Every time Kos et al prevent a large group of kos users from doing what they want--such as the one-diary-a-day rule--there will be argument. I'm a democrat, small d, and believe that the only way to fairly maximize happiness in a group is to let the group decide on controversies democratically. Kos et al don't feel that way regarding the website--understandably enough since they control it completely--so the arguments will continue, and more so when the next Katrina-size issue breaks.
However---
In the meantime, almost all of my own desires for more user-freedom on dailykos can be achieved very very easily by the Scoop gods. All I want is a way to search diaries based on date, recommendation level, and number of comments. Why? Because... [flip]
This would allow everyone a customized, diary-centric dkos homepage, one which would be able to handle even the most Katrina-sized storm of diaries. It would allow those of us who want to to ignore the disproportionate power of the main page posts, while not at all reducing them for those who want it. I myself might set up three dkos "home" pages, the normal one, the 100 most recent diaries (by title only), and the 50 most commented-on diaries of the last 24 hours, ranked by comments. This would be able to handle any rate of diary-posting without need for posting caps at exactly those times when people most need to communicate. It would allow the dkos community to grow beyond the artificial constraints imposed by the present front-page limitations (squeezing all the diaries into the tiny right margin).
There are two difficulties in implementing this. However, the first--actually writing the search function--is trivially easy. I bet there are at least 1000 people on dkos who could do it, including me, in about five minutes, and the scoop people could do it equally easily (with a few more minutes for prettifying, I would guess.) The second is the additional computing burden it would put in the servers. If few people want the search, then no problem, just add the function (or let me do it!) in an hour and be done with it; if lots want it, well, it would be nice to provide the power to let us do it, but I understand kos may not want to spend the money on something that he may think will dilute the power of the front page. But how about letting us raise the funds for it? Does a slightly more sophisticated search really demand that much more? What do the scoop guys say?
Basically, the question is, why not do it? It would allow the diary- and community-focused members of dkos (and I'll be the first to say I'm not exactly one of them, but I see the need) to grow at their own rate without artificially imposed limitations, and to view dailykos as they wish without hurting the main page. Many of the arguments about whether dailykos is primarily a Democratic blog or a liberal blog would be unnecessary with a larger diary-search function--dailykos would then be, when viewed on the search page, whatever its users were thinking, with no need for an imposed party-line (though again, it would remain just as coherent and focussed on the main page). Nor do I think dailykos diaries would turn into democraticunderground or the like--the people here are different, and at this point there is a huge momentum of the current community that will shape the future community. I trust us--does kos?
How about it?
(And please, no baby meta-Jesus, which in any case is always a bit silly coming from people who focus so much on the internal machinations of government and the Democratic party--something that for most people is meta-Jesus-crying level of picayune infighting. Dailykos is just a blog, but it's perhaps the most important new community on the left in the US, and deserves as much careful discussion of its organizational structure as any other important organization. Deriding the very existence of such arguments is usually done by those who don't want to change (as if this debate precluded other, more substantive discussions!). Internal structural debates are important in government, in the Democratic party, and in Dailykos.)
