If you've seen my UID lately, you'll notice that I haven't been here very long. Boy do I regret not coming here sooner. I could have seen the beginnings of fivethirtyeight.com and the Princeton Election Consortium. Is this where Drew Linzer started out, too?
Before I became a member, I read my fair share of DK. Yet as recently as two days before I signed up, I didn't even know that any regular Joe like me could write a DK Diary. I thought you were all paid professionals. That's how good the DK community is! Anyway, I have a confession to make. Once I learned that I could have a DK Diary of my very own, what prompted me to become a member is that I had started a blog, and I wanted to syndicate that blog here to help spread my ideas. Obviously, I seek a bigger audience because I think I have something important to say about my two current obsessions, which are fact checker data analysis and election forecast model averaging (soon to be added: redistricting algorithms and alternative voting mechanisms).
So far, some of my diary entries have lead to meaningful discussion in the comments section. Meaningful discussion is another thing that attracted me to DK. Not only could I increase my audience, but I could talk with smart people about topics that interest me. In fact, that's the reason why I blog in the first place: to generate and participate in intelligent, rational discussions.
Unfortunately, a cadre of of my fellow Kossacks are offended enough by my syndication practices that a few of the comment sections of my Diary entries are littered with a debate about something that is unimportant: whether or not my syndication constitutes "spam". Clearly, they aren't spam, which is the mass communication of a commercial message to a very large number of addresses. I don't get how you can apply the term "spammer" to describe a guy who shares data-driven essays about whether incumbents are more factual than challengers, or about whether we should employ Bayesian model averaging to make better election predictions. I mean let's step back for a minute here. When Nate Silver was just poblano, was he not promoting himself? The only difference is that he developed a following here before he published the fivethirtyeight domain to the web. That difference is not meaningful...at all. The only thing that matters is the work that Nate Silver does. That's what we should be judging and discussing. Not where or how he publishes it.
Now, I would appreciate it and respect the wishes of these Kossacks had they requested politely that I post the entire blog entry here at DK rather than posting a teaser. In fact, I've already adopted that practice because it seems fair to me. Yet what I can't get behind is the allegation that I am somehow "spamming" DK. Someone actually accused me of unconscionable spamming just today because I failed to back-link to a piece that I referenced in enough detail that anyone could find it with a few taps on their keyboard into a Google search bar.
What I also can't get behind is the possibility that Diary policing is cluttering the discussion section of the DK Diaries of people like me. Shouldn't we be discussing substantive issues here at Daily Kos? I think that's what kos would say.
I also can't get behind a knee-jerk response that includes threatening, putdown comments like, "You'll find that if you don't conform to our standards, you will be banned." I mean seriously? What am I, a fucking Amway salesman? Speak to people you don't even know, and who have spent several hours on original research that they now report to you because they honestly think it will inform you, with some goddamn respect. Honestly. Conform to your standards? Like I'm writing some kind of product description marketing tripe? Oh, wait, that's half the breaking news at TechCrunch or c|net. Come off your anonymity-inflated high horse.
Anyway, I propose a solution that will make the self-styled Diary police happy, and diminish the clutter of Diaries with unnecessary Diary policing. First, we make a new tag called "Syndicated". Every time someone like me syndicates a blog post here on DK, we add that tag. No exceptions. I'm going to adopt that policy starting today. Second, we create an easy-to-use mechanism to block certain tags, such as "Syndicated". That way, the Diary police don't have to read my original research, and can instead read the 100 word descriptions that over half of Kossacks make about stuff that other people write, which are basically glorified back-links, but which are apparently okie dokie by the standards of the DK Diary police. Third, we write some guidelines for syndication. These guidelines would include a rule that you publish the original blog post verbatim rather than a teaser. I would like this to include an exception for blog posts that originally contain a lot of graphics, because those are time-consuming to reproduce. But honestly, I wouldn't even care if the rules required complete syndication, including graphics. I'm here to spread good ideas, and to promote myself. So long as those two goals are tightly interwoven, I'd appreciate it if no one call me a spammer again. Instead, I'd like you to discuss with me what I've written. Otherwise, I'd like you to go away.
Thu Nov 15, 2012 at 8:42 PM PT: In my mind, this conversation has run its course. Why? Because my fellow Kossack Neuroptimalian made an even-handed comment that hit the nail right on the head. Thanks for the constructive criticism and the understanding remarks. Meta success.