I first noticed the problem with mothership diaries during the summer of BP. Usually, I can come to Daily Kos and get the latest relevant news, as determined by my fellow progressive bloggers, by scanning the Recommended Diary list. If something really important has broken, one can usually find it there. And if it's not there, you can write it yourself.
It's a great system. It has a kind of buzz, where when a story is really big, there will sometimes be multiple diaries on the rec list at once, usually each with its own different take or bit of useful information.
It's also democratic. If enough people find a particular story important enough, then they will recommend it, even if there are other similar stories already up. Sometimes it can be redundant. But people have always been quite good at deleting redundant diaries.
But some people complained that there were too many similar diaries and somehow convinced everyone that the democratic nature of the rec list was not to be trusted to know what content should or should not make the rec list, so the mothership was born.
So now, when a big story happens, instead of a buz of interesting diaries on the rec list covering various aspects of that story, which is incredibly useful for the vast majority of people who don't have hours to spend at Daily Kos and just want to see what the latest big news is, we get one diary called the mothership.
OK. If someone is willing to aggregate a bunch of the best diaries on the big story and post them in near real time so we can get the latest big news as it happens, I can live with that.
But that's not how the mothership works. When you click on it, instead of getting the latest greatest, you get NO NEWS AT ALL. You get a link to another diary. The ROV.
OK. I'm down with that. Let's go to the ROV and see what's new on the BP oil spill or, the Egyptian Revolution or, now, the nuclear crisis in Japan.
Nothing. I've now clicked two diaries and have not found one single news story or analysis.
Oh, I get it. To get the latest news on Japan's nuclear crisis, I should scroll down through the comments. That's where the good information will be right?
Wrong. You can find relevant information in the comments of an ROV diary. But it is tedious and time consuming because most of the comments ARE NOT relevant and even when you find one that is, it's not in a useful context or presented in a narrative like a good diary or news article is.
I continually try to extract the talents of this community by scanning the ROV comments section. But it's like fishing. You never know what your going to catch, or even if you will catch anything at all. And if you don't have all day, then it's a big effing waste of time.
Now, the ROV diaries DO link to other diaries that people have written on a subject. This, I suppose, is supposed to function like the rec list. But it doesn't function like the rec list. The rec list is democratically populated. Maybe that doesn't mean much to some people. But it means a whole hell of a lot to me. Especially when I'm short on time.
When I come to Daily Kos, I check the rec list first. Why? Because I value the opinions of Kossaks and if enough of you vote to put a story up in the rec list, I figure it probably deserves clicking on at least.
BUT THE WORST? The mothership system actually deters people from writing good diaries on the big story in the first place. Why spend 4 hours writing a great diary on Egypt when no one will recommend it anyway? Because of the freakin mothership?
The mothership system overrides the democratic system of the rec list. It kills the buzz, and takes what should be a booming big story and throws it into a black hole.
I have seen repeatedly people comment that they would have written a diary about something but for the mothership system. I have seen important breaking news during big stories go unreported here because of the mothership system.
It's anti-democratic, it stifles discussion, and, most importantly, it greatly reduces the profile of important topics on the site.
Please. Reject the mothership system. Continue recommending important stories. And let the rec list be all that it can be.