And, in the end, the love you take,
is equal to the love you make.
Hello! Is everyone awake out there?
Have any of you noticed an apparent drop off in reader response here, lately, or it is just me? If I am reading it correcly, today's High Impact Posts: March 25, 2014 shows that, yesterday, out of the 135 writers who posted, only 54 engaged in all three activities writing posting, rec'cing, and commenting. Only 54 rec'd someone else's post. Am I reading this right? 81 authors posted here without recommending a single other author's post?
Hypnotoad says "you will be more generous with your tips and recs to support emerging writers!"
I call for all of us here, who are dedicated to making Daily Kos, the Democratic Party, and progressive causes more successful, to adopt a more Keynesian and a more generous approach to recommending posts.
How many more posts should you recommend? For some of us, this might mean doubling, for others, like the 81 authors who posted but did not rec a single post, yesterday, try rec'cing just one person a day, as a start.
Our current culture seems like the lost austerity love child of Mr. Scrooge and Representative Paul Ryan.
I was talking with one of our old time writers last night who referred to a wonderful post he did 2 years ago, that is still relevant to a current topic so I encouraged him to re-post it. He said "why bother," noting his original received zero recs! And, it was well written, with photos on an issue relevant to the long term survival of hundreds of millions of people in third world countries. What a painful experience it is to put hours into a post and have it languish, twisting in the wind with no or only 1 or 2 recs before the entire community.
I was originally writing to note that some of you seem to only rec a few of your best friends or the Front Pagers. Heck folks, the front pagers don't need rec's, that's why they have infinite mojo, -- they have the front page! Everyone knows them. They get paid. This is their jobs. Yes, I rec them, I love them, my point is that recs are mostly to call attention to the writings of writers who are less well known, and also to encourage those writers to keep writing.

And, hey Kossacks, recs and tips do not cost you anything. After one week, every reader here has an infinite supply of them. Were else on the internet can you go and get an infinite supply of Bit Coins? Yes, infinite. At some of those other sites you'd have to pay $9.99 for 300 recs and tips, and renew every time you got low like on your pay phone card. Who knows how long they will remain free. So "smoke em if ya got em." Use them while you still can!
Try it and see. If anyone runs out of recs, and tips, contact me immediately, and I will get it fixed. Please just start rec'cing more posts to encourage our aspiring writers. You wouldn't go out to a restaurant and not tip the waiter? Why do you read someone's post and not give a little nod of appreciation to acknowledge their effort? This isn't a vote for a tenured faculty. And rec's do not necessarily imply agreement.
Maybe we need to ask the programmers for a new button that says "Keep On Truckin'" to thank volunteer writers and to encourage them to keep working and to make our site and our Democratic Party more successful. Perhaps, we should think of it more like the equivalent of giving a coffee mug to people who come in to phone bank at the election center for the whole afternoon? Or, at least half-way in that direction?
Some of you worry that it will lower the quality of the posts on the rec board, but this is not the case. There will still only be 10 on the top 10 list. The difference is that mathematically, due to the law of large numbers, we will have less sampling error, and and selection bias from clickes voting for their friends. If everyone rec'd twice as many posts, and we could induce more people to vote we'd have greater representation.
What we see here before us, fellow Kossacks, is one of those very rare, a high leverage opportunity to not only make Daily Kos, create stronger community bonds, more social energy, which could make progressive causes more successful. And, in this case, in some kind of mind boggling rarity, it is absolutely cost free! Seriously, Kossacks, WTH? How lucky could we be? (Could be the ripple of the butterfly's wings that causes us to wing back the House in 2014?)
Another benefit will be to encourage and cultivate more upcoming writers for our Democratic and progressive causes, and create a lot of happiness in recognizing and supporting people in their personal growth.
I hope we can count on your support for this campaign to make Daily Kos a better place by asking everyone to be more generous with recs and comments.

P.S. Footnote: I know many here are worried about "mojo inflation." Now don't laugh new folks. Some of the old-timers are worried that if we have an "easy mojo" policy it might undermine the value of their hard won mojo back in the old days when the electrons didn't move as fast. And, the audiences were a lot tougher, and even some of the Front-Pager used harsh and ugly language, and if you tried to say something pleasant to them, one of them would scream "Suckup" right to your face. I won't mention names but ask around. Yes, it was a much tougher place, but we need to make choices about our future.
But, I would like to remind these old timers that he mojo counter has been broken for years and as far as I know there is no plan to fix it, so your mojo superiority will be safe for all time. Which is fine with me. I just think we should be honest about it and label as Mojo Honor Role as of July 25 2009, or whenever it was the last time they tried to run it.
7:10 PM PT: BTW: When I suggest recommending a post, the proper way of doing this is to select, or "click on" the star at the bottom left hand side of the post, not to put a tag in the post. The tag is put in by the master Daily Kos computer based on special counts of the little stars. Thanks.