There is so much information and speculation about DK4. Some of it valid and accurate, much of it driven by fear of the unknown, and a less than perfect Beta.
Folk are adopting positions that are "impression based", which is fine, but for every point there is a counter-point.
Free Republic is teetering on the edge of oblivion, Daily Kos is morphing into it's future. Some will leave, but some always do.
So can DK4 be what everyone wants it to be?
Let's take a look.
Let me start by saying that I want Granny Doc to stay. I read her Diary, I tipped and recc'd it because it opens up both the opportunity to discuss the very real fears of Diarists, and the possibilities as yet little understood.
I hear a lot about "Balkanization". That is, the splitting of the site into small groups of self-interested Kossack, to the detriment of the wider discussion.
Well pardon me ... Is that not what people ave been complaining about anyway, in the last two years? Let me give you an example:
Two Diaries were published this week. One was an Open Letter to Rachel Maddow, the other (mine) being a response to the Open Letter. Neither Diary reached the Rec. List. Neither Diary contained much in the way of angry debate, abuse or Hide Rating. Both were excellent Diaries (esp. mine ... heh!), which had discussion threads running over two hundred comments.
The point was that each side refused to Recommend the other! It was almost as if the two sides were reluctant to open the discussion to the wider Community, for reasons best known to themselves. If both those Diaries now resided in a Group about the RKBA, then they, and their arguments would remain freely available to anyone researching the subject.
Cliques, entrenched views, Balkanisation ... it exists. It is alive and well on DK3, and is no reason not to move to DK4. Remember BlackWaterDog anyone?.
The complaints generally fall into a few categories:
- Useability
- Recent Diary List
- Fragmentation
So, briefly:
Useability. As I understand it, the available "accessibility tools" rate DK4 higher than DK3. That's it ... DK4 is an improvement on a technical level, for users with a disability. This does not address more "personal" considerations like "preferences". Each needs to find their own, and ask the Development Team to fix any obvious issues.
Recent Diary List ..... Is useless and was always useless. The problem here is that people are not acknowledging that they already miss most new Diarists, because they missed them! The feeling that you encounter New Diarists from the RDL is, and always has been, hit and miss at best. These points have been raised before. Users have long complained that the RDL is rubbish, and that Diaries scroll so damned fast at times that much is missed.
For example ... In and average day right now, about 180 or so Diaries are published. Mostly by American Users, and mostly between 7 am Eastern and 7 pm Pacific.
That is 15 hours, which means that a Diary I publish in the middle of the day is likely to be gone from a 30 Diary List in about 2 hours tops. If folk concentrate at the top of the list, then it is "marginal" for attention after an hour.
Okay, so I estimated the numbers, but the point stands. Most Diaries are missed, by most of us!
But we don't get that, because we see the ones we see, and want to keep on seeing them, and holding the impression that New Diarists and Diaries are given a fair crack at the whip. They aren't, and they never were.
Fragmentation ... I refer y'all to above. The site already suffers from this, and comment after comment complains about it.
Groups .... Have the ability to do a number of things. They can reduce fragmentation, not increase it. Groups are a way to allow Users with special interests to work collaboratively on projects. They will develop and build on the talent available here, to a previously unimaginable degree.
Before Groups there was no real way for Diarists to work together to increase knowledge and build expertise. Even if they were able to do this, there was no easy way for Users to find that info. Now there is, and we should be cheering from the bloody rooftops.
There is a further thing that Groups can do. A personal Group can be your own Blog, if you so choose. Every Diary you post to your own Group will get a Permalink, which you can publish anywhere you want, Facebook, Twitter. You will get to keep your own stuff here, and drive traffic to the site. It's a two-fer.
When you combine Groups with Tags, the possibilities are endless. Publishing some Diaries straight to Groups would, by the way, reduce the clutter on the Diary list.
Balkanisation is not necessarily a bad thing. It's negative connotations apply to DK3, but they will only apply to DK4 if we, the Users, take them there. No platform will prevent that!
So ... Finding New Stuff:
If we can accept that the current RDL is, at best, an imperfect tool, then what can we do in DK4 to improve the opportunities for good Diaries to gain wider exposure?
Well we could make the Rescue Rangers work a damn sight harder. We could have some of them patrolling all day, and, rather than just one FP Diary a day devoted to this, we could have a Front Page "Community Spotlight", that changes hour by hour and highlights Diaries that should be read.
We could have, on the Front Page, a Recently Recommended Diary List, which would include all Diaries that at least one Trusted User as recc'd. In itself that would give us a list generally free of the kind of Diary that currently pushes your brilliant Diary off the Front Page. We could further make sure that a completely unexpurgated list of All Diaries remains easily available.
These are all improvements that should help gain your latest "War and Peace" much wider exposure than it might currently get, were you unfortunate to publish it minutes before Sarah Palin released another Facebook Video!
Finally the "look and feel":
That's trickier. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Accessibility issues aside, whether or not you "like" DK4 is personal. Some will, some will hate it. It's also an area where changes can and will be made, that much is inevitable.
In the end, we will "suck it and see". There are other features, other improvements to come, we will treat them on their merits at that time.
The bottom line is that the DK3 you love hasn't changed much. It is all still there, still usable if all you want to do is read Diaries and comment on them.
However ... Should you want to do more than that, then DK4 is a massive leap in the very direction you have long wanted Daily Kos to move.
I am drinking wine, and cooking supper, so my apologies for the rambling, and the typos.
I have no connection with this Site, no insight or knowledge beyond that of any other User. I do not know Markos, Meteor Blades is just a screen name. I write this simply because what I write has been my experience.