One thing the Top Comments series celebrates is good writing. Whether in-depth comments that rival the best diaries (and sometimes are expanded further and posted as such) or perfect one-liners, many Kossacks read gold and tell us about it daily in Top Comments.
We also take note of what the Daily Kos community likes as demonstrated by their comment recommendations: those comments that get the most recs from readers. It's why we exclude tip jars from our first list of top mojo: recs there are generally for the diary, not necessarily for the actual comment.
This particular diary is also about comments, and about top comment writers, but from a different perspective: the people who are tops in the number of comments they have written. If you follow me over the flip, you'll find the Daily Kos users who have published the most comments on Daily Kos, in addition to information on today's top comments.
This diary is an offshoot of the established Prolific Commenters series, which I took over from plf515 at the beginning of 2008. The series has been on hiatus for several months while a glitch in the search databases that inflated the number of comments was tracked down and fixed by the invaluable jotter. Look for another diary in the next couple of weeks to present the prolific 2009 commenters.
For today's diary, I looked at the people who have made the most comments since counting became feasible: since Markos set up the Scoop platform for Daily Kos starting October 13, 2003. In the nearly six years since, people have written a lot of comments: I estimate this number as approximately thirty million.
Update: thirty million was too low. ct just emailed me at 11pmEDT with the latest figure: 31,396,108 comments on Daily Kos under Scoop. The number continues to increase. (My most recent data points are the 20,000,000th comment, noted in a diary by ct on June 13, 2008, and the 23,000,000th comment on September 27, three months and two weeks later. Commenting seems to have slowed down since the election, so I'm guessing the rate is well below the million-a-month we were experiencing in mid-to-late 2008; even so, an additional seven million in 361 days seems a reasonable, even conservative, estimate.)
There were over 16 months of comments before then, when Daily Kos ran under Movable Type, but there's no way to count them—no search functionality at all; comment threads are large single blocks of text. Additionally, comments from a month and a half in summer 2003 have been permanently lost.
The top of list this time is Gooserock, decisively displacing long-time leader Armando, even when you include the latter's days as Big Tent Democrat. Gooserock moved into first in late February, and hasn't looked back. Third place shpilk looks to pass Armando in November or December.
The first of these diaries, back in the summer of 2008, used a cut-off of 24,000; a refresh at the beginning of this year increased that number to 29,000. This time, we're using 34,000 as the minimum to be listed. The data was gathered from late evening on September 21, 2009 for a number of hours, going a few hours past midnight eastern time.
There are just three columns: User Name, User ID, and comments under Scoop (Scoop Comments). I've added an asterisk after the number of comments if the user has been inactive for at least three months or has had their account deactivated, and the total is therefore unlikely to change in future.
User Scoop
Name ID Comments
Gooserock 7,281 73,522
Armando/Big Tent Democrat
1,638/104,162 64,335*
shpilk 15,850 61,544
droogie6655321/Shelbyville Manhattan
76,877/174,714 53,339
Eternal Hope 17,872 52,676
plf515 75,605 49,705
DemocraticLuntz 78,234 49,325
Elise 47,731 48,841
gchaucer2 104,028 48,775
Meteor Blades 6 45,219
Geekesque 59,129 44,690
Bob Johnson 191 44,233
cskendrick 20,146 43,212
ek hornbeck 49,281 42,924*
Arken 54,791 41,610*
noweasels 63,850 41,556
Trix 2,255 41,169
buhdydharma 70,415 40,796
DHinMI/Dana Houle
899 40,603*
Seneca Doane et al.
65,885/99,900 39,363
inclusiveheart 37,824 39,356
Inland 56,531 38,489
Texas Blue Dot 71,251 38,182
DemFromCT 426 37,315
khereva 88,062 37,032
rserven 65,285 36,575
Adam B 5,179 35,970
TomP 107,928 35,910
terrypinder 52,583 35,568
TrueBlueMajority
7,504 34,851
teacherken 4,334 34,312
Late Update (2): Adding Seneca Doane, including comments from his various aliases along the way (including M*j*r D*n*y), because it adds up to quite a packet. I am respecting his request to avoid a searchable connection between his usernames.
Next Day Update (3): adding droogie6655321's three-month stint as Shelbyville Manhattan to his total comments, moving him from ninth to fourth place, and increasing his total by 8,105.
Honorable mentions to NeuvoLiberal, ben masel, and comparative newcomer Muzikal203, who fell below the minimum required to make the list, but have made a heck of a lot of comments. If you know of anyone who has been omitted, please be sure to let me know in the diary comments below. You can check yourself by using the following URL and changing my username to yours (or the one you wish to check); if you don't change my username, you'll see how far I came from making the list (over 13,000 short). However, be aware that a six-year search can take over two minutes to run, and too many will overload the server. So don't everyone search at once when this diary goes up! Search link removed; we seem to have broken the search server. Apologies to all concerned.
Finally, a brief reminder for those of you who haven't seen any previous Prolific Commenter diaries: because of the nature of Daily Kos search, indices for comments made in the past seven days have overlap in them, causing Search to return some duplicate entries. These duplicates are counted in the totals, but eliminated in the entries it will display for you. If you've ever asked for 30 entries displayed per page, but only received 24, it's because there were six duplicates that had to be eliminated from the 30 returned.
This means that most totals (except for asterisked entries) are slightly inflated...but we have no idea how much. It could be a few dozen or a few hundred, depending on how prolific that commenter has been in those seven days.
~~~~~
No artificial inflation has been applied to the number of comments in the Top Comments mailbox, which has been on a natural upward trend the past few days. Five emails appeared in our gmail address before the 9:30pm Eastern Time deadline; the address of said mailbox for top comments submissions is:
TopComments AT gmail DOT com
(change " AT " to "@" and " DOT " to ".")
Any Kossack can send great comments to our address. Be sure to include the direct link to a comment—the URL—which is available from that comment's date/time; we need that to find your choice. Please always include your Daily Kos user name in the body of your message, so we can credit you properly: both link and username are important. If you also include a writeup, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit if necessary; should you only provide the link, then you have to take whatever writeup we create...and we can be excessively creative. Not today, though...
From begone:
You have to look upthread to see who(!) inspired KenBee's comment (replying to the immortal words "My dog ate it"), but late at night here, I laughed. [Editor's note: this came from a snark diary by ignatz uk, but read KenBee's comment, then click on the Parent link to see who he was responding to, and only then read the diary. I think it works best that way. YMMV.]
From pat208:
In the hilariously ironic context of Georgia Governor Perdue and Rep. Tom Price impatiently calling for more urgent Federal GOVERNMENT action to help alleviate the effects of Georgia flooding, Houston Gardener wrote this morning, Keep the government out of my FEMA!
What a great new twist on the "Keep the Government out of my Medicare!" meme!
From Land of Enchantment:
Espumoso serves up some fine snark vis-a-vis our corporatist Supreme Court.
From MinistryOfTruth:
User bigsurtree totally OWNS Eric Cantor and the GOP in my diary today. Classic.
From N in Seattle:
In teacherken's tribute to The Boss on his 60th birthday, Roddy McCorley quotes what is surely the definitive statement of Bruce's importance and value for all of us:
The great thing about Springsteen is that he's exactly who you'd hope he'd be.
Roddy also notes, with a touch of snark, the ironic identity of the man who turned that memorable phrase.
From sardonyx (tonight's diarist):
Pinecone notes that works reasonably well for one purpose doesn't necessary carry over into all of them.
In today's thoughtful Morning Feature: Identity and Information by elropsych, gulfgal98 talks about looking for new talents and interests.
Tom Seaview writes a moving comment in response to Diogenes2008's disturbing diary on "just a joke" abuse.
Responding to a comment that Dean says the votes are there for the Public Option, PorridgeGun's reportage was most unexpected.
For our final feature in tonight's diary, we have today's top mojo using my revision of the cskendrick-devised mojo-to-Excel process.
First, Top Mojo excluding Cheers and Jeers, search-identifiable tip jars, and first diary comments:
1) Hung in KY with "FED" written on his chest? by MinistryOfTruth — 194
2) Gotta love the reaction of her countrymen by grannyhelen — 176
3) Trashing the US in front of commies = by psycho liberal — 160
4) Published in American Conservative Mag. by FishOutofWater — 139
5) The Patriot Act is "surreal" by MD patriot — 124
6) Dedicated Kossaks too by Ashaman — 112
7) This is good info, and congratulations to you for by Blogvirgin — 105
8) I still think this was all a joke... by Jonze — 92
9) This is colossal. This has always been the thread by JerichoJ8 — 89
10) It will get easier for by Overseas — 88
11) I hope by droogie6655321 — 84
12) Wow. by route66 — 84
13) "... and any mortgage sold and/or transferred by understandinglife — 83
14) Like the adage about atheists in foxholes... by John H — 83
15) Holy Jesus Holy Jesus by Adept2u — 82
16) I have a feeling she's already been doing this by ferallike — 82
17) Move over, Hanoi Jane.... by Scruffy Looking Nerf Herder — 80
18) Send them help but.. by Josiah Bartlett — 79
19) We love the False Claims Act. by DC Scott — 75
20) Michael Moore went to Newt's CD in '94 by RFK Lives — 67
21) If you can prove that money was taken... by PhotogHog — 67
22) If the Dems pass the mandate and not the PO by MinistryOfTruth — 67
23) "I'm so tired of these race card allegations" by droogie6655321 — 64
24) I especially liked this part by The Raven — 63
25) Amen. by Hillbilly Dem — 61
26) Huh...I was Waxxing Scrooge for a Minute There. by CityLightsLover — 60
27) From a blue dot on Sope Creek. by gttim — 60
28) Will Ferrell needs to by TomP — 60
29) Little paranoid there by smileyman — 59
30) Wall Street has destroyed the basis of capitalism by NBBooks — 59
31) PAUL O'NEILL PAUL O'NEILL PAUL O'NEILL by lizard people — 59
32) 2 Things. by BenGoshi — 59
33) From Clay County, Kentucky.... by Mark27 — 59
Top Mojo with No Exclusions:
1) Tip Jar by Hangin in the Highlands — 564
2) Tip Jar by The Anomaly — 503
3) Tip Jar by cynic — 435
4) Tip Jar by xxdr zombiexx — 363
5) Tip Jar by Seattlite — 360
6) Tip Jar by JerichoJ8 — 353
7) Tip Jar by Diogenes2008 — 341
8) Tip Jar by The Bagof Health and Politics — 331
9) Tip Jar by CuseDem — 320
10) Tip Jar by TomP — 240
11) Tips for empathy & passing the best HCR bill we by MinistryOfTruth — 220
12) Hung in KY with "FED" written on his chest? by MinistryOfTruth — 194
13) Tip Jar by AndrewMC — 187
14) Gotta love the reaction of her countrymen by grannyhelen — 176
15) Tip Jar by slinkerwink — 176
16) . by buhdydharma — 168
17) Trashing the US in front of commies = by psycho liberal — 160
18) Published in American Conservative Mag. by FishOutofWater — 139
19) Crap, I forgot the most important one: by Colorado is the Shiznit — 134
20) The Patriot Act is "surreal" by MD patriot — 124
21) Tips and such by it really is that important — 118
22) Tip Jar by testvet6778 — 116
23) Dedicated Kossaks too by Ashaman — 112
24) This is good info, and congratulations to you for by Blogvirgin — 105
25) I still think this was all a joke... by Jonze — 92
26) This is colossal. This has always been the thread by JerichoJ8 — 89
27) Tip Jar by math4barack — 88
28) It will get easier for by Overseas — 88
29) Tip Jar by teacherken — 84
30) Wow. by route66 — 84
31) I hope by droogie6655321 — 84
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All quotes are the property of the original authors or the websites that held them