Daily Kos is a community, but because it is virtual, it's hard to get the big picture without spending a lot of time here.
This map of user diary recommendations made between last January 22 and February 19 may seem familiar to seasoned Kosmopolitans, and I hope will help all gain perspective on what we have here.
note: The full size image should show full resolution if clicked again after loading.
The map is a second attempt at visualizing associations revealed by diary recommendations. I collect that data in order to provide lists of highly recommended diaries weekly and (for the moment) daily. The first map was published about a month ago; there I described the methods I used.
Readers who recommended 8 or more diaries by an author between Jan 22 and Feb 18 are connected to the author they recommended using an arrow. Compared to the earlier map, this time I included data from C&J, and data from a longer time period were considered (4 weeks instead of 3), resulting in a large number of associations. In order to reduce the number of drawn edges without losing too much information, I decided to combine all readers who recommended only one author into a "fan club" of that author.
Fan Clubs are shown in green, Kosmopolitans who both recommend and author diaries are shown in gold, those who recommend only (in the time period studied) are shown in a light blue. Each edge (the arrows) between reader and author is shown starting at the reader and ending at the author. Edges are labeled with the number of recommendations awarded (for reader-->author links) or the number of members of the fan club (for fan club-->author edges).
In the spirit of not confusing the map with the territory, I should mention what is not shown. No front page stories are represented here - only user diaries. No comments figured into what is shown here. Most important, only diarists who published at least 8 diaries between Jan 22 and Feb 18 could possibly make the list. This is most definitely not a list of "who is important and contributing" at Daily Kos. There are many many very important diarists not appearing here, and readers locked in the fan clubs. Apologies to them.
Despite these disclaimers, I'm reasonably pleased with the result. It looks somewhat like the site I'm familiar with. For instance, although it shows several authors who have a substantial following, some are not connected to the main graph, while others are "embedded". Many of the authors are familiar names. The links to my own diaries seem accurately (though as discussed above, incompletely) presented.
That's enough for now. I expect to prepare and publish a similar map every 4 weeks for a while, as it may require having a few maps in hand to see what they show: it could be nothing more than a reminder of who has come and gone.
If there are objections to posting this, please let me know.
-- jotter