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 Your Own Blog.
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.
Hello Devil. Welcome to Hell.
If your user id (hover your mouse over your name in any comment, look at the status bar in the bottom of your browser) is larger than 198746 you probably haven't had the opportunity to participate in one of my Welcome New Users diaries.
That would be 424 of you more or less.
There are 13 of them that I consider the New Users Guide and I encourage you to take a look at the table of contents at least so you can see what kind of information is already available.
But don't panic, I'm always happy to review.
Your Own Blog
So tonight I'm once again going to put on my macro-blogging hat and talk about some subjects of interest primarily to Administrators and Proprietors of blogs other than Daily Kos.
What's triggered me is that my friend PerfectStormer has started a new site on the highly reliable, very familiar, and reasonably inexpensive SoapBlox platform that supports sites like My Left Wing and OpenLeft among others.
As an aside let me say that if I make a frank assessment that mischaracterises your favorite website I apologize in advance. It's usually because I don't understand the local culture. I was born and raised a kossack and it's what I consider normal. |
When I say inexpensive I mean less than scoop websites like MyDD or Booman Tribune. If you want to see what dKos was like before Ajax Comments and the Ajax Diary Editor visit one of them. Last time I looked I was trusted at every one except Booman and not there because I am just so lazy.
I consider those moderately sized communities, tens of diaries a day, hundreds of active users, dozens and dozens of comments. On sites like this you can normally see about 4 or 5 days of total output if you set your preferences to 50 as I recommend constantly, or site operators limit that display.
They manipulate it to create the illusion of activity.
Not that I blame them. On The Bus has limited the Front Page to 15 spots because she is concerned about load time, especially for dial up users.
Now being the dictatorial type myself I'd just as soon have issued an edict that nothing but text and blockquotes were allowed above the fold, but not only would that stifle contributor's artistic vision (from which only producers and accountants derive pleasure), it would detract from visual interest.
The ideal Front Page article has 3 paragraphs, 1 Text Effect, at least one link, and 1 Graphic Element- either a picture or a video. It's not so long as to push the last headline off the page.
Now I violate this rule all the time when I promote, but I know what I like.
Stylisticallly it's quite a format to adjust to. You have to prioritize your lede for the viewer.
So we generally turn over our 15 spots in 24 hours. You can set recent essays to 50 and recent comments to 50 and if you track the traffic I'd say that the essays turn over in a little less than a week and the comments in 4 hours or less except for late night.
Now you don't have to put out as much content as that. Firedog Lake may run slightly hotter. They age their Front Page every 8 to 12 hours, but it's shorter. They've also got a feeding system of 5 other blogs- emptywheel, Tbogg, Campaign Silo, Attackerman, and Oxdown Gazette.
emptywheel is mostly a duet between emptywheel and bmaz and they run about 3 or 4 stories a day. The ones that don't get Front Paged at FDL get less than a dozen comments, many thoughtful and detailed. They have a weekly feature for Football Trash Talk. Tbogg is a solo act, his wacky stuff is entertaining and he's not afraid to link right to whatever nutcase set him off. One or 2 pieces most days, but not always. Campaign Silo wore out 3 bloggers before Lisa Derrick took over. This moves almost as fast as the FDL Front Page and Christy Hardin Smith and Jane Hamsher sometimes dump their excess contributions or park them for later promotion. Other Front Page Regulars like Pheonix Woman also.
Attackerman is Spencer Ackerman's blog and he's everything as a solo blogger that the dropouts at Campaign Silo were supposed to be- some kind of punk rock mercenary war correspondent who blogs 10 times a day between his articles, interviews, and appearances AND jamming with his band at night when he's not out partying or jetting into another war zone.
He's Buckaroo Banzai and Doc Savage all rolled into one.
There are fewer Front Page spots than there used to be, because now they're also promoting stories from Oxdown Gazette their community blog. Kind of like our 'Recent Diaries' with it's own Front Page.
If you scan the number of comments you'll be suitably impressed, FDL Front Page pieces attract as many comments as their equivalents at dKos, not so many as 'Recommended Diaries'.
I can't fathom why, and that's one of my 2 big beefs with FDL. Their comment system is not nested and it's practically impossible to find responses except by using your browser to search on your name, and even then you have to reconstruct the threading in your head. Still, you can't argue with results and many people seem perfectly happy.
My other big beef with FDL is the way it keeps crushing down the Intro, 'Above the Fold', Artistic Vision of content. It saves scrolls and appears to make things faster, but what it really does is force you to tune in more often.
Aye, there's the rub.
You want people to tune in.
Now the best way I think is to publish on a regular basis, Tbogg is an example of a minimalist approach. Mostly off the top of his head. Often short, not always political, Thursday Night Basset Blogging and Pre-Friday Random Ten on a semi-regular basis.
Comments? Dude, you stress too much.
emptywheel shows you a slightly more aggressive approach. Very substantial posts with lots of detail, a few thoughtful and detailed responses a few times a day whenever. An extreme example of that style of blogging is Glenn Greenwald- 1 important piece a day. A bajillion links and citations and quotes. He has a traditional media commenting system that is modeled on 'Letters to the Editor'. Hard to have complicated dialog and witty repartee.
Now the polar opposite in style from Greenwald is Atrios. Atrios tries to plunk them out every 90 minutes. He has to because everything gets 200 comments by then (though I can't fathom why because the Halo commenting system is if anything worse than the one at FDL or Salon for that matter).
Atrios' posts are... pithy. If you don't click the link you won't get the joke and he reads a lot of interesting stuff. You can tell if you've seen it before by mouseing over the links and looking at your browser status bar. There are a few people who cover for him when he's out
digby is another example of a 'few hander'. Fairly long posts, 2 or 3 a day, not so many comments. Halo again. digby, tristero, and dday are the regulars, the regular feature is Saturday Night At The Movies by Dennis Hartley.
Americablog shows what you can do with a team of 4 or 5 consistent regulars. Something new every 3 hours or less. Likewise OpenLeft which runs slower, every 4 hours or so.
Still, even at 6 stories a day, it can be hard to produce that amount of content without a team.
So- now we have 3 examples of single handers (Tbogg, Greenwald, and Atrios) and 4 examples of small teams (digby, emptywheel, Americablog, and OpenLeft) in terms of original front page content.
OpenLeft starts the threshold of what I would call stand alone community blogs and some would claim that they're more successful than Docudharma. Before you contest my casual discarding of the other 6, the distinguishing difference is that they don't support user diaries.
One reason you might consider OpenLeft more successful is that they're more influential. While OPOL, buhdydharma, and I might be considered popular, we're hardly Paul Rosenberg, Chris Bowers, and David Sirota.
The other reason you could consider them more successful is the number of comments, and I must admit they generate a whole lot of reaction. Recently that is because of people disagreeing with their progressive criticism, but I don't find them that much further port of orange than we are, or any of the sites I've mentioned so I suspect it's mostly jealousy.
Another element is presentation and now we are comparing apples to apples since OpenLeft and DocuDharma run the same Soapblox (with the exception of that beta YouTube support code) that Rainbow Mittens (you remember Rainbow Mittens, this is a song about Rainbow Mittens) runs.
Outside of the details of visual presentation, the cultural differences also reflect in our content. Open Left has 10 Front Page pieces (also covers about a day), most of which come from the core contributors. That's a pretty heavy workload, 3 posts a day.
On DocuDharma our core contributors post 1 piece a day and we fill the rest of our schedule with promotions from members and weekly commitments from Contributing Editors. Every one of the 30+ people on the Board have a positive obligation to notify everyone else about excellent content and most of them have the power to promote by fiat. The primary promoters are buhdydharma and myself (who both play requests) because some people dj and other people dance.
And it's not that the system doesn't fall down, it's that we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and endevour to persevere!
It's just a blog!
Open Left has a lot of activity in a 20 list feature called 'Quick Hits'. We don't implement it because we're all about 'Artistic Vision' but it is designed to handle the content that Diary Guideline 4 is intended to cover-
Diaries should be substantive. A good guideline is that if you don't have at least three solid paragraphs to write about your subject, you should probably post a comment in an open thread, or in a recent diary or front-page post that covers a topic relevant to what you wish to write about. |
It shows good traffic. Their default user diary list is set to 10 by comparison which covers about a day.
Those who argue for site tabs ought to visit Booman. I think they're an appendix and a ghetto as they are at FDL. I'm in favor of a common user experience. The same effect is achieved by On The Bus in our 'Topics' section which is driven by tags and arbitrarily long. Could be 50. Could Marquee. Our entire Front Page could Marquee by time as could every blox with user definable limits (if you're not interested in the 'Most Recent Comments' you're not. If you're only interested in the last 6 or 36 hours you are, 10 essays or 200.).
My great benefit is I have a team to restrain me who were set up by buhdy, and they're very tolerant and reliable. I don't have to deal with the things I'm hopeless at, like graphics.
If you are setting up a new site you need a mechanic like On The Bus and a photoshop person (sigh, the poor pixels) to handle that stuff for you. You can hire a manager or allow leadership to emerge. In terms of content and activity the more you have the more you will get.
- If your site does not refresh at least daily people will ignore you unless you are Glenn.
- Open Threads are good, at least one a day and better 2, but you shouldn't put them on the Front Page. Instead put them on the right because then it doesn't matter how lame they are and old ones are old.
- Encourage people to write promotable content and promote it.
- Establish a schedule that sets expectations low and yet keeps them. Morning and evening for instance. Blogging is an appointment activity. Instantaneous response is not demanded by any blog except dKos.
- Stick to your schedule and establish your audience. Don't expect too much, or even anything mostly. If you're publishing anyway you might as well cross post on friendly blogs to drive a little traffic.
- People who will commit to providing content on a regular basis on time and under budget are your best friends and your primary job is to find more of them.
- Volunteers come to work and not sit around on their asses.
- When you have to write volume counts for more than coherence and by volume I mean number of impressions. Don't hesitate to cut larger efforts into smaller pieces.
Have patience and don't worry, things will work out.