This diary is meta. I know some people have strong feelings about that. Personaly, I see meta as either interesting, or not, just like anything else. You've been warned.
A couple of years ago, Slashdot was the first website I would visit everyday. I like science, tech, computers, and politics. Now I visit DKos first. Followed by C&L and BoingBoing if I have time. I don't get over to Slashdot with much regularity anymore.
Some comments that I can't remember specifically a couple weeks back got me to thinking about one fundamental difference between Slashdot and DKos. RTFA. It stands for Read the F-ing Article.
Now I may be wrong about this with regard to the rest of you, but one reason I prefer DKos over Slashdot is the writing styles that are cultivated here. Slashdot is a different kind of site. They essentially just aggregate various news articles with a summary paragraph or two. They gather some pretty cool items, don't get me wrong, but the site's appeal is in the obscure articles and highly informed comments, not the diaries. Journals can be written there, but I've never seen an interesting one and they don't appear on the front page.
DKos promotes journalism and writing in general. Some of the writing talent here is simply amazing and it get's brought to the forefront in both the reco list and the rescues. Writing just a summary paragraph with a link to an article is not our standard. Still, we expect all claims to be backed up with linked sources. This is good journalistic practice.
So here's what I got to thinking about. A good DKos diary will include links to all sources. It will also contain a summary, excerpts, analysis, and commentary on the article (and here, there are often multiple sources) of interest. You can often understand the story better from the diary than from the source article, or articles, which have all been pulled together. On Slashdot, any comment that displays that the commenter didn't read the article in question is responded to by someone with a terse "RTFA!" It's just protocol over there. On DKos, the articles are provided for verification and credit. Diaries are generally expected to explain themselves pretty comprehensively or they get the "should be a comment on an open thread," responses.
I think part of the reason I like DKos is because it lets me be lazy. It lets me learn things new and old with the enjoyment of a good book. I admit that I seldom verify the links to the blockquotes. Do you? I try to rely on the comments to quickly debunk bogus stuff, but if the thread is very long, I sometimes move on to another story without really verifying for myself. Do you? (And part of my comment frustration seems due to server lag when expanding comments. Is that common?)
