To newer members: Welcome, welcome, welcome! Membership at Dkos has exploded over the last year, the last month, the last week; and now you're part of it. This one site is now bigger than the
top fifty conservative blogs. It has grown
thirty-fold in the last two years alone. So yeah, you may see people bitching about this traffic jam in some fashion in comments or on posts of their own.
Rest assured the vast majority of us are
thrilled that you're passionate enough to want to add your voice. Thrilled is not a strong enough word: We
need you desperately to help save the country! It's all about numbers and getting the truth out.
Below I have a few helpful hints I've managed to pick up that might lend a little insight into this wonderful community. Most of you probably know the basics already, but there it is for anyone who doesn't. More importantly, in comments please take the time to introduce yourself should the mood strike you, tell us a little about why you joined, your background; your story, and feel free to ask any questions. This diary is for you.
By way of introduction, I go by the handle DarkSyde; it arose from an old AOL screen name. I usually write about science with the occasional rant when the White House lies, religious right lunacy, or GOP bullshit becomes too great for me to bear in solitude. I live with Mrs. DS just a hop and skip from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I've only been a member for about six-months; not very long in human time. But in Kos years that makes me a young adult. In fact I've been accused of being part of the 'establishment'! Whatever the hell that means. But I'm just a member like you. One voice in a wonderful chorus.
Speaking of Mrs. DarkSyde, I've witnessed her morph into a political activist in the last week because of the glaring incompetence shown by our elected leaders in the aftermath of Katrina. But I have never in my life seen her as hopping mad, foaming at the mouth, screaming angry, as when I told her just now that BushCo was handing out fake dogtags to 9-11 marchers. Mrs. DS hails from a patriotic, slightly right-of-center family; most of them served in the military or work in the defense industry and some are retired lifers. She herself served in what I'm guessing was some kind of covert, mobile 'listening post' near the Soviet Border in the 1980s--although I'm not sure because she won't discuss classified info to this day. After she stopped shaking in anger, she asked me to tell the cyber-world that:
If assholes who never served want to walk a mile for Bush, give the SOBs a Camel cigarette!
She then
demanded I share her reaction and asked other vets to join her in outrage.
Most of us are here because we're sick of George Bush and his fundamentalist, corporatist, greedy, minions. A lot of us are legitimately worried they're going to run the greatest nation on earth into the ground ALA the Soviet Collapse. Hell I was a republican more or less up until a year or two ago. So all kidding aside, saving the country is serious shit and your voice is essential in helping.
If you're new and someone tells you or implies--for no obvious reason--you're not wanted or that no one cares you're here, they're absolutely full of crap. If they stalk you around the site, don't worry, if they start out with subtle criticism which builds into a bat shit insane rant: That's just a troll trying to mess with you. Like any pathetic coward they zone in on new members whom they perceive as 'weak' and try to stem the momentum of disgust with our current Preznot. Don't waste time on them.
Those of you who are interested in taking back this country: You're among friends here and your participation is valued. Those of you interested in trying to disrupt the site be warned: Dkos is not the minor leagues. This is a world-class blog and we expect world-class trolling. Simple vulgarity and mere stupidity will just get you troll rated and your comment will disappear into the hidden realm. In the old days a troll tried to be the best darn troll they could be. These days they just can't seem to meet that classical standard, so we mostly use their posts/comments to share recipes amongst ourselves.
Dkos is part political news site and part community. The news articles are on the front page, the page that everyone sees when they come to the main site. About a dozen managers spend practically their whole day keeping a flow of information moving along at quite a clip on that front page. You'll see stories here before they're on CNN if you keep an eye out; the information stream moves fast. Dkos has an army of servers that require a staff of several professionals to keep operational. We get around a million hits a day. We're not even sure anymore because the site counter breaks under the load during peak times. That's the political/news side of Dkos.
The core of the community side is the recommended list and the new diary list. You can see all the diaries of any member merely by clicking their user name which is listed below each post or comment from that member. That history will give you an idea how long they've been here and what kind of stuff they write. By hovering your cursor over the member name you'll get a UID number; the lower the number the longer they've been around this site. Right now we're at almost 65,000 registered users.
As a member you can leave comments on diaries or front page articles 24 hours after first signing in. A week later you can post your own diary. I strongly recommend you read this FAQ on Diary Guidelines. And note--There is currently a one diary a day limit. If you post more than one diary in the same day it will be deleted without warning (Unless it's exceptional in some way). We ask that you avoid duping topics that have been diaried earlier that same day. A quick review of the titles of the last fifty on the recent diary list will usually clue you in on that. Again, if the diary is a dupe there's a pretty good chance it will be deleted. Don't take getting a dairy deleted as a personal insult. It's not; hell it's virtually a rite of passage. It's happened to me, I bet it's happened to most everyone who writes diaries here on a regular basis.
Once you post a new diary it will appear on the recent diary list and scroll down as other members post theirs. It may scroll away quickly. Members can vote to recommended your diary though and if enough votes are garnered it will appear on the recommended diary list giving it a much longer life. Understand this: Getting on the reco list involves a great deal of chance. Even if you have name recognition here there's a ton of luck involved. Every one of us who writes articles has watched our cherished work scroll down that list into the abyss and watched as second rate snark we or someone else wrote in less than half an hour pop to the top. It's mostly chance and what will or will not be reco'd by other members at a specific time is unpredictable. But the best way to get a diary on that list, that you have control over, is to follow the rules and post well written, original work, that you've put some time into. Also I like to use Carl Sagan's Rule: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
In addition to getting on the reco list, managers can front page your diary. They make a point to look for new names and relevant material for that purposes, but again there's a lot of luck involved. On the reco list you can easily get thousands of hits and dozens of comments, on the front page you might get a hundred thousand hits and hundreds of comments. I don't know of any other forum on earth where the everyday Joe can get that kind of exposure. But aside from luck, the competition is fierce. There are members of Congress, national celebrities, political candidates, famous activists, professional reporters, big name bloggers, and some of the most talented and hilarious writers on the Internet, posting here all the time. Don't be discouraged if you're new and you're don't seem to be getting any attention. Keep producing good material and you will eventually get some feedback; you'll probably end up getting more than you ever wanted.
The managers also regularly put up open threads on the front page. The open threads are the most under utilized part of the community for new members who have something to share. Use them! The competition is less intense than the recent diary list and they're on the front page for crying out loud.
Once again: With the exception of trolls, we're glad you're here!
Other than that, if you have any questions about the site or the community, please use this thread to ask them and we'll do our best to answer (It may take some time before someone shows up who has an answer). If you've written a diary you're proud of that didn't get much attention, link it below. If you're a blogger, feel free to link your blog and tell us a little about it. And even if you're a bit shy, by all means share with us why you joined Dkos and any other information about yourself you feel like providing! Tell us your story. And regs please join me in helping the newer folks feel welcome!