Welcome, New Users, to 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 of this diary you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in the Body this week is a discussion of Diary Rescue and the wonderful, hard-working, altruistic Rescue Rangers who toil 24/7 to bring the best-written and most-overlooked diaries to our attention.
After that you can ask me any question you want. If I don't have the answers you seek I'll go out and find 'em and bring 'em back to ya (wink, wink). I also invite those wiser than I to contribute and correct(or raise a ruckus, just don't scare people).
Come on down and learn more about the fabulous Rescue Rangers!
But first: Who are the co-hosts of this series?
Laughing Planet and I take turns hosting the revived Welcome New Users diary series. Before we begin with new material, I encourage everyone here to review some of the
previously written goodness that survives here in the DKos archives.
And, if you're new, don't miss
The Welcome New Users dKosopedia page.
Now, let's get on with the show!
There's More to Getting Noticed Than the Rec List!
Not every newcomer’s first diary (Alan Grayson, anyone?) shoots to the top of the Recommended List. As the list of recent diaries scrolls down at dizzying speeds on some days, newcomers without name recognition, a fierce constituency, or an army of twitter-minions to click the Recommend button might wonder how they can ever jump into the Great Orange Pool without immediately drowning in a sea of diaries.
But here’s the good news: There is another way that good writers and excellent diaries get noticed on dkos. There is someone, actually a group of someones, who reads and evaluates every diary that’s posted, and on a nightly basis elevates certain overlooked gems to the front page as part of Open Thread and Diary Rescue. They’re called the Rescue Rangers, and here’s how you can get them to find and rescue you.
The mission of Diary Rescue by Got a Grip:
The mission of Diary Rescue is to promote quality writing with an emphasis on encouraging new or overlooked diarists who are putting out quality work.
Out of love of good writing, or wanting to give back to the dkos community, the intrepid Rescue Rangers toil behind the scenes for no pay and little recognition, with the exception of having just won the DK Community Service Award in the first annual Daily kOscars™ 2009. (Yes, Virginia, that funny-looking thingie below is a kOscar award!)
As a newcomer to dkos, my first few enthusiastic diaries scrolled off the recent list, usually within an hour and with few comments. Then one day I shared an anecdote in Midday Open Thread and a lovely person, SusanG (who I did not realize was a Front Page editor and the very founder of Diary Rescue), suggested I expand the tale into a full diary. I did, and to my great amazement, found my little diary among those featured in that evening’s Diary Rescue. As a general rule, no one notifies you if you’ve been rescued, so if your diary was posted before 3pm PST that day, check that night’s listings. Also, your diary will have a Rescued tag appended to it once it’s rescued. As anyone who has had their obscure scribblings rescued can tell you, it was a heady moment indeed, and it had the intended effect-- I was encouraged to stick around and write more. (Now there's no shutting me up, so blame SusanG!)
Have YOU ever had a diary rescued? Tell us about it in the comments!
Justieputnam dropped me a line with his Rescue story:
It wasn't my first rescue, but when SusanG included my diary in the list
with the following, "justiceputnam's The Lost War Dispatches: A Public Parody is a quirky, interesting take on the persona and romanticism of war correspondents," it validated my belief that I am indeed, quirky and interesting!
So, How Do Diaries Get Rescued?
For a thoroughly entertaining history of how SusanG founded Diary Rescue, and what the early days of the Rescue Rangers were like, get caught up by reading Unitary Moonbat’s History for Kossacks: SusanG's Rescue Rangers. SusanG’s standards continue to be upheld, and while the current Rescue Rangers stay in touch with her they have complete autonomy to run their own show.
Rescue Ranger and Editor vcmvo2 (I'll just call her Vicky, since that's her name) generously satisfied my curiosity about how the nuts and bolts of today’s Diary Rescue works. Here’s how the all-volunteer Rescue Rangers divide up the work in their private online forum- workspace, where at least four members at a time gather to work on the day's rescue, train new members, and chat.
We are a diverse group of people who get along very well. I have known some of these Rangers for almost 5 years now. We have about 23 members. Some are editors, and some post to the FP. But we all read shifts and have different days scheduled. We vary our shifts so that everyone reads different shifts. We all cover weekends, holidays etc.
We still read every diary written. The Rangers split it into 6 shifts, with the last shift ending at 3PM PDT. We report in no later than 5PM or 6PM with our rescues. The day's editor checks the coding, reads the submitted diaries and then assembles them into a draft. Depending on the day we may have many more diaries than we can publish on the Front Page, so the editor has to decide who gets cut and why. The editor then posts a draft that the rest of us eyeball for mistakes. Once jotter is posted and Top Comments is posted (no later than 7:30PM PDT) we then include those links and the result is usually published about 8:15 PM.
What Type of Diary Gets Rescued?
What criteria, I wondered, do the Rangers use to determine a Rescue-worthy diary? Vicky explains:
We still look for the best writing. We look for new writers and those that might be discouraged by the noise on dkos, and the lack of response, to their diaries. We want good writers to keep writing. We try to get a variety of topics because not everyone is writing a health care or a breaking on something type diary.
In general we don't rescue I/P diaries or candidate diaries, but if someone analyzes a state or a local race and the analysis is good we'll rescue that. We don't rescue diarists who are paid to post like ACLU. Sure, they write well but they are professional writers, and unless there is something unusual there we don't usually rescue them. People who frequent the rec list don't need our help so we don't rescue them.
We like original writing that is supported by links. We also rescue personal type diaries which by their very nature won't have links. The key is good original writing with at least three if not more paragraphs.
I’ve always felt that hanging around to tend a diary and converse with those interested enough to stop by is more than just good manners, and Vicky confirmed that belief, as well as naming other reasons why a diary might not make the final cut come publication time.
As an editor, if I have to cut one or more, it's probably because it's on a topic that one diarist wrote better about. Or perhaps there aren't any links. Sometimes the diarist doesn't interact with commenters and that's a problem. The value of Diary Rescue is as a service to the community - no one really likes a drive-by posting. If what you say is important enough to diary about I feel that it's worthwhile to stick around for questions for a bit.
Another Rescue Ranger, Got a Grip, gives the following advice:
I won't go into the exact criteria we look for, but I will give some handy tips on what all diarists, new or otherwise, should be doing regardless of whether they hope to be on the Rec list or find their way into diary rescue.
- Know your material.
- In writing where you are relying on other sources to support you thesis, links are your friend.
- Spell and grammar check is your BFF.
- There's personal, and then there's TMI.
- Interaction in comments spurs conversation and lets people know that you care about what you've written.
- If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
- If you get respectful feedback on your writing, let that inform your future efforts.
My best advice to new diarists is to work on producing a quality product, learn from your mistakes, and don't give up. If you have good ideas or good stories and you present them well, the rest will take care of itself.
Spinoffs, such as Meteor Blades’ Green Diary Rescue, have been inspired by this format but are not part of the nightly Diary Rescue Series.
So here's a hearty round of applause to our intrepid Rescue Rangers and the great and selfless community service they provide!
If you haven’t already done so, and want to read some of the best writing on the site on a daily basis, come by tonight or any night, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE to Diary Rescue.
Tell us about your Rescue stories in the comments, feel free to ask any other site-related questions, or just join the party in progress!