Unless ... you want to really participate in the Daily Kos culture, in rewarding and reinforcing the writing of your fellow Kossacks, of drawing more attention to exceptional quality in the comment threads on this political site. Because that is why Top Comments is here.
But First, A Word From Our Sponsor:
 Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the Spinning Top™ to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top™ to pop up in diaries around Daily Kos.
 Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist reserves the right to edit all content.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the doodle...
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A few thoughts on Influence.
I wrote a diary on Saturday about relative optimism and positive attitude, about the phenomenal worth of things that, incrementally, don’t seem so impressive. Our country has about 313 million people. Of course, all of those do not vote, but the temptation is to view our vote (and our VOICE!) as perhaps being 1/313 millionth of the voices in our country, perhaps not so influential. Of course, the wealthy have a larger voice. They may have only one vote, but they can call a press conference at any time. They can practically buy many many other prestigious and influential voices, which most of us cannot.
Yet, to me it’s less important how powerful my voice is than it is to use it as powerfully as I am able within my world. And the nicest thing about that is, income notwithstanding, the opportunities to use my voice are infinite! Supporting candidates and causes, speaking out on their behalf, making phone calls, blogging, commenting ... I am not wealthy by any means, but I almost never do anything without contemplating the political ramifications and opportunities.
Certainly I never come on Daily Kos without being very conscious of that, in a community of such marvelous voices! Filled with passion and compassion! What a remarkable place! What a humbling place! Of course, that is immaterial, we each have our role to play, we each have our causes we need to support, even if we cannot advocate as effectively as Hunter or Meteor Blades might, in our place. They cannot be everywhere, though, they cannot see and articulate everything, and I don’t think they want to. They WANT us using our voices! They want us using them loudly and passionately! I think they need us to, however effectively we can manage. They want us to stand alongside them as we go into the battles!
My sister told me she thought my diaries might achieve wider readership if I wrote them outside the Top Comments umbrella. I have demurred. Top Comments is, on Daily Kos, my blog home. It is where my best friends are, it is where I want to be, where I enjoy writing. I care a great deal about readership. I care that people read and consider what I have to say. But the thing is, Top Comments is, for me, a terrific venue for diary writing. (There are TC diaries on an astounding variety of subjects!)
There is a reason TC is one of the longest continuous diary series on Daily Kos (if not THE longest.).
That reason is, in very many ways, comments are the heart and soul of Daily Kos, the thing that really sets it apart from so many other political sites. Even the best diarists participate actively in the comment threads, where the really vital give and take occurs.
kos, our founder, has made (at the time this diary was prepared!) 11291 comments. He has RATED 42,317 comments! Why would he do that if he didn’t want to endorse and reinforce commenting on the site? If he didn't want to extend the voices and influence of those blogging here?
Meteor Blades, who in many cases does more in the day to day cultivation of the dKos culture than anyone else, has authored 66,723 comments! (That number will almost assuredly be higher by diary post time! True for all the people cited!) And he has rated a phenomenal 404,907 comments! Whoa!
To give a few more examples, bubbanomics has rated 218,258 comments, teacherken 336,396 comments, Nurse Kelly 213,583 comments, JanF 161,857 comments, Gooserock 429,284 comments, gchaucer2 has rated 520,786 comments! Top Comments' own noweasels has authored 52,393 comments, and rated 546,629 comments! (She is mostly blogging outside Top Comments nowadays, but we still proudly claim her! ::wink:: ) TomP has written 59,982 comments and rated 587,867 comments written by others. Hedwig has rated 603,332 comments! blue jersey mom has rated 626,712 comments! Floja Roja has rated 720,798! Finally, Yasuragi has recommended 812,482 comments! Well over three quarters of a million comment recommendations!!! (That is the highest number of comment ratings I have yet found! If you know of someone with more, let me know and I'll edit the diary, and credit you with the find!)
What do those numbers mean? To me (languishing far behind with a mere 91,820 recs) the meaning is fairly clear. It means that these people believe in exercising their political creativity both through commenting, and through endorsing and giving attention to the comments of others, thus extending THEIR voices.
Carnacki originally started Top Comments because he wished to shine a spotlight on the limitless creativity and imagination of Kossacks in the comment threads on this site. A mechanism already existed for further highlighting worthwhile diaries, in Diary Rescue (now Community Spotlight). Top Comments has been and is intended as a resource for further drawing attention to comments on Daily Kos.
I remember the time investment that comment mining took in the early days. When gloriana did her first TC diary, I believe that she spent something close to 16 HOURS poring through comments on the site to find comments worthy of inclusion. va dare is another who performed truly relentless comment mining to be sure that each night visitors to her TC diaries would find a wealth of comment inspiration and stimulus for their reading (and political activism) pleasure.
As Daily Kos has evolved, performing that kind of exhaustive scrutiny of each day’s comment trove has proven unsustainable. The last time we performed mojo searches on dKos 3, daily comment submissions ranged between 12-60,000 comments and up. No one can screen that many comments, nor can any single team. So ...the number of comments featured in each night’s diary has suffered some.
There is a WAY (and only one way) to provide a richer presentation of comments each night, however. The answer is for Kossacks, whether Top Comments diarists or not, to submit comments they find as they roam the site each day, visiting diaries in their streams, perusing comment threads in the diaries they visit. Just about ALL diaries receive at least some readership. Almost all comments posted on this site are read by somebody. Kossacks already rate those comments. That gives the poster some mojo, some recognition, some opportunity for greater readership, extending those voices and those contributions. Submitting quality comments for inclusion in any given night’s Top Comments diary is completely consistent with that. If you have ever found great comments because someone else linked them through Top Comments, please consider submitting some comments yourself! If someone else so appreciated one of YOUR comments that they recommended it to Top Comments (and you LIKED that), please consider submitting comments, yourself! If no one has ever submitted one of your comments to Top Comments, but you would like it if they did, then do unto others!
In many respects our comments here, like our diaries, are seeds for others. Who knows what fruit those seeds will ultimately produce? In many cases we will never know. We might give someone inspiration that directly results in victory for one of our candidates! We might make a political suggestion that goes viral and benefits Democratic politics in important ways for years to come. Or maybe we’ll just lift the spirits of another good person in an important way, even if we’ll never know. Exercising our passion/compassion is ALWAYS worthwhile. Spread it, ratify it, endorse it, reinforce it! Relay great comments to TC each night. Come here and show those whose comments are featured some love, some appreciation. Do it as an exercise of your own political will and influence! We’ll all be glad you did!
On to tonight’s comments! (My deepest thanks to brillig for her generous formatting and collection assistance! Marvelous collaboration, my friend! A pleasure and an honor!)
brillig here, I'll be bringing you tonite's Tops!
Brillig's ObDisclaimer: The decision to publish each nomination lies with the evening's Diarist and/or Comment Formatter. My evenings at the helm, I try reeeeallllyy hard to publish everything
without regard to content. I really do, even when I disagree personally with any given nomination. "TopCommentness" lies in the eyes of the nominator and of you, the reader - I leave the decision to you. I do
not publish self-nominations (ie your own comments) and if I ruled the world, we'd all build community, supporting and uplifting instead of tearing our fellow Kossacks down.
From rb137:
In my diary today, colleen posts a clear "how to keep yourself from getting accused of rape" in ten easy steps.
From blueoregon:
I would like to nominate this comment from Laura Clawson's diary Mike Huckabee proposes keeping student loan rates low in exchange for keeping the Bush tax cuts It's a simple truth.
From zenbassoon:
In eXtina's diary about the VP sweepstakes, Crashing Vor illustrates perfectly what the GOP may be reduced to.
From BeninSC:
I loved this comment by remembrance in tonight's The Grieving Room diary, because it is a thank you to two Kossacks, nomandates and mapamp for guiding remembrance to The Grieving Room community, yes, in the COMMENT threads of the new diarist's group. It shows in a clear way how our interactive participation in comments can help others. Still others who may be hurting may ALSO have benefitted. We can't always know all the consequences of the 'seeds' we plant. Having and expressing a good heart is (and should be!) its own reward! But it's nice, too, when feedback comes!
wu ming wants us to undermine Romney with much superior educational assistance for students!
leftykook makes a put-up-or-shutup repudiation of some of the straw man arguments we encounter.
I liked this comment by 2thanks because it solicits the kind of dKos networking that can help promote quality ideas and writing. (In this case the writing of Frederick Clarkson!)
This comment by marie was a response to a comment by doesnotworkorplaywellwithothers, and must be read in that context! ;) Two for the price of one!
Top Mojo for yesterday, April 22nd, first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you
mik for the mojo magic!
1) Unbelievable! by 4mygirls — 92
2) Good Catch by Hammerhand — 90
3) We always hope you enjoy our series... by Meteor Blades — 77
4) If not for President Obama by Diogenes2008 — 75
5) OPOL, feels like you need a bright spot by sherlyle — 74
6) Isn't it long past time... by alaprst — 74
7) that's probably a good thing by VetGrl — 74
8) THIS IS WHY GUN LAWS ARE FUCKING ABSURD by Hind2 — 71
9) Women shouldn't go where they could be raped? by kismet — 67
10) If you're not cynical you're not paying attention by Dallasdoc — 65
11) Something similar happened here by welso — 60
12) There's an old story about Golda Meir. It seems by Jonathan Hoag — 60
13) Exactly. by rb137 — 57
14) Oh Hai Whoknu! Thanx 4DA Serkritarmy Masterpiece.. by leonard145b — 54
15) In deciding cases between a corporation and by deepsouthdoug — 54
16) o yesh... by kishik — 54
17) I would like to begin this Earth Day event by by lineatus — 54
18) Welcome to the neighborhood. by Nance — 53
19) Sekritz of Earth Domminayeshun by arizonablue — 53
20) I was in a vibrant PO in a red state last week. by singe — 52
21) . by Horace Boothroyd III — 52
22) or on dates, or home....or shopping... by SallyCat — 51
23) Coke is way better without the corn syrup. by Lost and Found — 50
24) Maybe you should go write your own diary. by KelleyRN2 — 50
25) They confronted them with guns... by Damnit Janet — 50
26) And where is that place? by Steven D — 50
27) pee esh by kishik — 50
28) Heard a report on NPR by Joieau — 50
29) Agreed by Diogenes2008 — 49
30) Sorry to break the news to you by Horace Boothroyd III — 49
31) Nugent is a has-been for decades by gizmo59 — 49
32) Bite the hand that feeds you by lgcap — 49
Top Pictures for yesterday, April 22nd. Click any image to be taken to the full comment. Thank you
jotter for the image magic!
Please submit your own comment finds in the comment threads!
And, finally, if you have any questions about submitting comments, any active Top Comments diarist will be happy to help! If you like, you can send a message to the entire group by clicking 'Send a Message' at the top of the Top Comments team page!
