Admit it: you miss meta.
Well, some of you don't -- those of you who have been around only in the past six months or so may not even remember the days here when meta occasionally reigned supreme. I remember times when we would have eight meta-diaries at one time on the Rec List: one of them about how there ought to be more than eight slots available on the Rec List, and another twisting that diary's title into some sort of lampoon.
Those were the days.
Of course, these are the days too. DKos is now, slowly, shifting from its role as Thunderdome, during the primary season, to Unleasher of Hell on Wheels during the general election. You're going to learn about candidates and races you never imagined. You're going to learn and pass on information that puts you ahead of most political journalists. We're gonna party like it's October 2006.
But the site is soon going to change once again, with primaries winding down, and -- well, if it doesn't tempt fate, I think we need a dose of meta.
Is there anything more pathetic on this site than old-timers (I've been here almost three years, longer as a lurker) waxing nostalgic about the golden days of yore? Yes, there is -- and we've seen a lot of it this primary season. I don't excuse myself from this; I've been fiercely partisan in the primary fight, partly because I so want it to be over already so we can get down to business. But, for those of you for whom DKos is all Obama all the time, I want you to have a sense of what this site has been -- and can be -- at other times.
The first thing that jumps to my mind is: fiercely funny. Hunter's rants, BiPM, Jeff Lieber, Dood Abides -- honestly, this place has been hilarious without making other Democrats the targets. I just tried to find the single funniest diary I can remember here, about trying to figure out if one's diary would make the Rec List. (I recall that it had something to do with finding out that one had posted right between clammyc and occams hatchet, or maybe thereisnospoon and OPOL, and realizing that one was doomed, and thinking that one had a whole bunch of recs before realizing that it was actually just a few from people with humongous user names -- can anyone find that one?) I hope that we get back the funny.
Second, there is the changing of the guard -- the everchanging changing of the guard. If I have noticed one thing over the past six months apart from the move into primary-diary fratricide, it is what seems like the amazing diversity of diarists on the Rec List. Lots of people who don't often right; not that many repeats from day to day, week to week, and month to month. There used to be much more of an "all-star" team dominating the right side of the diary; now, much less so. Will this change in June? In December?
Third, is that there used to be a whole lot of meta.
I just did a search: in the past year, 272 diaries contain the word "meta".
From two years to one year ago it was 798 diaries.
From three years to two years it was 314 diaries -- but bear in mind that there were a lot fewer diaries then.
I am fully away that I am rattling at Pandora's Meta-Box here by even noting the decline of meta, but I think it's interesting. Meta can be bad, and overwhelming -- but it is also a healthy part of a balanced website.
So, for this diary, I want to do a few things:
(1) I want to invite old-timers to reminisce for the sake of the newbies about the best and worst and funniest of DKos. Let's luxuriate in some nostalgia. God knows we've earned it.
(2) I want to ask a serious question about this time of transition from a focus on the primary race to a likely relative summer lull to an intense focus on the general election in the fall. How do people expect that the site will change? How do they think the site should change, and how should that be accomplished? ("Stop slamming Hillary and her supporters" is taken for granted; it will happen, it's just going to take a little time.) Your meta ideas are encouraged.
(3) I want to take your minds off the West Virginia primary. No! There is no #3!
Have at it, make the discussion as messy as possible, and have fun.