The timers are steadily counting down to the end of an era: Daily Kos version 3 will be no more, to be seen again only in screen captures and at the Internet Archive. It joins version 2, the first version under Scoop, which looked a fair amount like version 1, the Movable Type version. (No one but Markos and a few of his friends know what the few weeks of version 0.1 looked like; and as no one's described it in the past 8.7 years, I don't think we'll ever know how it looked.)
Similarly, only a few know what was going on behind the scenes as Markos finally set out, with the help of Grant (uid 2) and Kevin (uid unknown) to install Scoop and switch Daily Kos over to it. The site was too busy for Movable Type to handle, and that kos had mentioned switching to Scoop earlier in the year, even before the deadly 1.5 months with HaloScan comments instead of Movable Type's; those July and August 2003 comments are lost forever.
Nearly two months of open beta comments are set to be lost at midnight tonight (Pacific time), when the beta is taken down for good. And I'll mourn for them as much as I mourn for the 2003 losses. In 2003, as in 2010 and 2011 (for the beta), the comments were known to be evanescent; both times, no one expected there to be so many or to be required for so long.
We can now see, thanks to the magic of DK4, that while setting up Scoop, accounts for Grant, kos, and test were created on October 11, 2003, meaning that the installation had been successful to the point that accounts could be created. In fact, earlier in the beta process, before some features were deemed to supply more precision than was strictly necessary, you could find out when people joined, not merely by the day (as you can now), but to the hour and minute.
It's because of this that I can tell you that Grant's account was created at 1:30pm eastern, and kos's at 2:09pm eastern. The test account had to wait until 9:33pm eastern before it got created. The next account wouldn't be created until the day everything broke loose, October 13. kos posted that famous warning, MT version of dKos is now obsolete at 6:33pm, and Jerome Armstrong signed up 13 minutes later at 6:46pm eastern, with Meteor Blades following at 7:30pm eastern. The official announcement of the new site's numeric URL went up at 9:17pm eastern, which meant everyone reading the site now knew where to find it; by 9:23pm both n69n and Cogito (uids 7 and 8) had been snatched. Eleven minutes after that, Expo (uid 27) was posting the first Daily Kos comment. And the race was on.
One thing that made the conversion from Movable Type (DK1) to Scoop (DK2) far easier was that none of the contents was being converted. While the look and feel was changing somewhat, all the old posts and comments were effectively being encased in amber. They're all still there at the Daily Kos archives of version 1, which anyone can explore. There is no search capability, however, though there are post "categories"; no way to locate comments beyond looking (or, if you're interested in one of the guest front-pagers, there are lnks to their guest posts, and to most of their comments, in the dKosopedia: folks like Meteor Blades, billmon, and Steve Gilliard.
DK3 wasn't a platform change, it was a site design change. If you're wondering what it changed to, well, you're looking at it now. As it is, and will be for the next fourteen hours (and counting). Frankenoid has a screen shot of DK2 here, as it looked before June 24, 2005. Though even that was somewhat changed from the original DK2 screen; Recommended Diaries hadn't been introduced until August 10, 2004, ten months before DK3, and an equivalent distance after DK2/Scoop's introduction.
Not all significant changes had numbers attached to them. March 13, 2006 saw the new comments software with editing enhancements and the demise of the 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 rating system, leaving us with just Recommend (4) and Troll/Hide rate (0). And a truly major change in the blog a year later required no software changes at all: Daily Kos formally became a group blog on March 9, 2007.
To reiterate: Daily Kos is coming down Saturday morning at 9am Pacific, 12 noon eastern. It will be down for many hours: elfling has advised not bothering to try logging in until after 5pm Pacific, and pointed out that the site will likely not be up until later in the evening.
Top Comments is planning to post a diary tomorrow night. We're hoping to be up within an hour or so of the site returning, or the usual posting time, whichever is later. No guarantees; we can but try. Please send any comment nominations overnight through the morning, or whatever you might see when we're back. It'll be easier to find things before the site goes down, of course. The Top Comments gmail address is still TopComments at gmail.com, if you find one you want us to include tomorrow.
Some useful links that you should copy to your computer now, or bookmark, for when the site is down:
• Congress Matters (where Kossacks will be hanging out): www.congressmatters.com
• The dKosopedia, where you can read about DK4 and lots of other interesting things: www.dkosopedia.com (DK4 FAQ link)
• DK1 (Movable type: May 22, 2002 through October 15, 2003): dailykos.net
Lest we forget, this final Top Comments of DK3 is being held on European Palindromic Date day: 11022011. If you're going to be American-centric about it, come back on November 2. But it won't be DK3, so don't expect it to be as you remember it ought to have been. Then. When it happens.
And, of course, as we had the Antepenultimate DK3 Top Comments diary on Wednesday, and the Penultimate one on Thursday, this diary you're reading is the Ultimate Top Comments diary. Just in case you hadn't been here for the past two diaries, and was wondering what was so Ultimate about today's Pre-Launch diary. Now you know. :-)
Finally, some bookkeeping. If you want to be able to easily find Top Comments on Daily Kos after the launch of the new software, we have a way that should work immediately out of the bag: "Following" the "Top Comments" tag.
So it's Saturday night, the site is back up (or so we devoutly hope), and you want to have Top Comments in your stream. What to do? Easy. Click on this link to the Top Comments tag (note: revised at 11:53pm eastern to point to dailykos.com rather than the beta, since clicking on it now won't do any good), and "Top Comments" will appear at the top of the page that comes up with an orange heart next to it. Click on the heart, a check mark will appear in it, and voila! You're following the Top Comments tag, and all our Top Comments diaries will appear in your "My Stream" as soon as they're published.
There will also be a way to follow our Top Comments group instead of our tag, but elfling has to do something special to our current Top Comments account in order to convert it into a Top Comments group. Until then, you can't follow us as a group rather than (or in addition to) a tag.
I should note that with Diary Rescue changing over from a front-page post to the real-time Community Spotlight box at the top of the front page, you won't be finding Top Comments mentioned in the nightly diary, nor (unless there's a fantastic essay that evening) eligible for the Community Spotlight.
I want to thank the Diary Rescue team for their persistent encouragement of this series by specifically pointing people to the place where comments are rescued. The Top Comments founder, Carnacki, had been inspired by SusanG's creation of Diary Rescue a couple of months earlier. Both he and Susan have gone on to do other things (and Susan has even changed expanded her name), but both have developed teams of diarists and created two of the most consistent and longest-published daily series on Daily Kos. (jotter and his High Impact Diaries, and Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers are even older timers. I've been fortunate to be able to read all these series since their inception.)
Enjoy yourselves, and get ready for the countdown to a new phase of life on Daily Kos. It's coming in hours to a screen near you. An internet screen.
~~~~~
People seem to be busy with launch-related activities (poor kos was being chased and HRed from here to eternity on the beta), so contributions were a wee bit light in the Top Comments mailbox when the 9:30pm Eastern Time deadline rolled around. Even with all the other changes, the address of our mailbox for top comments submissions remains unchanged, and is:
TopComments AT gmail DOT com
(change " AT " to "@" and " DOT " to ".")
Anyone can send great comments to our address. Be sure to include the direct link to a comment—the URL—which is available from that comment's date/time; we need that to find your choice. Please always include your Daily Kos user name in the body of your message, so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit.
From Yasuragi:
In ThisIsMyTime's diary BREAKING With Pic - Update 8: Mubarak Steps DOWN. Hear The Sound Of FREEDOM, Brit writes this is a great moment.
From Mets102:
raptavio issued a challenge asking for descriptions of a certain individual using different compound words containing the word "douche". arielle proved up to the challenge in her reply. [Editor's note: cleaned up just a little bit...]
From Ed Tracey:
In the front-page story about Maine senator Olympia Snowe facing a tea party challenge, dweb8231 notes that both Snowe and Susan Collins "were not going to do anything to let the far right get at them for not being sufficiently conservative enough", but now the far right is doing that anyway.
From sardonyx (your Final DK3 Friday diarist):
In Jed Lewison's front-page story on how Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King threatens government shutdown unless Obama abandons health care reform, Helena Handbag reminds us what Iowa means.
david mizner writes a TTFN diary, and dizzydean writes an excellent response about real change.
Please add your own comment finds below!
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Finally, we have today's top mojo using my revision of the cskendrick-devised mojo-to-Excel process.
First, Top Mojo excluding Cheers and Jeers, Mojo Friday, miscellaneous cute animals, search-identifiable tip jars, and first diary comments:
1) Why the Chamber of Commerce is Doing This by JekyllnHyde — 200
2) Fox News' Formula for Success by JekyllnHyde — 143
3) And a point about "second amendment remedies" by Mr Bojangles — 131
4) also a nightmare for NeoCons by LaurenMonica — 109
5) yes by ScienceMom — 105
6) Good job Katie (my four year old daughter)! by Corporate Dog — 102
7) This is so recommended ... by Seneca Doane — 99
8) Discouraging? by ActivistGuy — 96
9) You Know by shanikka — 93
10) The Answer to Your Question by JekyllnHyde — 92
11) Fuck'em by SCFrog — 91
12) Farewell, DK3 by david mizner — 91
13) Vox populi Vox dei by Brit — 87
14) Where was KO when he heard the news? by Eileen B — 87
15) The Chamber Might Want To Be Careful by webranding — 84
16) I like this by david mizner — 83
17) Great Catch by War on Error — 82
18) Rec'd for uncommonly appropriate use of BREAKING by raptavio — 80
19) Message to HBGary Federal from "Anonymous" by Annalize5 — 78
20) Your dad is a legend. Deservedly. by Adam B — 74
21) Very similar article at Politico: by Addison — 72
22) holy crap by ScienceMom — 72
23) My Best Diaries by bink — 69
24) I hope anonymous stays nimble. by Free Jazz at High Noon — 68
25) I hope you don't stay away too long by vigilant meerkat — 67
26) and predictable. by ThirstyGator — 65
27) If you can't dazzle them with brilliance by FishOutofWater — 65
28) Cheers to jotter!!! by Predictor — 64
29) They have been doing this by missliberties — 60
30) In "Lord of the Rings," a palantir by Dbug — 60
Top Mojo with No Exclusions:
1) Tip jar by plf515 — 441
2) Very by bink — 427
3) Tip Jar by Vyan — 425
4) Tip Jar by Tomtech — 329
5) Tip Jar by david mizner — 264
6) Tip Jar by ThisIsMyTime — 245
7) Tip Jar by BlueJessamine — 221
8) Why the Chamber of Commerce is Doing This by JekyllnHyde — 200
9) And, by dirkster42 — 197
10) If Rhee wants to redeem herself.... by 8ackgr0und N015e — 169
11) Tip Jar by dkmich — 167
12) Fox News' Formula for Success by JekyllnHyde — 143
13) And a point about "second amendment remedies" by Mr Bojangles — 131
14) the low spark of high impact kogs... by bubbanomics — 118
15) Tip Jar by kavips — 117
16) also a nightmare for NeoCons by LaurenMonica — 109
17) Tip Jar by Congressman Pete Stark — 109
18) Tip Jar by Democrats Ramshield — 105
19) yes by ScienceMom — 105
20) Good job Katie (my four year old daughter)! by Corporate Dog — 102
21) Tip Jar by Tahrir — 100
22) This is so recommended ... by Seneca Doane — 99
23) Tip Jar by Eclectablog — 98
24) Discouraging? by ActivistGuy — 96
25) You Know by shanikka — 93
26) The Answer to Your Question by JekyllnHyde — 92
27) Fuck'em by SCFrog — 91
28) Farewell, DK3 by david mizner — 91
29) Vox populi Vox dei by Brit — 87
30) Where was KO when he heard the news? by Eileen B — 87
© sardonyx; all rights reserved
All quotes are the property of the original authors or the websites that held them