I've been lurking -- as you may have guessed from my username -- since 2003.
So I've seen a lot of diaries come and go, and have started writing a few myself.
Today, I've seen a diary of a type that seems unusual (only one I found in "search"), and possibly useful:
The MC: Mea Culpa Diary
In this diary
http://www.dailykos.com/...
dov12348 admits that he was wrong in an earlier diary which questioned whether torture was acceptable in certain extreme conditions (his example was torturing Heinrich Himmler in order to save the lives of thousands in a concentration camp).
http://www.dailykos.com/...
This diary, which garnered 382 comments, was as you can imagine poorly received.
In today's diary, dov12348 admits that he was wrong, retracts his stand, discusses why he changed his mind, and thanks "those who contributed, even belligerantly, to that diary."
Perhaps Kos needs a new Meta-Diary-Title: The Mea Culpa Diary, or "MC: ____" for short. I'll explain why, below.
Any diary of this type would be named "MC: ________" with "_________" being the name of the diary being repudiated. If we readers had been interested in the repudiated diary, we could read the MC to it. If not, the MC at the beginning of the title would alert us to its content type (as "BREAKING:" or META: are supposed to do) -- and we could skip it entirely if we were so inclined.
If more of us Kossacks were more able to change our minds, and say so publicly, this might raise the level of discourse on the site. It might help us to better understand those who "used to" disagree with us. This would help us to better argue or convince people who still hold the positions of the "repentant diarist."
It might even, if it became an accepted diary form, lead to less flaming, and more collaboration. Since some commenters would doubtless use the MC diary as an opportunity to flame the repentant diarists once again, and the repentant diarist would have to accept this as a concomitant to posting an MC diary, might it not lead to "case-hardening" of diarists against flame?
Of course, there are potential problems with this. One is ego -- is the diarist of the MC posting just to re-gain attention on a controversial issue? dov12348 has posted his MC diary twice. Is that a bad trend?
Or does it smack of Stalinist show trial "repudiation?" Maybe so.
Will it just add to diary clutter? Perhaps, but if diarists adhered to the "MC: ____" titling protocol, these diaries would be easy to skip over if one didn't like the subject or the concept of MC diaries.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?