We're in a new era. Daily Kos launched a little while ago, and Top Comments has made it safely into the harbor. Much has changed, much remains the same, and the day has been busy and lively.
One thing that I discovered last night, after things died down to a dull roar and I'd discovered that last night's Top Comments was our 1503rd consecutive daily publication, was that it was also my 199th Top Comments diary. Adding one to that and you get 200. So it's my bicentennial for the series, an anniversary even as we start anew. (If there's some sort of bicentennial that's site-related, let me know. We can share celebrations.) brillig's Tuesday diary, in addition to being our 1500ths consecutive, was also her 175th TC diary. emeraldmaiden's diary on Wednesday was her 175th diary. A week full of anniversaries, all overlooked in the looming advent of DK4.
Top Comments, like it did in the DK4 beta, is becoming a Group. What this means in terms of your standard Top Comments experience is not very much. We'll still have the same fine authors, the same criteria for Top Comments, the same gmail account to which you can send your nominations.
What you will have is what amounts to a Top Comments blog. You can go there and see our posts at any time. (Easy to bookmark.) You can "follow" our group so our diaries automatically show up in your stream. (On the blog page, click on the heart in the "See More by Top Comments" box on the right under the banner.) You can also (or instead) follow the Top Comments tag. Or you can just wait for our diaries to appear on the Diaries page, or on the front page in the Recently Rec'd list; we'll still be aiming to post at 10:00pm eastern, 7:00pm Pacific. We continue, as always, over the jump.
I imagine you're wondering why I bothered with the jump, now that it's entirely optional for you to split your diary here in DK4-land. The answer is that it makes your blog easier to read. Since the basic view is the Blog View (as opposed to a List View, which isn't always available for use), having a shortish introduction is useful in making the blog page readable, and the rest in a "continue reading" section. Given the length of your average Top Comments diary, that seemed like a really good idea.
If you never visited the beta, this is going to look new to you. In fact, you've done pretty well to find us here tonight. Thanks for exploring.
I also imagine you're wondering where certain things are. The DK4 FAQ has a section Where to Find things on DK4, which saves me from going into greater detail here. I'm happy to answer questions in the comments.
Some things don't quite work the way they used to. Checking out who the people are who recced your comment, for example. You click on the numeric ratings to open…but where's the red square with the "x" in it to close it? You don't need the red square: just click on the numeric ratings again, and it closes. The same thing for the "Dairy Recommended By" header bar, which replaces the old "View Recommenders" link, which had its own red square. You can click anywhere on the header bar to open, and anywhere to close again. No need to move over to the stylized plus or minus button at the right end of the bar. (If you want to close any of the other lists below it, click on the list's header bar; click again to reopen.)
Another difference is in using asterisks for bolding, underscores for italics, and hyphens for strikeouts. Here's how they've changed:
• Asterisks require that they be around entire words, not just single characters at the beginning of words. So *It* will work, but *I*t will not. Punctuation immediately following a word can be inside or outside of the asterisks.
• Underscores, like asterisks, must be around entire words.
• Hyphens no longer work for strikeout. Use the <s> command instead: <s>strike-out characters</s> will turn into strike-out characters.
As I've mentioned before, changing you sig will not change your sig on old comments. Your sig only affects new comments as you write them. Once the comment is published with your sig on it, that sig stays with that comment permanently.
If you haven't visited it already, go see your Profile page. Since you're reading this diary, you'll be seeing a "See More" box in the upper right side. On the blog's front page, and many others, that's a "Welcome Back" box; if you click on your username in that box, you're taken right to your profile page. Lots of great information there. From this page, you'd click on My Page and then the Profile submenu that appears just below it. Or you can click on your name in any comment you've written to go straight there. As with the previous version of Daily Kos, there are usually multiple ways to get where you want to go.
For now, where I want to go is on to the comments. Even with Daily Kos down, I've had a busy day mixing work with pleasure (in this case, pleasure was, believe it or not, getting ready for the DK4 launch). Hope you enjoy the new digs. There will be inevitable release pains amongst the great new features—slowness here and there, error messages, search not quite (yet) working as you'd expect in some areas—but overall, I think you'll be glad we've changed…and for the better.
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Even on the final night and morning of Daily Kos as we've known it for over five-and-a-half years (aka DK3), people took the time, while getting that final look around, to submit comments that deserved recognition, and a trio of comment nominations appeared in the Top Comments mailbox in time for the (this time only!) 12 noon Eastern Time deadline. Then, to make it a quartet, we got another submission from an Unexpected Source. 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. If you send a writeup with the link, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit.
From trashablanca:
Here's a great comment by LaughingPlanet in BlueJessamine's lovely Ode to Jotter.
From Seneca Doane:
Lots of great comments on Egypt yesterday, and how what they've done influences the rest of the world, but I like how chicago jeff put it in context.
From Julie Gulden:
Colorado is the Shiznit, while watching the countdown to 4.0…
And that was it for Daily Kos version 3, Scoop, and life as we knew it. But, nothing daunted, Kossacks by the hundreds followed the site's temporary "Daily Kos is down for the transition to DK4" page for the link to Congress Matters, where David Waldman had set up a Welcome, Daily Kos refugees front-page diary.
From politik, who submitted this from Congress Matters minutes after Daily Kos became unavailable:
[Editor's note: I strongly advise you to read the diary first, and then agnostic's parent comment for full context.] This comment by triv33 says it all...and is TMI!
From sardonyx (your post-launch Saturday DK4 diarist): nada. Sorry; I was too busy getting things set up to find worthy comments; fortunately, others took up the slack. And it's too soon to find comments from the newly launched site.
Please add your own comment finds below!
~~~~~
Finally, we have today's top mojo using my revision of the cskendrick-devised mojo-to-Excel process. It's only 14 hours worth of mojo, run at approximately 11:45am eastern, shortly before DK3 signed off for good.
This may be the last time you see top mojo in this form: Search Comments is not yet capable of running search with the parameters we need, and even if it does gain this ability, we may not be able to extract it into Excel for formatting, at least not for a while. (And, without examples of output, we haven't been able to redo the Excel spreadsheet to handle said output's new format.) Any problems we may have will understandably be low on the list for the DK4 team to address.
First, Top Mojo excluding miscellaneous cute animals, search-identifiable tip jars, and first diary comments:
1) I'm rating you a "3" by raines — 69
2) We Got Upstaged By Real Life by Gooserock — 65
3) Even better by Julie Waters — 61
4) One Last Editorial Cartoon on DK3 by JekyllnHyde — 59
5) hmmm, can anyone think of something that'll help? by nonnie9999 — 57
6) Must uprate... by SallyCat — 50
7) You're not fooling anyone, Bob... by Trix — 49
8) too tired for drinking by LaughingPlanet — 45
9) THANK YOU FOR THE REC LIST!!!!! by Clytemnestra — 42
10) Thanks for giving me an excuse to post by Eileen B — 41
11) The joke is on us... by The Eyewitness Muse — 41
12) Scanning thru a couple diaries by Many Dogs Barking — 40
13) May both men rest in eternal peace. by blue jersey mom — 37
14) The Lark Ascending by Nulwee — 36
15) Funny that you wrote that. by Bob Johnson — 36
16) The first time I ever got trolled by rexymeteorite — 35
17) asdf by billlaurelMD — 35
18) It's only the dumb and clueless trolls by blueoasis — 34
19) May God Bless by psychodrew — 34
20) I'm staying back by Dreaming of Better Days — 34
21) Christening time for DK4 by begone — 33
22) Neo-Luddites have feelings, too by maryru — 33
23) Best. Troll. Evah! by JekyllnHyde — 31
24) Kewl! It really IS as easy as DK3... by Jimdotz — 31
25) Delete My Dk3, Kos! by norm — 30
26) the revenge of Carl, you mean by musicsleuth — 30
27) if we all by Laurence Lewis — 30
28) Nothing Loved is Ever Lost by JaxDem — 29
29) Thank You, Sar by JekyllnHyde — 29
30) Well I don't know about anybody else, but... by blueteam — 29
31) Once again we light the candles by llbear — 29
32) RealityBias by norm — 29
33) Thank you, blue Jersey Mom by Sandy on Signal — 29
34) Two more gone too soon. by maggiejean — 29
Top Mojo with No Exclusions:
1) See you all later. by Pluto — 207
2) tips .... (hic) by Clytemnestra — 202
3) Tip Jar by Bob Johnson — 153
4) Tip Jar and don't tell me by LaFeminista — 111
5) I felt for my final DK3 diary I should write abou by teacherken — 71
6) I'm rating you a "3" by raines — 69
7) Tip Jar by standingup — 68
8) We Got Upstaged By Real Life by Gooserock — 65
9) Even better by Julie Waters — 61
10) One Last Editorial Cartoon on DK3 by JekyllnHyde — 59
11) hmmm, can anyone think of something that'll help? by nonnie9999 — 57
12) Tip Jar by beltane — 55
13) See y'all on the new frontier! by Crashing Vor — 55
14) Tip Jar by Adept2u — 51
15) Must uprate... by SallyCat — 50
16) tips and such by jotter — 50
17) You're not fooling anyone, Bob... by Trix — 49
18) Tip Jar by palantir — 48
19) Tip Jar by Uberbah — 47
20) Tip jar by sardonyx — 46
21) too tired for drinking by LaughingPlanet — 45
22) THANK YOU FOR THE REC LIST!!!!! by Clytemnestra — 42
23) Thanks for giving me an excuse to post by Eileen B — 41
24) The joke is on us... by The Eyewitness Muse — 41
25) Scanning thru a couple diaries by Many Dogs Barking — 40
26) May both men rest in eternal peace. by blue jersey mom — 37
27) Tip Jar by mole333 — 37
28) The Lark Ascending by Nulwee — 36
29) Tip Jar by Philoguy — 36
30) Funny that you wrote that. by Bob Johnson — 36
31) alms for those facing by claude — 36
© sardonyx; all rights reserved
All quotes are the property of the original authors or the websites that held them