There are 398 groups now, unless I counted wrong. There'll be new ones created after I post this diary. There were eight of them set up yesterday, and Frankenoid's already added another one on knitting today (so far, I'm the first of her two followers.) I check every so often, and keep adding more. I haven't founded any groups myself, since my interests seem pretty well covered by others. A few of my own DK4 stats:
Following Tags - 5
Following Users - 172
Following Groups - 53
Group Contributor - 5
Group Editor - 9
Group Admin - 3
This gives me a fairly active stream, and that's the main way I read the site just like I used to read a lot off my subscriber list. Though I do look to Rec List, Community Diaries, Recently Reccomended and even sometimes Recent Diaries, too. A new activity I'd never imagined before is republishing diaries to groups.
! ! ! ! ! ! --- This is important --- ! ! ! ! !
Doesn't matter if you're a group member (editor, contributor or admin), if you want the group's diaries in your stream, you have to follow the group, too. If you just want to read a group's diaries and comment in them, you don't need an invitation - just click on the little heart to follow the group. Easy as pie!
I'm publishing this diary to two groups: Cranky Users and Meta Groupies. One of these days, there'll be links to all groups a diary's republished to, automatically. I look forward to that as a useful improvement.
I did some digging around in group stats today. 5 groups have over 300 followers. Mark Sumner's Science Matters has the most at 622. Fifty groups have over a hundred followers. 95 of them, nearly a quarter, have yet to have a diary posted to them. Many more have but 1 or 2.
I've watched the groups taking shape, and have formulated some thoughts and opinions. Your mileage will likely vary. Others probably see them in an entirely different light, like something they want to market or advocate or organize or something. At any rate, I'm curious to hear about experiences I've not imagined or noticed.
I turned down some group invitations, though I'm following most all of those same groups. It might be about time to drop out of a few. Obvious example: There's no need to follow Meteor Blades' blog page if I already follow Meteor Blades. So that one's gonna go, at least. Tasini seems to cross-post to Income Inequality, so there's probably no need to follow his Job Party, too. And there's no point in following the Cranky Users tag if I follow the group.
Inactive Groups Some groups haven't got their engines started yet, and may never do. Some other groups haven't had any diaries yet, but I'm sticking with 'em. Ocean Advocates only just was founded yesterday, so we'll see on that one. Montana Kossacks? That Rehberg vs. Tester Senate contest is gonna get interesting, so I'm sticking with that one. I'm staying with Wildebeests & Yaks, too. No telling what might happen there someday. It might be kinda like following user Grand Moff Texan (which I do, too.)
Amongst the groups I didn't sign up for were 10 created over a 2-day period for Progressive Congress News. There's no diaries for any of them over a month after they were founded, and the same 3 people are signed up as the only members of all of them. They mostly have single-digit followers. I'm thinking this might have been an idea that maybe won't pan out. For example, people who want to talk about immigration seem to be participating in Baja Arizona Kossacks, rather than PCN Immigration.
Baja Arizona Kossacks is emerging as a robust, lively group. It has several good diarists. One longtime kossack who'd gone inactive, Man Eegee, has re-emerged since the changeover. The group has a terrific logo, and have 2-3 diaries a day posted - a good pace. The management approach has been to make it wide open. All 50 group members are Admins, and there are half a dozen outstanding invitations. There's 61 followers, who are treated to a good stream of stories about goings-on in the Congressional districts of Gabrielle Giffords & Raul Grijalva and thereabouts.
Pink Clubhouse: A lot of invitations went out for this one right at first. I signed up before I realized that if I wasn't gonna post a diary, then following was probably in order. So I'm one of the 92 followers of the 92 contributors, 7 editors and one admin. I'm not sure I get the point - it republishes jotter, has pootie diaries, and a quirky array of a lot of diaries, a few of them serious. 153 all told - one of the most prolific groups. It's kind of a cluster of hang-out diaries, and I'm not sure I see the point - at least for me. It's mostly covered by users I follow (172 at present) anyhow. It confuses me, so I might let that one go.
Readers & Book Lovers is perhaps the most active and popular group. It's got 426 followers and has already published 751 diaries. I think many of those are an archive, republishing of older diaries. It's a pretty active diary stream, incorporating several DK3 series: Books by Kossacks; What are you Reading?; Write On!; Book Flurries. It was a smart thing, methinks, for them to all travel under the same banner. I'm thinking (hoping!) the number of diaries will slow down a little. But I like the group. It's got all kinds of reading lists and book reviews, as well as the aforementioned series. It's sorta like a real-time book review, serving much the same function the weekly NY Times Book Review and New York Review of Books used to provide when I lived in NYC some years back (pre-Internet.)
There's separate groups for National Parks and Public Lands. I'm not sure but they might not have been better served by the Readers & Book Lovers model, rather than forming separate groups with much overlapping interest. I'm an editor on both of them, and sometimes scratch my head over the boundary between the two when faced with a republishing problem.
Family History and Genealogy: This is an emerging group. I never saw anything on DK3 on this topic. But edwardssl started it up, and 62 contributors, a couple of editors, 169 followers, and 33 diaries later, it's one of the more substantial groups on the site. It's arrived on the scene fully-developed, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. Who knew? And there's likely others like this, too. Very cool.
New Mexico Kossacks: claude's gone the way of leaving everyone a contributor. But he's not online much these days since he got elected majordomo of his acequia. So when I posted BREAKING! about Senator Bingaman's retirement, it didn't get republished to the group for over 24 hours. Next thing I knew, I got promoted to Editor. Everyone else is still a contributor. It's a relatively quiet specialty group with a modest number of readers and participants. We probably have a few more people to pick up. TheFatLadySings isn't even a follower yet, and she definitely writes on NM topics so she ought to be a contributor. But the group's off to a good start. It's got enough juice to keep going to serve its local purpose. I managed to offend a guy who wanted to use dKos messaging for organizing purposes, rather than just the mechanics of the group. Hopefully, claude unruffled his feathers a little.
History for Kossacks: I write a lot of history diaries, and my friend Unitary Moonbat (I'm one of the very few Kossacks to have met UM in person) founded History for Kossacks. He's been busy elsewhere, as has the other admin, so I've done some of the initial work getting the group started. We've got a lot of good writers on historical topics here at Daily Kos, and we've got a good bunch of established diarists as editors, as well as less familiar ones. I even got dengre to sign on! I did delete a coupla diaries from the queue rather than publish to the group. One felt like flame-bait, wondering if Obama is like Nixon? And Obama's time is now, so things about him aren't hisotry. Another was about the last WWI veteran who died recently. Had the diary been about him, it would have been fine. But it was about how Boehner & Reid wouldn't let his body lie in state in the Capitol, making it this week's news. I have some anxiety about acting as gatekeeper that way, but I guess a little moderation's in order to keep things on topic.
Republishing: If republishing has much weight in the new mojo algorithm, then I'm heading for my sixth bar of mojo. I've been doing a lot of it. When I find an interesting diary, I look for groups to republish to. Then, unless I'm an editor or admin, I have to track down an editor or admin to release it from the queue to the group. Some of 'em just make me an editor, so I can do it myself without bothering them. And so I learned there's reason to be a group editor even if you don't write diaries on the subject. It's not unlike a clipping service, calling interesting stories to the attention of people interested in its topic.
Unconventional groups: A lot of groups have similar structure. But some are a little different.
- Trolls: In DK3, it was against the rules to put a "Troll Diary" tag. This group's function is the equivalent to that tag. It is a republish-only group. The 23 editors (there aren't any contributors) don't post to diaries to the group. They've got a pretty steady stream of material that crawls out when they go out overturning rocks. And ya gotta get your recipes somewhere!
- Photo Cooperative: This one's got a bunch of unique challenges. It's a good idea, so I hope it gets off the ground. Nothing much has happened yet.
- Team DFH: It's all admins, and some fun stuff turns up. A whole new jbou has emerged for example. What's not to love about a diary title like I really think Miracle Whip lowered the bar for what constitutes a miracle? He reminds me of Bill Maher; totally annoying sometimes but also totally funny. And that's just one of the DFH crew's 47 admins. There's usually music around, too.
- There's some groups that are following old practices (like Top Comments or IGTNT, for example), just a little facilitated by having a formal DK4 group.
- Armando: It's good to see him writing at DK again. He's been writing interesting stuff that I'm glad to have turn up in my stream. Otherwise, bygones seem to be bygones.
- Thanks to Lisa Lockwood for Anonymous dKos. I loved the Lisbeth Salander trilogy. I'd been wondering for a long time about how everyone hated the banks during the Depression, and there was a certain romantic nostalgia attached to outlaws of the period. Not happening nowadays. A recent epiphany told me that it was Wikileaks and Anonymous and Ms. Salander who have that role today. So I had to follow this group. A fascinating phenomenon of transparency and brinksmanship.
- Class Warfare Newsletter: It's got 238 contributors and only 88 followers. Kind of a chaotic soapbox kinda venue, with a lot more people wanting to speak than wanting to listen, it might seem. Like I said: To get a group's diaries in your stream, you have to follow it. Being an editor won't do it.
A lot of the groups haven't really found their footing yet. Some active groups might be short-lived. More will emerge, and there's many ways it might happen, just as groups have taken various forms already. Someday someone's gonna study these complex structures. Write a dissertation on it or something. Things have changed a lot since the days of the 2400-baud modem. And how!
That's it. Some rambling thoughts about groups.