Welcome to Daily Kos, New Users! I'm your host, belinda ridgewood. This diary is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
Below the orange gnocchi-doodle you will find links to get you participating more effectively. Featured in this edition: what's a "group" and what is it good for?
Our comment thread is an open thread for questions on anything to do with use of Daily Kos and its various features. Please feel free to discuss my topic or any that you need answers about. Our readers are helpful and will pitch in when they have advice! Our only rule is, please be kind to everyone. While there are, in fact, stupid questions, they are not about using this website, but pertain mostly to how the U.S. government secretly controls the weather.
AND -- if you're new and wondering what is and isn't OK around here, read Kos' Community Guidelines. That'll keep you out of trouble!
Wanna follow us around or send us a kosmail?
Find this at the top of this page. Click the ♥ to follow us in your Stream, or click Send Message to send us a private kosmail.
Last time I wrote for Welcome New Users, ages ago, we talked about how to build a stream by following users, groups, and tags. But what exactly is a group? Do you need to join one???
Groups were introduced when Daily Kos did its last big upgrade, to version 4 ("DK4"), back in early 2011. The idea was to help multiple users wanting to act collectively to cover a certain subject area. Of course, political topics were the point at first, but the concept has proven extremely flexible, and has exploded in popularity. Now there are groups writing about not only different political matters, but all sorts of other interests as well. Long-established communities like animal lovers, who assembled informally before there were groups, now use groups to do their work, and they've been joined by other groups with every sort of interest: cooking, photography, home repair, music, you name it. Groups make it easy for people to write collaboratively, schedule publication of pieces for regular coverage, share "boilerplate" code, and keep track of who's doing what. They support our politics, and also our community.
The early introduction of groups to our existing users, at DK4 rollout, was a bit cranky, because the idea had not been well explained. It ended up sounding as if some high-school clique would have to invite you to join before you were welcome to read or write anything here. That's not the case at all, so if you've gotten anything like that impression, I'm glad to tell you to quit worrying. All diaries on the site are open to everyone to read and comment in, and anyone can post their own diary without consulting anyone else!
It's useful to think of a group as a publishing organization. Let's look at the Welcome New Users group as an example. Even before groups existed, there were people who wanted to work together to help new users find their way around here. When they had the chance, these folks formed a group dedicated to that purpose. It publishes material that the group initiates, like this diary, or that its members choose on their own, assigns members to cover a certain schedule, and can also "republish" a diary some other user has posted that is relevant to its purpose.
What good does this do? First, it collects links to all these published diaries into a list that anyone can consult by looking at the group's "diaries" page -- useful for someone searching for information on a topic. Second, groups can be followed just as individual users can, causing anything they publish/republish to enter the stream of the follower. In that way (in our example), someone interested in material directed at new users can have it called to their attention, even if it's written by a user they've never heard of. (Refresher on following here.)
As a publishing organization, a group has three levels of membership. A contributor can write a diary for the group and place it in the group's queue. (The queue is a place where diaries await publication.) The next level up is editor. An editor can do what a contributor can plus publish diaries that are in the group's queue and go into unpublished drafts in the group's queue that they are not the author of, for the purpose of, well, editing -- offering assistance or collaborating on content.
This is an important point! If you are specifically looking for advice or collaboration, you must put your unpublished draft into your group's queue, or no editor can access it before publication, and you are on your own with the contents. On the other hand, if you feel that you would not want anyone else to have access to alter your work, then my advice is: interact with groups not by publishing initially through them, but by allowing them to republish your already-published work. That precludes anyone but you from ever accessing "edit" mode and prevents any concern about who might gain that ability.
At the top of the group are a few
admins. These are the folks who control the group's membership and can invite or remove people as needed. (A group should
always have more than one admin! People may come and go unexpectedly here, and if your lone admin vanishes, only the Help Desk can set the group on its feet again, which is an annoyance for everyone.)
So, how do you join a group? The short answer is, ask! If you see a group that interests you, send them a private message ("kosmail") to express interest in contributing, and see what they say. (Note that kosmails to a group notify no one that they are there, so you may have to wait a bit for a response.) As is true of any group of humans, however, the longer answer is, if you want to be accepted, hang around and build some relationships before you ask to join officially, and you will be more likely to achieve success. Visit the threads, have good conversations there, show that you have something to add -- you know how that works.
And if you are not looking to write for a group, then you have no need to join. Following will let you keep track of the group's output to read it, and remember, following is independent of joining to contribute diaries -- even if you are a member of a group, only following will add the group to your stream!
Please join us in the comments below, to ask questions, make observations, or post a picture or dumb joke (I'm looking at you, Glen The Plumber!) This is the right place to ask about anything that's unclear, about groups or something else entirely, so fire away, and welcome!
Please also check out the buddy system over at the New Diarists group. While WNU and New Diarists do quite a bit of cross-pollinating, there is one essential difference between us: Over at New Diarists you can request a mentor who will help you learn how to write and publish a diary that won't get you publicly consigned to Worst Diary Hell at the GOS (Great Orange Satan, as we are affectionately known among wingnuts). Just send them a kosmail asking for an invite! Also check out their Resource Diaries. Note: The New Diarists groups also welcomes experienced diarists who would like to be mentors.
Got questions? Comments? Ideas? We're all ears-- just join us in the comments. And remember: Since this diary is for New Users no question is too basic, no matter how long you've been here!
For More Helpful Diaries, Check Out Our Archives:
Everyone is encouraged to review some of the previously written goodness that survives here in the DKos archives, going back to WNU founder ek hornbeck and including the list of teaching diaries republished to our Group page.