- he writes succinctly, conveys opinions efficiently
- he does not fear criticism
- Kos likes data
- he is able to follow national trends and polling well
- he insisted the community form its own guidelines
- when he sketched guidelines, they were well informed before ever sketching them out with remarkable brevity
- he is liberal regarding personal freedoms
- he believes in personal and community autonomy
- he understands web communication well
- he is an able web developer
- he has helped fund raise money put to fantastic new use in the Democratic Party
- he has chosen good front page contributors and has good taste in that regard
- he realized the Iraq War was a mistake a long time ago, before many that now realize
more beyond the fold...
... if you add them.
Kos is no doubt a huge reason DailyKos is compelling. His succinct style and the basis on following the horse race, that is what characterizes Kos' posting... it's data data data.
That proved to be a great umbrella for everything else behind those number, behind people's opinions on these people and issues. I'm interested in communities because I believe two heads are better than one, and so one for five, ten or ten thousand heads are better. But not automatically. It can just be a mob.
Kos understands this pretty well, taking an landmark step in the political direction on a line from Slashdot to Kuro5hin, and then here. And it still goes on to TPMCafe, ePluribus Media, Booman's Tribunes, even conservative RedState or multipartisan debate site Tacitus.org, and more and more non-scoop sites, such as the Soapblox sites such as MyLeftWing, which borrow scoop behaviors.
Consider, the scoop software is not used in it's Kuro5hin incarnation, but the DailyKos model, which is what introduces recommended diaries and many other of the familiar facets of the dkos presentation.
And that's markos' design.