Yesterday was my six-month anniversary at Daily Kos. It also was the one-month anniversary of New Diarists, a group that is the brainchild of a newbie and a number of more experienced Kossacks. After contemplating a variety of ideas for commemorating these momentous occasions, I ultimately decided that this particular combination calls for—what else?!—a diary…
New Diarists is a safe place to practice diary writing skills with a mentor's guiding hand. Experienced diarists are invited to join and buddy up with new diarists, and new diarists are welcome to join and to ask for help. The group's Publication Manager provides a space where we can collaborate on diaries and help with everything from revising to formatting to promoting your new diary.
How-to and Help diaries, such as smileycreek's New Diarists: How to Collaborate with Us on a Diary, will be published to the New Diarists group. Visit our home page and click on the little ♥ to follow us.
Ready to play? Send a private message to nomandates for an invitation to join the group.
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On July 16th, I finally took the plunge and signed up after reading one of Bob Sloan's Exposing ALEC diaries. As he celebrated the attention that The Nation and others were finally devoting to ALEC that week, Bob recounted spending seven years unsuccessfully trying to get the word out "as ALEC continued to eat away at our democracy from the inside, unnoticed and without challenge or question as state by state enacted their corporate friendly legislation" before posting his research at DKos. It probably comes as no surprise that I was planning to say what I really thought about ALEC and/or the traditional media’s failures to expose ALEC before that week, but the GOS thwarted my grand ambition with that one-day waiting period for comments.
I didn’t have to wait too long, though, for another opportunity to express myself. Dem Beans exposed the Heritage Foundation’s most recent ‘study’ in The Heritage Foundation sez: You aren't poor! Someone added a class warfare tag, but this diary also needed a YCMTSU tag referencing Dem Beans’ exasperated remark: "You can't make this shit up!" Such a tag would also come in handy for things like this.
So having found kindred spirits who detest the HF and everything it stands for, I continued reading and rec’ing. ferment’s comment was and still is magnificent. Apparently, Dragon5616 thought so as well because he sent it off to Top Comments. As you may also have noticed, I was inspired—for better or worse—to write and to actually post (those things don’t always go hand-in-hand…just sayin’) my first comment as a reply to ferment’s.
Re-reading that comment now, I’m satisfied that it comes close to conveying how much I despise the HF. At the time, though, I was quite relieved when nothing exploded, and others began to leave rec’s. You see, I knew enough to know that folks would somehow be able to tell that I had a RHUID—how exactly was still a mystery to me at that time—so I was prepared for my comment to be ignored by all but a few and so pleased when some folks actually read and rec'ed it. It felt as though I had been welcomed to join the conversation here.
One thing I like about this site is the ability to seek out whatever I’m in the mood for and just to ignore anything else. Only a couple of weeks after logging on for the first time, I ran across joanil’s simple (to use her word) diary: I like it here. It was simply beautiful as well as perfectly timed. I follow folks for a variety of reasons, and I began following her because of that particular diary.
The same goes for dopper0189, who posted THE IMPORTANCE OF THINKING ABOUT DIVERSITY FROM THE GROUND UP yesterday on my anniversaries. Okay, well his actual purpose was to urge the following:
Make reaching out your Martin Luther King Day resolution there is no greater way to honor him.
I love the times when folks at this site reach out their hands to others, and I appreciate the
efforts of those like
Denise Oliver Velez at
Black Kos to reach out to lurkers and newcomers like me.
Sometimes, I’m in the mood to look at blueyedace2’s pretty pictures. At other times, I’m in the mood to read bubbanomics’ brilliant diary series. At still other times, I’m in the mood to read intellectually stimulating diaries and comments. I’m still contemplating, though, whether the addition of TheGrandWazoo’s best Eva Gabor imitation would prove to be an asset or a distraction. In general, I'm never in the mood for pie fights.
Yet it isn’t always possible to avoid trolls and zombies, as I found out when I acquired my first follower. My first thought when I noticed I had a follower was ‘OMG, aoeu is after me!' That’s actually true because I had no idea why, given that all I had been doing that week was reading and rec’ing, anyone would have decided to follow me. I complained about my First World Problem in WYFP? and acquired an excellent follower, one who more than cancelled out a banned zombie, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
It became apparent that a New Diarists group was needed after I posted my first diary, a gift subscription list diary, which was obviously not the first diary I had planned to write...eventually. Onomastic and Dr Erich Bloodaxe RN, who had posted the first two in what evolved into a series of list diaries, encouraged and helped me, but that diary was a bit of a mess when I first posted it, and I was more than a little scared because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I explained what happened next to Meteor Blades, who quoted my description of the genesis of this group in 'Buddy System' another example of Daily Kos community at its best.
What’s missing from that narrative is a link to the Top Comments thread where I asked smileycreek for help and a bunch of experienced Kossacks stepped up to advise and to encourage the clueless newbie to create this group. Their efforts continue behind the scenes as well as publicly, and here I want to thank all of the experienced Kossacks who have joined New Diarists and have been so eager to help others.
The New Diarists group currently has 92 members and 134 followers. The Buddy System has resulted in 5 published diaries, one of which was an accidental posting of delilah 52's draft diary (no worries...she thinks it's funny now), with at least 6 more diaries in the works. smileycreek’s New Diarists: How to Collaborate with Us on a Diary lists the teaching diaries that the New Diarists community has produced thus far.
And that's my story so far.... What's yours?
Now, back to the important matters that occupy my mind. It has come to my attention that some folks have been speculating about my handle here, here, and here. So I thought we should have a poll...