There are a lot of controversies here on DKos lately. Some I've taken sides in, some I've not. These controversies come about for different reasons. However, every single one of them has one thing in common: that tyrannical overblown very small list of diaries known as the Rec List. It's the absolute worst thing that DKos has going. I am writing this diary to make that case.
I am an infrequent diarist. I've only made the rec list once myself, but considering how few diaries I've written in my 5 years here, it's probably a good ratio :). But this isn't at all sour grapes. As I said, I diary too infrequently to care. And, as I've said before, in my other internet activity, erotica, I'm on a sort of rec list, all the time. And I'm going to talk about that a bit, to make a comparison.
Over the flip....
One of the places I post my erotica is called Stories Online (SOL for short). SOL uses a rating system. I think it's pretty worthless. That is not sour grapes. SOL actually has three different time periods, and, because of writer's block and real life, I haven't posted a word in over three years...but I'm still #12 on the "All Time Short Classics" and #15 and 16 on the "All Time Long Classics". When I was posting regularly, I owned the "current stories" Top 20.
Even though I have some disdain for SOL's rating system, in many ways, it's far superior to what we have here. Some features...like the "All Time Classics" for older stories...couldn't be duplicated here. But, if we must have a Rec List, we'd do well to incorporate some of SOL's features:
- You have to click to get a list. It's not just there. THis is partially because SOL has six lists (current serials, stories just finished, and then long and short in less than a year old, and more than a year old). Having six lists would completely take up the SOL home page. But there's no reason we couldn't make the Rec List here need to be clicked. Make it less visible (and thus less important).
- It's not a yes or no. It's zero to ten. And once you get the requisite amount of votes (50 for newer stories, 100 for the four older stories lists) where you are on the list is an average of your score. One of the absolute worst features of the DKos Rec List is there's no way to score a diary "I don't like this". I'm going to get back to this.]
- The lists are 20, not 8. With six lists, that means 120 stories are being featured at one time, not 8. Now, those lists change far FAR more slowly than the DKos Rec List. However, there are also fewer stories posted in a month than there are diaries here in a day. If you must have a Rec List, 8 is ridiculously small. Make it 20, and make it clickable.
Those are the three areas where SOL's rating system dwarfs ours...but, other than that, there are a lot of the same problems:
- Once you establish a name, your grocery list will hit the top. I've started writing again, and am going to be posting a new story in the next couple weeks, and it will hit the Top Twenty. Guaranteed.
- ...and one of the reasons it will hit the Top Twenty is I will alert the readership on my Yahoo group that I've released it, they will all go read it, and rec it up. Same exact thing happens here, though it's often Twitter around here, not a Yahoo group :).
- Er. Well. You see...I'm not that good. I'm good, mind you, but there are better writers than me that never sniff the rec list. I have been accused of deliberately writing stuff to get on the Top Twenty, which isn't true, but I can see where people would think it was. I'm very much a Write To The Crowd type of writer. In using an 80's music analogy, I once called myself the Journey of Erotica. That may have been a wee bit too unkind to myself, but, at best, I'm the Hall and Oates of Erotica. Hall and Oates were good, but the "this is good!" sensation clearly came after the "There's 5 top ten hits on this album!" sensation. I'm that type of writer.
And guess who makes the rec list here on DKos? Uh huh :).
There are, however, things that make the DKos rec list particularly insidious. Part of that is because, let's face it, what we do here is more important than writing erotica :).
Since I have been involved in this dispute to some degree, I'm trying to be as neutral in the following statement as I can: nobody would be hiring people to blog here if there weren't a rec list. I consider anyone other than Kos hiring people to blog here to be a dangerous slippery slope. (I do understand that's not all they are paid to do.) Even if you don't consider the current people paying bloggers to be a problem, what happens if someone else does it? It's a slippery slope.
And it's a slippery slope I absolutely would find myself on if I were in the position to do it. Hiring respected bloggers that make the Rec list to get your word out, in the current DKos enviroment, is smart. There's nothing against the rules of the site to it. (I agree with Meteor Blades that it's not Astroturfing, though I also agree with Elise that it's lobbying, but lobbying's fine sometimes.) Since a lot of what we do is lobbying like activities, and since money's involved here quite a bit, I don't think a de facto "purchase" of a spot on the rec list is the problem. It's that there's a rec list to purchase that is my objection.
My next problem is the algorithm. Nobody really knows it :) (except for maybe Kos and ct and MB?) but there's things we can figure out about it. My main objection is that speed is far, FAR too important. That makes the Twitter/Yahoo Group "callouts" far FAR too important. This is a complete gaming of the system. X recs in X amount of time vault you over someone that may have gotten more recs, but it's taken longer. That's actually counterintuitive. It should be the exact other way around. In fact, I don't think you should count recs, at all, given in the first 10 minutes a diary is up. Because if you rec'd it that quick, you didn't read it.
It's particularly insidious when combined with the lack of a way to indicate "I don't like this". This is where SOL's zero to ten rating system helps prevent gaming of the system. Do people game the system the other way? Hell, yes...but that means the gaming balances out. The mindless zombies giving me 10s are balanced out by the jealous writers giving me zeros :). Here, the "mindless zombies" rule the day. (I just called my fans mindless zombies, so don't take that phrase too seriously :)).
But, here comes my biggest, most emphatic problem with the Rec List: it has turned this whole site into a bunch of attention seeking children. People write things to get on the rec list. People use the most misleading, eye grabbing headlines just to get on the rec list (and I've seen other people advise diarists to do that). People post mindless "Hey, I made the rec list!!!" updates. This place has become Rec List Mania. It's all that counts. (Thank goodness for Diary Rescue, without that, Rec List Tyranny would even be worse). It doesn't foster good writing. It might foster Action Diaries, but at the expense of other Action Diaries.
Why do we have a Rec List? If you answer "to make it easier to find diaries", well, you need to get less lazy (and you also need to at least advocate making it bigger). If you answer "to make stars out of some diarists", well, you're probably right on. Is that what we want?