When Daily Kos started out eight years (and five days) ago, it used Movable Type blogging software, including Movable Type comments. Basically, whenever you made a comment, you had the option of filling in a username field, and also a URL or an email address.
Each comment you made, the options were presented anew: you could call yourself anything without regard to continuity, spelling, or whether you had any claim to the name. There were real names, regular pseudonyms, impostors, and blanks (deliberate and accidental).
One of the final comment threads on Movable Type, as noted by taylormattd in his Top Comments: Pre-scoop Edition, had usernames such as
George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh
in addition to well over a dozen names still recognizable today.
This naming free-for-all was coming to an end; the advent of Scoop was at hand.
Daily Kos habitués didn't have much warning that they'd need to come up with usernames. At 6:33pm on October 13, 2003, kos posted MT version of dKos is now obsolete on the MT (Movable Type) Daily Kos site. The warning was contained in a numbered list of functional differences between the old Movable Type site and new Scoop site:
- User accounts: All posters will have to register an account. This will ensure that no one can steal anyone else's handle, while also enabling powerful community moderation features.
In short, no more using names of (other) real people, no more anonymous posts, no more changing usernames, no more typos of your username: one person, one username.
Unchanging names was a major change. Switching your handle was not a new practice, even among those who'd been around a long time.
Some names evolved. Guest blogger Steve Gilliard started out (before he was a guest blogger) with one comment as "sgilliard" before he switched to "steve gilliard" and eventually "steve_gilliard", though his posts used "Steve Gilliard". Billmon's comments usually used the lowercase "billmon" (but not invariably), and sometimes cut off the last letter in his hurry to publish, though "billm" was someone else entirely. There were several days when an impostor posted comments using "billmon", so you had the real mccoy denying authorship of comments, both sets of comments using the same name.
Two eventual front-pagers started out using their real names before acquiring pseudonyms. For Tim Lange, there were two comments only before switching to Meteor Blades in late January 2003; for Mark Sumner, there were a full five months of posts before changing over to Devilstower in mid-September 2003. (He's finally started the switch back to Mark this mornth.)
Other folks picked names, and then realized they were too similar to existing ones. skip showed up in January 2003, and changed his name in a matter of days to OkieByAccident once he realized that there was already a skippy (who never ceased reminding people he coined the word "Blogtopia").
What some people didn't realize, in this new world of Scoop, was that there name might not still be there when they signed up.
For some people, it wasn't a problem, either because their name was unusual (DrFrankLives), grabbed early, or they decided to change. For others, they found the name they'd been using under Movable Type was gone—the blogger who had been known as Orrin had to settle for OriginalOrrin with a UID of 402 (the lowercase orrin had been taken by UID 294 less than an hour after midnight on October 14, while OriginalOrrin signed up about four hours after that); the irony is that the usurping orrin never did post a single comment on the site. One person I imagine was also frustrated as AdamW (UID 102); Adam had been taken by UID 100. And Daily Kos might have been very different if the name Bill, which wasn't taken until 12 days after accounts were made available, had still been available two days after that when Bill in Portland Maine was taken instead.
Others had second thoughts about their names and changed them. In the case of Adam in MA, a user from the Movable Type days, Adam first created an account using his existing username about 90 minutes after the Scoop site opened (UID 178), posted a comment, and then proceeded to open a new account half an hour after the first, manyoso (UID 204), with a .sig saying "formerly Adam in MA", and posted with the new name from then on. He explains his logic here.
One of the newly arriving Kossacks was alive to the possibility that anyone could—and a troll might well—sign up under the name of an important politician, such as a presidential candidate. So less than half an hour after Markos opened Scoop for testing, one person was busy setting up accounts in those names so no one else could, and did so in a matter of minutes. It's why Howard Dean has UID 45, Wesley Clark has UID 49, John Kerry has UID 52, and likely why George W Bush has UID 54.
In fact, if you look at Howard Dean's user page, you'll see the following message.
I am not Howard Dean. This login was created to prevent trolls from using his name. I have no intention of posting using this ID. If the real Howard Dean wants this login, I'm sure he could convince Kos to give it to him. I'd support that.
A similar message appears on the Wesley Clark page, though George W Bush's page merely says "Kos's biggest fan." What a kidder.
John Kerry's page, however, lists posts by the real John Kerry. It's a good bet that when John decided to post on Daily Kos using "John Kerry" on January 20, 2006, someone discovered this account already created and waiting for the real guy to come along. He did, and they gave it to him; John's the only politician with a two-digit UID, even if he claimed it fifteen months after the fact.
Both Howard Dean and Wesley Clark could have taken over their own accounts, but Howard wanted the username Gov Howard Dean MD, and Wes wanted Wes Clark, so they had new accounts created in the usual way.
I have a vague impression (not even a recollection) that I read a comment where someone said they created such accounts. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find such a comment from the first several hours.
There's one final puzzle that I'm trying to figure out: why some UIDs don't have accounts that go with them. I've conjured up any number of theories:
- the account-making software hiccoughed between the point where it assigns the UID and the point where it stuffs the username into the database, reserving the UID but leaving the username blank.
- the confirmation email with the password is sent but bounces (though that could explain some account that never get used later)
- the usernames were obscene or otherwise deemed unfit for display, so the accounts were canceled and the names scrubbed from the database
- the accounts were deleted in some other manner during the beta test, though this was deemed to be a bad idea after the site went live.
There was certainly some testing of account creation being done by the team; I noticed that Grant (Grant Henninger, UID 2, the person who helped Markos set up Scoop) almost certainly signed up for GMHenninger (UID 212), and since the account never posted anything, it seems reasonable to assume this was a test of some sort in the first couple of hours of beta testing. Lots of things weren't working properly, including the diary posting software; a glitch in user account creation is possible under the circumstances.
Note: Grant posted a comment below, and while he did indeed create the GMHenninger account, it was to give him an ordinary user account to use, not for account creation testing as speculated above. The Grant account was a very powerful "owner" account that could affect the entire system; GWHenninger could not effect any changes at all, and was thus far safer to use for everyday blogreading.
At some point in the future, I'll doubtless come across some comment that sheds light on the above. For now, let me just leave you with a few data points.
In the first twelve hours of the beta test, approximately 750 accounts UIDs were assigned beyond the five that had existed pre-beta. Of these 750, 629 were eventually used to post a comment or a diary, 103 have usernames, but never posted, and 18 have no names attached to them at all. If you try to use their UID to find them, you're shown the recent diaries page. The first of these was UID 119; compare what you see as opposed to, say UID 100 (Adam).
It was far more relaxed when I chose my username over ten months later. Since I couldn't post for a full 24 hours after I signed up, I took a full hour before coming up with my own name. Of course, I needed more time because I didn't already have a name I was using for commenting, but then I was able to make sure any name I liked hadn't already been scooped up.
~~~~~
There weren't a lot of comments to scoop up from our gmail account today, but it's a holiday of remembrance, so our memories were probably engaged in other things than thinking of comment mining. (My memories, alas, were back in 2003 for too much of the day.) Thank you to those excellent Daily Kos readers who came through with submissions to the Top Comments mailbox today, all in advance of the 9:30pm Eastern Time deadline. The address of our mailbox for top comments submissions remains:
TopComments AT gmail DOT com
(change " AT " to "@" and " DOT " to ".")
Anyone 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. I say again: both link and username are important; someone today forgot the latter, though I was able to do some sleuthing and determine the proper byline, and someone else forgot the former (ditto). Not all of us are sleuths, y'know. If you send a writeup with the link, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit if desirable to do so.
From Eddie C:
In the comments from my diary No Vacation Nation, I thought pucklady captured the American experience with it has been my experience.
From Angie in WA State:
In MinistryOfTruth's diary about corporations being enthroned, this comment by Nowhere Man puts that kind of long-range prediction in perspective.
From Ed Tracey:
In discussing in LiLaF's diary the resolution that the Kentucky Senate passed affirming the right of governmental bodies (contra Rand Paul) to pass non-discrimination laws, Dallasdoc cited an excellent line from the resolution, and then added a stinger.
From sardonyx (your Monday diarist):
In Fishgrease's eponymous diary Fishgrease: Booming The Money Shot, a diary diagram with a "What the fuck is this?" arrow draws an explanation from dog in va.
When a diarist suggests that Colin Powell would be a good person to take over cleanup of the oil spill, kerplunk speculates as to his actual qualifications.
~~~~~
Finally, we have today's top mojo using my revision of the cskendrick-devised mojo-to-Excel process.
First, Top Mojo excluding Cheers and Jeers, miscellaneous cute animals, search-identifiable tip jars, and first diary comments:
1) Don't call courageous people idiots by edtastic — 129
2) Shorter Fishgrease by JekyllnHyde — 126
3) Thanks OPOL by nyceve — 121
4) Not According to New Yorker by Pluto — 120
5) According to the latest tweets by corvo — 113
6) This is a test to see if they can get away with by ShadowSD — 109
7) A totally disgraceful attack by Israel, but by pollbuster — 105
8) Watching Sky News right now, 19 dead. by Patric Juillet — 103
9) I'm sorry, but not posting this on Memorial Day by neroden — 97
10) Courage for boarding a humanitarian ship? by edtastic — 96
11) The NY Times reported by marketgeek — 95
12) This is very, very dangerous by Troutfishing — 94
13) If you're stuck for something you can do by heathlander — 91
14) What bullshit. by Timaeus — 83
15) Gandhi by tommybones — 82
16) Provocation. Sure.Right. Israel was "provoked" by Robert Davies — 81
17) Self-Defense by pletzs — 80
18) In fairness to Israel, there are confirmed report by Tom J — 78
19) Imagine what would happen if by truong son traveler — 77
20) Must be Opposite Day... by Mr X — 77
21) They must be TERRORISTS! by Aldous — 76
22) u kno a real easy way to not get hit with sticks? by m4gill4 — 76
23) An entire generation of children is growing by JesseCW — 75
24) It is fine by simone daud — 74
25) Israel is currently sitting on hundreds of by JesseCW — 72
26) Sure, my point is simply that if you by Roadbed Guy — 70
27) Rec list, finally! by angel d — 70
28) the abuse of the term by Israel... by Boreal Ecologist — 68
29) In which case one would have to wonder by corvo — 68
30) Garbage! by Judgment at Nuremberg — 68
Top Mojo with No Exclusions:
1) Tip Jar by Fishgrease — 484
2) To repeat: by heathlander — 405
3) Tip Jar by soysauce — 354
4) The 1st link in this diary is worth a read (IMHO) by One Pissed Off Liberal — 353
5) Israel's short-sightedness confuses me by 8ackgr0und N015e — 320
6) Tip Jar by Troutfishing — 275
7) Let's hope that all goes well... by RLMiller — 227
8) Tips to the Republic for which we stand by MinistryOfTruth — 218
9) Tip Jar by jamess — 214
10) Tip Jar by LiLaF — 212
11) Tip Jar by Tom J — 177
12) Tip Jar by litho — 165
13) Tip Jar by Assaf — 135
14) Don't call courageous people idiots by edtastic — 129
15) Shorter Fishgrease by JekyllnHyde — 126
16) Thanks OPOL by nyceve — 121
17) Not According to New Yorker by Pluto — 120
18) According to the latest tweets by corvo — 113
19) This is a test to see if they can get away with by ShadowSD — 109
20) A totally disgraceful attack by Israel, but by pollbuster — 105
21) Watching Sky News right now, 19 dead. by Patric Juillet — 103
22) I'm sorry, but not posting this on Memorial Day by neroden — 97
23) Courage for boarding a humanitarian ship? by edtastic — 96
24) The NY Times reported by marketgeek — 95
25) Tip Jar by nika7k — 94
26) This is very, very dangerous by Troutfishing — 94
27) If you're stuck for something you can do by heathlander — 91
28) Tip Jar by YoungChicagoDemocrat — 89
29) Tips for Standing up to Bigotry by LiLaF — 88
30) What bullshit. by Timaeus — 83
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