I spend a ton of time here, but I've never managed to read all the articles in the order in which they were published. There are too damn many of them. Like most users here, I suspect, I have evolved my own preferences for choosing from the Recent list, which means that I skip over at least half the new items as they come in, sometimes without really noticing what I’m skipping. Even the Rescue Rangers run multiple-user teams, so that nobody has to even try to look at everything.
The problem with however it is that I filter the material is that it gives me a high probability that I will miss something good along the way. Community Spotlight helps, but they’re looking for the really, really good stuff. Meteor Blades’ compendia on ecological writing help, too. Occasionally, though, it’s useful to have something that breaks our personal filters, and lets some of the stuff that we normally would unconsciously skip, come through and get looked at.
But, there’s a problem with that...
EPIPHANY!!!
Which is why so many people, including me, have not reacted well to the new format. I don’t hate it, I just don’t want to be in it for very long at any given time.
When I first looked at the new format, I choked on the information overload. And left after about 3 minutes. Came back, and did it again. And again. And the next time, the categories had shifted, and it happened again.
The worst thing about the new Front Page format isn’t any particular feature, it’s that our filters don’t work on it, or at least not as well as we need them to. And, since it’s going to change on some random basis that’s meant to give us a fuller experience of the site, we’re never going to get used to it.
I love Daily Kos, and I love it that there’s always something that I’ve missed, that I can dive into for a while. But when Trump is already confusing the news, there’s a global pandemic going on, the economy is going to Hell in a handbasket, and the rest of the world is still there and wants to be known about, I need my filters. I need them to work, and let me skim over large chunks of what people are writing about, so that I’ve got time to process what I do read. Sometimes I will end up skipping things that are important to me. And the more information is going by, the more I’ll skip. The world is a whole lot bigger than I am, and always has been, and I’m gonna miss some good stuff. That’s okay.
Once we get Joe Biden elected, and there’s a moment or two to be bored again, I’m going to want to explore some of the really neat stuff that the new format is making available to me. But, much as I generally enjoy a new experience or seven, this is perhaps not the best time to require them of me. Fortunately, for now, there are multiple workarounds. Can I request that those workarounds stay in place? Because even if I can forsee a moment or two of boredom, I don’t think politics is ever going to quiet down again. And if it does, I don’t think we can afford to let it stay quiet. There’s too much to do.