Hey guys,
I've been a member of this site since 2003 - been through the up and downs, etc, etc, and so forth and I've gotta say - Web 2.0 is passing by the Dailykos to an extent which may eventually put this site in jeopardy, if not for it survival, for it's relevancy over the long haul. (which is NOT to say the Dailykos is irrelevant by any means! Only that it's infrastructure is showing a little age)
Briefly, without referencing some really, really boring thesis paper - Web 2.0 means community-driven, outreach and extendability via webservices/API's and such (API's are ways that people/other sites can tie into your site to publish/promote its content, etc).
At this point in the internet's life-cycle all of the above adds up to: the Dailykos needs to have more than 8 prime spots* dedicated to user driven content and needs to provide a way for other sites to hook into the Dailykos or the other way around.
(*8, of course, is the number of 'recommended dairies'. And sorry - the 'rescue rangers' while better than nothing do not suffice!)
Digg.com and Reddit.com, as an example, are both sites that are (substantially) larger than the Dailykos as measured by Alexa.com statistics (here's a chart comparing all of them) - both are newer than the Dailykos - and both have a really active political constituent.
THERE NEEDS TO BE TIE-IN AND/OR OUTREACH TO THESE TYPES OF PLACES (and/or other places)...
or even better become one of those places yourselves. (site programmers take note - this is where a Dailykos webservice/API fits in - nonprogrammers don't sweat the details but do demand a Dailykos API!)
I've been beating the drum of making the Dailykos more and more of a community site for a long time and finally the numbers have caught up with the situation enough that they indicate that such a move is a no-brainer/necessity.
Please recommend this if you'd like to see a move by Markos / the Dailykos to make it more community-centric and/or more cross-pollinated across the internets.