With approximately 100,000 members of varying states of activity, dKos is about the size of a small county. Many small (and certainly large) counties have the resource base to fund a community college with basic courses on topics of professional, enrichment and community interests.
What Kossacks may lack in money (though it would be nice if some people around here had some coin, may it start with me! :-)) they do have in creative energy, drive, good will and resourcefulness. I think of the incident at YearlyKos where Kos' technical employee got his house plowed into, and suddenly some substantial green money cash came into his hands from Kossack donors. We are a creative, driven bunch.
So - a community college here? Of a sort, maybe.....
Here's what I envision, for starters. Diaries get posted on every manner of topic, from "why my cat is cute" to "Delete (paint, clean) My Fucking Account (house, gutters), Kos!" But there are some diaries that actually educate people on substantive areas such as economics, labor, construction, ecology, military science, transportation, sexuality, etc., that are worthy not only as possible advocacy pieces, but as substantive and clear instruction in a broad or narrow field of expertise -
clear to a lay person of good will and reasonable intelligence.
Toward starting this DailyKos Community College or DKCC for tag, I would encourage interested Kossacks first to tag diaries that are worthy. There may be disagreements on such matters but no more than one would expect on a borderline troll diary tag, for example, In my view, a good DKCC diary gets a person to the next level, however defined, is funny or witty and is clear to a non-expert, i.e. this is community college, not a doctorate program.
THEN to the extent of interest, interested Kossacks can search by tags for past diaries, tag them with DKCC if deemed appropriate, and assemble diaries - of diaries. A syllabus diary, as it were of diaries that were either DKCC tagged or considered otherwise worthy. I could even envision "department" diary listing lists of lists, I guess that would have the tags DKCC and metametameta, as it were. Just as there are self-appointed troll hunters, there can be self-appointed academic department heads.
What topics could fit under this structure? Any, conceivably. Some of the content could be put onto the underused DKosipedia, or vice versa drawn from it. I could actually envision real-life community college student Kossacks or even professors using this as a study guide reference or at least as supplemental reading, or vice versa - adding links and (within strict fair use privilege only for copyrighted material) actual limited content here.
The big payoff for Kos himself is that it provides a new reason for this site to be sticky and keep readers, but without any new admin overhead or headaches. All of the hardware for this is already here. Kos, if I am right, not only will you not have to do anything new but you will likely gain net readers (in terms of reading time and reason to return) and perhaps new demographics of readers, but with you not having to do much new. Probably nothing new. For you, Kos, one married Dad with a tough job to another, DailyKos is sometimes for you a joy, somtimes a massive pain but always a business, and this is good business, in my opinion.
So - who is ready to enroll? Better, who is ready to teach?