionable to register in order to get a low uid number I would've done it (oh well, oh well). Many of you know the history of the varied degrees of censorship and/or public outcry here.
In some cases, the community for the most part agrees that censorship is good (though some disagree).
Other times, this place gets a little.. 'heated' about the topic. (e.g. the pie fights)
Some arguing during the pie fights brought up issues of site preservation ("the site will become beholden to sexist corporations" or something like that.. it was awhile ago, forgive me), and I believe that very argument can be used today in terms of the site's viability.
This site does a lot of good with raising money and awareness for politicians, and it is increasingly becoming a place for people to plan things in the real world (YearlyKos). I hope Kos wants people to come to this site FOR INFORMATION AND DIALOGUE, not name-calling.
If it gets as bad as I predict, the site will become cluttered and unreadable--full of hateful diaries and ridiculous (and dangerous) comments.
Kos will do whatever he wants, but I think if he were to begin restricting free speech more so--to the point where people would be afraid of calling people horrible names--this whole site would get things done a lot better.
And that's really the point. We're trying to get things done here, and I honestly think that without a strict stance on this, things will get so out of hand that it will stymie our efforts.
Sure, after the nomination we can return to increased name-calling (and this has nothing to do with using curse words, god-mother-fucking-dammit) but it's hard enough to find the good diaries these days--just imagine what it will be like in a few months:
10 diaries in a row entitled "Fuck ___"
1 diary about energy independence (thanks Jerome!)
10 diaries in a row entitled "___ IS A FASCIST"
I believe that peopled-powered politics is related to the people-powered Internet, and if Kos got out of hand with what he was to censor, a new, better site would rise in response.
So I say, let's stifle the "losers" that clog up this site. We need substance during our nomination-process, pleeeeease?
NOTE: Queerbo is a term me and my friends use generically to call people a name. It originated from us being gay and thinking it a funny word. I didn't realize I used it and I know it might be offensive to gay people outside of my world (yes, we gay people don't all know each other) so I apologize.