This is a response to the recent diaries concerning the downward trend of traffic at DailyKos. Specifically, this one by onemadson.
Actually, it isn't. I just needed an example to make a point.
If I wanted to respond to an item--be it a candidate diary, or "Delete My Fucking Account, Kos!," or any front page post, or Kos's diary on the candidate wars, or whatever--I'd have to find a way to make that clear in the text of my response diary.
And if I wanted to incorporate my diary into a larger ongoing conversation, the only mechanism for sorting that conversation out from the din would be the tagging system, and hoping that interested readers would check the tags instead of just happening upon my diary on the "recent diaries" list. But if the conversation were, say, about a particular event instead of a general subject (like Musharaff's reaction to the Bhutto assassination, or the Obama-Oprah tour, etc.) where the most obvious tags would cover a hell of a lot more posts than the ones about the particular subject at hand, then the tags would still be providing a fairly large haystack for just a few needles.
Like in all things, I think YouTube has an answer.
Consider the (in)famous ParkRidge47 "Vote Different" video:
If you follow the link to the original YouTube page, you'll notice immediately below the video itself there are links to six "Video Responses," in addition to the comments section. Most videos that have any popularity to speak of receive some form of video response by other users, either expanding on the subject or offering a criticism or rebuttal.
If you've been around this site more than a few weeks you've probably noticed how often someone will post what I consider an "alpha diary," a post that leads to numerous pastiches, parodies, and rebuttals. These diaries start conversations that extend well beyond their own comments sections.
Ideally, I'd like to see a version of that on DailyKos, where diarists can clearly signal that their diary is in response to one posted previously by another user. Instead of making punny titles, or putting an explanation that a diary is intended as a response in the intro section, users could easily let other readers know that the conversation started on one diary is ongoing elsewhere.
The biggest problem I could forsee with a system like the one I'm proposing is that it might encourage a proliferation of diaries where comments would suffice. But I think that problem would be short-lived, as people realize that it's usually more effective to start a comment thread than to post a completely new diary. But in those instances where a full rebuttal or a companion piece expressing similar but distinct sentiments is warranted, it would be nice to have a way to keep those organized and clearly recognizable.
To be perfectly honest, the site works pretty damn well already, so a change like I'm promoting isn't particularly necessary. As far as I'm concerned, just having indented comment threads was the icing on the cake--establishing a 'response' mechanism would simply be like a piped flower on top of the icing on the cake.
So, if anyone out there is taking a survey on desired site functionality, my two cents are in the jar. And if anyone else has something they'd like to see added to the site, please tell me about it in the comments.