It has been amazing how Sarah Palin's daughter (Bristol!--I even know her obscure name.) has dominated the news coverage. You'd think that a candidate's affiliation with a secessionist organization (the only candidate I know of since Jefferson Davis) would draw more attention. Or Troopergate, or a myriad of other questionable details, beyond the general lack of experience.
McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis recently stated, "This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."
The problem is how did a "dailykos poster," a one-timer, AIX--end up making a non-issue (Bristol's pregnancy) the focus of the talk. Did DailyKos get punked? Wikipedia has measures to stop it from being punked--here's how DailyKos could install some.
On the eve of Sarah Palin's nomination her Wikipedia entry got changed by a user who had never posted to Wikipedia before. Not surprisingly, the changes were made to make Palin's portrayal much more glowing.
A day after or so, a diary was posted on DailyKos that focused on a strange pregnancy theory concerning Sarah Palin. This also was made by a user who had never posted to the DailyKos.
It is possible that an Rove-ian operator made the changes to Wikipedia.
It is also possible that a Rove-ian operator wrote the diary on DailyKos.
In both instances, the goal would be to improve the image of Sarah Palin. In the case of DailyKos, the goal would be putting out a false story from a liberal website that can be manipulated to make Sarah into a victim. And to trash DailyKos.
Whether these are possibilities or not, DailyKos should have a system that protects it from being the whipping boy of stories planted by a Rovian disinformation campaign.
I suggest the following:
- A "first time poster" warning.
- A member point system that provides points based upon some participatory standard.
- Something more complex--feel free to suggest below.
This is a simple database solution.
For example, on Apple's website they have a point system that rates each contributor to the help forum. Each user recommends an answer, and the poster receives a score.
I'm not saying that there should be some hierarchy. There just should be a basic evaluation as to whether this person is a member, or someone who has an agenda.
Quite frankly, there needs to be checks to keep DailyKos's reputation from being trashed by one clever Rove protege.
Updated: Jyrinx make a point about a smite button.
Correction:
To illustrate how one might use this now , the top diary right now is the unpaid taxes on a CarWash business. A diary that followed it by a CPA refuted the focus on this story by stating, simply, "I am a CPA, and this just means the business has gone out of money."
So, if we could smite it, we'd probably be saving the author from erroneously focusing the community on a non-issue.
We could also append it--basically not a comment, but a commentary that obtained enough votes to appear below the main text of the diary.