I've seen the diaries about whether or not personal stories are a useful part of the DKos community blog site.
Seems to me that whenever you get people working together on something that it's natural for people to do personal bonding as part of the process of keeping the "team" together and feeling motivated in a connected way. It also seems natural that as more people get involved, it impacts things. For better and for worse. All of which is subjective.
So, what to do? Do we discredit the submissions of others because they're "not what we're here for?" As a community web site, the members determine what diaries get catapulted to the Rec List. Those that we don't appreciate don't go there. Do we keep silent about our disgruntlement and quietly build resentment and/or leave? That doesn't seem constructive either.
How about something else....
I don't imagine that much is going to happen until after the election, but perhaps then we could have a community dialog about ways to improve the site to accommodate a larger community and a more diverse approach to usage.
I've read one suggestion about a 4-column layout that separates "i-reporter" diaries from personal story diaries. Would that do it?
Would a new set of sanctioned tags help?
I know there are some time slots which are designated for more personal diaries, would better reminders of those, or a tagging system that held diaries with particular tags until those times be an improvement?
As a relatively new user here (joined during the primaries) I don't know what it was like before, but I do know that it's hard to feel that you've really gleaned the best information from the site when so many diaries are posted each day and scroll off the front page list so quickly. I'm often thinking, "what have I missed?" I'm sure that after this election, some things will slow down (though I would hope we could use this site to keep an Obama administration in line and focused on the policies that are important to us.) Still, seeing what's evolved here gives us a chance to think about how it might be improved.
Categories?
Your thoughts?