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 Body you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in the Body this week is a discussion of Searches 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).
No permission slips needed, join us at the deep end of the pool for adult swim.
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 SSMD (#112806) and Sinlakudakas (#113421), the first and last users to join the week of 12/1/06 to 12/7/06, and all of you boys and girls out there in DailyKosland!
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.
Searches
Pushing the link above will open up the Search Window, the 5th button down on the right hand side of your dKos Main Page in the 'Menu' section.
Those 2 links open in new windows so you can Search Along with Mitch if you want to, the rest of them from here on out will not, out of deference to those readers who have requested the ability to make that decision themselves.
The other conventions I'm going to use are these-
- Stories means Stories and Diaries (unless otherwise noted)
- Diaries means Stories and Diaries (unless otherwise noted)
- Vertical Bars, | |, indicate Search Strings
When you open up the 'Search Window' you see the following controls-
This last one is the link to jotter's help file. jotter, the same user who provides us with the daily and weekly 'High Impact Diary' lists, did a rewrite of the dKos search engine using a program called swish-e. Before jotter's intervention 'Search' was practically impossible to use. If you think the Tag Cloud is bad, you ain't seen nuthin'.
After jotter's magic the search engine sings. Rarely does an inquiry take me longer than seconds, though finding the right answer in the results might take much longer. Best of all he was able to save all the good things about the old search (which you can read about in my plaintive whine The Little Search Engine That Could. I suppose you could still use it for a 'Keyword Search', but I never do.
Hobbitses ♥ jotter. Yessss.
It might be he explains things better than I do too, so you should give it a push at some point, but you don't need to right now because we're going to plow straight ahead.
As is usual we're going to save the first control, Search:, for last because it's the most complicated, and we're going to blow some of the simple ones out of the way first.
Results:
The very first thing I want you to do is go to that drop down box that says Results: and change the '30' to '50'. Do it now, I'll wait.
If you're listening to me Markos here is my A #1 very best idea to improve dKos and usher in the new 4.0 era-
Every place that the default value is 30, make it 50. Boost the maximum value to 100 or 200. And all the rest of you stop, stop, stop complaining about too much content. I'm serious, it would work.
The 'Search Archive' check box
Periodically Diaries and Comments are archived. Currently the time window is about a month. If you are using the old 'Database Search' to Find: 'Comments By' or 'Diaries By' you will only see the most recent unless you check this box.
The 'Search' button
Search. Do it now. You lazy machine, why won't you do what I want you to not what I tell you to.
Grr.
Find:
- Authors
- Stories and Diaries
- Comments
- Comments By
- Diaries
- Diaries By
- Polls
- Stories
- Users
Everybody knows there are 10 types of searches, 'Database Searches' which use the original scoop search engine and 'Indexed' or 'New Searches' (I refuse to call them swish-e).
Database Searches
- Authors / Users- Authors are the same as Users, you don't have to write to be in the list. To find anybody by name, from |"kos"| to |"ek hornbeck"| you type in the name (or part that you remember anyway) into the Search: field, set Find: to 'Authors/Users' and push the 'Search' button. All matches will be displayed alphabetically. Click on a name to go to the user's Page, note that your browser status bar will display the uid of each user.
- Comments By / Diaries By- Type in the author's handle, no need to use quotes. If you leave the Search: field empty for 'Comments By' and push the 'Search' button nothing will happen. If you do it for 'Diaries By' you will be taken to a page that looks suspiciously like the 'Recent Diaries' list. These are the only 2 searches that use the 'Search Archive' check box, the other controls have no effect.
- Polls- Good thing they're not scientific.
Index Searches
All of the 'Index Searches' use Search: queries and don't accept null arguments, you must give it something to look for. The order results are displayed in is controlled with Sort By: and the time range is limited by the From: / To: selectons.
- Stories and Diaries- All Front Page 'Stories' AND All User Diaries.
- Comments- All Comments, regardless of author.
- Diaries- ONLY User Diaries.
- Stories- ONLY Front Page 'Stories'.
Sort By:
- Relevance
- Time
- Impact
- Recommend
- Comments
- Title
- Cid*
- Recommends*
- Troll Ratings*
Stories and Comments
- Relevance- Determined by the swish-e sort engine. Depends on how close to the beginning of the document the query words are found, or whether they are in the title or subject.
- Time- The date and time the diary or story or comment was posted.
- Title- Alphabetic sort on title or subject.
- Author- Alphabetic sort on author.
Story Only
- Impact- A number combining both recommends and comments.
- Recommend- The number of 'Diary Recommendations'.
- Comments- Number of Comments.
Comments Only
- Cid*- The ordinal by time of a given Comment.
- Recommends*- The number of 'Recommends' for a Comment.
- Troll Ratings*- The number of 'Troll Ratings' for a Comment.
From: / To:
These control the time range of the results returned. jotter suggests using as narrow a range as possible to speed searches and reduce server load. If you are getting unexpectedly low results on your 'Searches' try increasing this range. They are all based on the current time and slide forward as time progresses. A 'Search' that has a range From: '1 week' To: 'now' will always include the current week and tomorrow's results will be different from today's.
Hours-
- now
- 1 hour
- 3 hour
- 6 hours
- 12 hours
Days
- 1 day
- 2 days
- 3 days
- 4 days
- 5 days
- 6 days
Weeks
Months
Years
Keyword Queries
I told you we'd get to Search:.
This is where you put in the words you are searching for. For the purposes of continued discussion we will be working with only 'Indexed Searches'.
Put Things In Double Quotes
Seriously. White space and odd characters are interpreted as separators except inside double quotes. Also-
Certain characters have to be "escaped" by placing a back slash in front of them; to find "⁄", use "\⁄", to find "=", use "\=".
If your query returns 0 results, fuss.
Logical Operators
AND OR NOT.
If you have some programing background the meaning of these operators is obvious, for others maybe not so much.
Like NOT. Not means not interested, throw it away. I like |"meta" not (author="ek hornbeck")|. Fair enough.
AND I have to have it. AND this lamp. AND my dog Frenchy. |(NOT ("my dog"))|. AND that's all I need, AND I need this...
You need all of what you AND together, but it doesn't have to be close together. If you need to find a phrase use double quotes. AND is the default operator (|ek hornbeck| gets you "ek" AND "hornbeck", but not necessarily "ek hornbeck").
OR means that one or the other or both can be present (sorry XOR guys, not implemented). If I search for |"ek" OR "hornbeck" OR "ed" OR "insufferable"| I can usually find most of my admirers.
Order of Evaluation Operators
You can control the order in which your keywords, 'Logical Operators', and query restrictions are evaluated by placing then in parentheses '( )'. Expressions are evaluated from the inside out. If this is confusing you should probably look at that Object Oriented C++ manual the PC guy wants. That'll unconfuse you.
Restricted Queries
Restricted means searches not on a keyword, but on certain meta characteristics. I'm sure there's a reason.
The characteristics you can search on are-
which can be used on both Stories and Comments,
which can only be used on Stories, and
which can only be used on Comments.
'Restricted Queries' take the form- query=value. Where the value is not numeric you should use double quotes.
sid
In understanding sid queries it will be helpful to understand how the dKos database is organized.
It's really a lot like a hard drive.
First there are big folders for the years. Each year folder has month folders. Each month folder has day folders. Then there are some folders I can't figure out (hey, 20 year old dBase II skills only go so far), and then in the last folder is the diary.
The names of all these folders are your story id (sid). All Stories (and Diaries) and Comments have an sid. In a Comment the sid is the place you go when you click on a Comment's Time and Date Stamp.
Sid searches are good for finding ALL the Stories or Comments in a given time frame. |"The Daily Show" sid=("2006/10")| will find you all the Stories or Comments (depending, you can't mix them) containing "The Daily Show" from October of 2006.
author
Author is any registered user of dKos, from "kos" to "ek hornbeck". If I wanted to look back at my Comments from election day I would ask |author="ek hornbeck" sid=("2006/11/7")|.
site
One I don't use very much, it will find Stories or Comments that reference a particular website. If I wanted to see Diaries that had linked to My Left Wing, I would ask |site=("myleftwing")|.
image
Another one I don't use very much. It finds the links in images (every image must have a link) so actually it should show up in a 'site' search. Never tested that.
title
Just what you might expect, it only finds words or phrases in Story titles
tag
Searches for a matching tag value. dmsilev finds this very useful.
subject
The same as 'title' except it works on Comments only.
cid
The ordinal by time of a given Comment. As jotter points out |cid=1| is frequently a Diarist's Tip Jar.
ntroll
The number of Troll Ratings. |not ntroll=0| will find all troll rated Comments, hidden or not.
nrec
The number of Comment Recommends. Good for finding Comments that need some Love ♥.
~~~~~
So there you have it, the basics of search. I hope you find what you're looking for.
If you're having problems and you can find me I'll be happy to try and find stuff for you (if feasible). Otherwise jotter publishes every day and he's happy to give guidance if the request is not unreasonable. A few final thoughts.
etags
As near as I can tell jotter or someone has done a very sophisticated search to surface Diaries related to the 2006 mid-term election that even the normal searches and tags didn't find. These have new etags so if you use them instead of a regular 'tag' search you'll get more results.
Time Limitation
Indexes only get updated every so often, the older it is the longer between updates.
Linky Linkage
Any 'Search' result is linkable. Swipe the URL of the completed 'Search' using your 'Swipe-O-matic 2000' and paste it anywhere you want.
And now some words from jotter-
Final Thoughts
Daily Kos is an amazing place, community, phenomenon. It has been my privilege to have the opportunity to contribute.
-- jotter
|
There are other things to talk about. Let's get started.