Welcome, New Users, to Daily Kos, from your host Angie in WA State. This Diary is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
Below the orange gnocchi-doodle Fleur-de-kos you will find links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in this edition Learning the Lingo or What in the Hell does THAT mean???
After that you can ask me any questions about the site you want. I may not know the answer, but someone else will - or I'll fetch someone who does.
AND-- if you're new and wondering what is and isn't OK around here, read Kos' Community Guidelines. That'll keep you out of trouble!
There is a baseline rule, easy to remember and it will keep you out of trouble in most cases here: DBAD (don't be a dick) Everyone follows THAT and we'll all get along just fine!
Wanna follow us around or send us a kosmail?
Click the ♥ to follow us in your Stream, or click Send Message to send us a private kosmail.
Like all Communities, Daily Kos has it's share of "in the know" stories and memes, but because we are an Online Community, we also have a plethora of special terms, many of which require that someone explain to you what in the hell is THAT all about.
Here are some commonly used Terms and what they mean here on Daily Kos --
Mojo:
Here's where you see it, on your profile page (located by clicking YOUR Username anywhere on Daily Kos when you are logged in)
And this is the closeup of that area
What exactly IS mojo and what can it do for you?
Mojo is basically the measure of your participation level here. The more you participate, the higher your mojo (5 bars is the highest level). Participation consists of: reading stories, rating comments or stories by Recommending them, sharing via social media, writing comments, writing stories. Get enough Mojo and you become a Trusted User.
Trusted Users
Trusted Users are just folks who have become registered Users and who have been around long enough and participated enough, to build up their Mojo to AT LEAST three bars. Once you reach that level your Profile page will change from this:
To this (that is my friend, Eric Lewis (ericlewis0) the artist who pens the exclusive to Daily Kos Cartoon Animal Nuz). You'll notice that Eric has two icons under his Avatar image. The blue TU for Trusted User and the Brown Swirl for Subscriber:
Trusted Users get to see a version of Daily Kos that other Users do not, one in which they can not only Recommend a comment, but give it a HIDE rating if they choose. Each Trusted User is allowed only FIVE HIDE ratings per day. Once you become a TU, if you find you are using all five of them every day you might consider taking an anger management class, because I think you might need one :-)...
Trusted Users can create new Groups.
Subscribe
Subscribers have the option to use Daily Kos without having to see the ads. That's all, but it's a a BIG 'that's all', so far as I'm concerned. Cuts load time. The page looks different without the ads, too. Plus, you get to help the site continue to bring you access to all the great articles and information available to Users. Yearly subscriptions are currently $40 and can be purchased for yourself or for other Users as a gift.
Groups
Daily Kos started out just a blog, but today it has become a Portal. Each registered User has their own Home Page here (which you reach by clicking on your own Username anywhere on Daily Kos). Groups are mini-blogs within the Daily Kos portal, made up of Members who have decided to publish stories about a specific subject or issue. There are Groups on every subject imaginable, from Readers and Book Lovers to Monday Night Cancer Club to Income Inequality Kos to Good News and everything in-between.
There are two ways to use Groups.
1) Read the stories they write. To do that, just click on the ♥ next to the word FOLLOW at the top of the page of the story you are reading which is published by the Group, like a group I write for on Wednesdays, Connect! Unite! Act!.
This puts every new story published by that group into your STREAM, which is your built-in RSS feed from everything on Daily Kos. You can find your STREAM by clicking MY PAGE anywhere on Daily Kos. You find that link at the top of every page on Daily Kos:
2) Contribute to the stories that Group publishes. To become a member, send a DKos Message to the Group and ask to be invited to join. You'll find the link to send that message right here at the top of the page on the diary you are reading:
DKos Messaging
Daily Kos messaging is for private communications between you and another User or a Group. No one other than you and the User or Group you send the message to can read it. Here's how to find out if anyone has sent you a DKos message and how to reply to a message someone has sent you...
You'll find your Welcome Back Box at the top right of every page of Daily Kos (when you are logged in). This is where your DKos message notifications are found:
You'll notice this says "No new messages". If someone had sent me a message WHICH I had not read yet, it would say "1 New Message". If a lot of people sent me messages which I had not yet read it might say "300 New Messages".
Just click on that message LINK to go to your Message Center.
FYI: although the DKos messaging works great, there is still some internal work to be done on it. Deleting messages doesn't seem to work correctly (still). Determining which messages are to YOU ALONE vs to a Group which you belong to is a tough call. For me, the best solution is to click that link and go to my Messaging Center, then click this link for messages sent TO ME ALONE:
UPDATE
Per Puddytat in this comment:
You will only get the "1 new message" alert in your Welcome Back Box if a Kosmail (another word for DKos Messaging) message sent strictly TO YOU is waiting in your Inbox. Messages you get because they were sent to a Group you are a member of do NOT trigger that alert, although you'll see them as "New Messages" once you are in the Message Center.
HELP PLEASE
Are you having a TECHNICAL problem using Daily Kos? Like the page won't scroll or you keep getting an Daily Kos error message or you can't SEE much less USE the recommend button for comments rating?
Anytime you run into one of these sorts of issues, you can always post a question about it in whichever Front Page Open Thread story is currently up. You'll know it's an OPEN THREAD Front Page story, because it'll say that right in the story title, like this one from last night by Meteor Blades: Open thread for night owls. New York City's plans for free, citywide wi-fi. You might even get an answer from someone which cures your ill.
But your better option is to ask the Help Desk. You can find them by clicking the HELP link at the top right of every page of Daily Kos:
The masthead section -
and the closeup of the top right corner --
Once you get there, here's how to come back to Daily Kos (this used to drive me crazy having to close out that window and open a new one to get back to the Front Page). Just click on the Go to Daily Kos --> link pictured here:
and a Tip of the Hat to Some Recent New Users:
Obiwan Capote who has only left two comments so far, but they are pretty good ones. This is one of them:
Why do I suspect the GOP clown car was designed by Willard's dad at American Motors? I'm thinking it's a '73 Matador with the optional seltzer-bottle popular equipment package.
Mopshell, who joined in January 2015 (and is a former editor for United Press) and came out of the gate sprinting... with some terrific progressive ideas in her People Power Project series (which I encourage EVERYONE to go read).
UPDATE: I mistakenly read Mopshell's start date, she actually joined in 2014. So sorry!
What new users have you met or helped in the past month?
Share them with us in the comments!
Please also check out the buddy system over at the New Diarists group. While WNU and New Diarists do quite a bit of cross-pollinating, there is one essential difference between us: Over at New Diarists you can request a mentor who will help you learn how to write and publish a diary that won't get you publicly consigned to Worst Diary Hell at the GOS (Great Orange Satan, as we are affectionately known among wingnuts). Just send them a kosmail asking for an invite! Also check out their Resource Diaries. Note: The New Diarists groups also welcomes experienced diarists who would like to be mentors.
Got questions? Comments? Ideas? We're all ears-- just join us in the comments. And remember: Since this diary is for New Users no question is too basic, no matter how long you've been here!
For More Helpful Diaries, Check Out Our Archives:
Everyone is encouraged to review some of the previously written goodness that survives here in the DKos archives, going back to WNU founder ek hornbeck and including the list of teaching diaries republished to our Group page.