It's never been easy, but on DK4 it's much more difficult, and the effort that it takes becomes less worthwhile. There are long term values, or memes, or general consensus, and then there are those that shift from year to year, or even much more frequently.
On DK3 if I felt the impulse, I would sit down and write my diary/essay, making whatever case I felt like with the full understanding that it was against the mood here. As it made it's way down the recent diary list, with the entire introduction available, there was a reasonable chance that a person or two would resonate with my message. They would sometimes write an expansive comment, agree or not it built on my diary. I had dozens of them. Sometimes I went too far, and never found what one person once described as a "tail gunner" to offer me support when the opposition got angry.
It takes great effort, and a degree of skill to present contrarian positions here; but now it's even more difficult. Here's an example of a diary that had missed the change in mood from "better the worse Democrat to any Republican" to "Obama is so bad that we have to consider withdrawing support" This change was quick, so the diarist wrote a pretty standard, well expressed argument for the prior meme. I was scanning the lowest level of diaries, those un-rec'd, and there it was, The Obama Bashers are a threat to the world with eight comments and zero recs and already over an hour old, a sign that it had been read, rejected and on the way to a short unnoticed existence.
I read it, made a comment and reced it. It ended life with eight more recs and ten TJ. tips, and the diarist got what he wanted, exposure of his thoughts and a useful conversation. But now, oblivion is too easy. Anything that does not clearly resonate with, I hate to use this term, "the party line" has a good chance of having this fate.
I anticipated what I am describing in my last diary on DK3, that actually made the rec lest, since it must have hit home with a decent number of people. I recently was at a conference at a local college, on Politics and the Media. The expert panelists reached a consensus on the triviality and nastiness of "blogs." After asking permission to make a comment, from the audience I made a forceful refutation, using this site, and one diary that I had written specifically as example of substantive probing content. They all backed off, admitting their unprofessional lack of specificity.
Now, I have to ask myself whether my argument still is valid. Would I even attempt to write the diaries that were the most valuable, that did result in the most stimulating challenging discussions over the five years I've been on this site. Actually, I do write them, but I post them on my own website rather than here, as I did for this one Donald Trump or Health Care Rationing.
There is a tipping point for diaries that challenge the consensus, defined by the numbers of comments expressing hostility for "foreign" ideas balanced by the thoughtful responses, pro or con, that lead to greater insights on the topic, The new structure of DK4 may have changed this balance, at least for me. When the mood turns against a diary, as in my example of the pro-Obama diary above, no one wants to touch it, as it didn't get a recommend until mine, an hour an a quarter into its life. Then it was accepted into the fold, and the diarist's argument was engaged respectfully.
If the definition of a diary's success as a well crafted essay that brings a challenging stimulating discussion, has been overshadowed by the silliness of collecting "mojo" for reiterations of the current group consensus-- this will no longer be the website that I used as an exemplar of excellence at the panel discussion.
I believe the loss will be felt by many.