I'm not the oldest nor youngest user here, I haven't been a user as long as some of the old timers, and I'm far from an active member here (I think I've only written 3 diaries). I don't spend all day on DKos, but I do spend at least an hour or two per day, and it's my first news source. I suspect in some ways I'm more representative of an "average" DKos user than some of the power users.
And I have to say, I kind of like DKos 4.
That's not to say that I like every single thing about it. Just for starters, I don't really like the color orange (kind of strange to end up here!). I'm not crazy about some of the graphics, and the home page has a bit too much white for my taste. But all these are just my personal opinions, and I make no assumptions that many other people feel the same way. Certainly if I were in charge, the site would look different, so it's probably a good thing that I'm not in charge.
The thing is, from a purely visual standpoint the site looks a bit different, but I don't think it's all THAT different. For me the important question is, how does it work? After playing around with the site for a few days, I have the feeling that it's going to work well. There are several areas where I think it shines compared to DKos 3:
- DKos 3 is a terrible place to try to find information if you're not on all the time. Once a diary is gone from the recent list, it's as good as gone forever. Yes, I know it's POSSIBLE to find those old (4 hours old) diaries, but it's a pain to do so and frankly, I never bother. I find it dramatically easier to follow particular writers on DK4, including finding their diaries that I missed.
- The new tags are outstanding. As a scientist, I am of course interested in science-related diaries, and there are a lot of excellent ones on DK. Unfortunately, I often don't see them - they roll of the Recent list too fast. That has not been a problem for me on DK4.
- For similar reasons, I suspect Groups is going to be big. I've never been terribly involved in the DK community, except as a lurker. I suspect that's likely to change for me on DK4. I can already envision making a group for the particular science topics I'm interested in. I'm not completely convinced yet about Groups; I'm not sure of all the details of how they work yet. But I can at least see the possibility (even likelihood) of a much greater engagement in the community for me.
- I don't think the lack of a diary limit is going to be a problem in the long run, and probably not at all. I think most people are not actually going to abuse this. But even if they do, I don't think they'll get traction. On DK4, just for practice, I've been following several diarists. One of them has published a ton of diaries, and it clutters up my feed a bit (I think they're doing this as part of the beta testing). If they do that when the site goes live and it becomes a problem, I'll just stop following them. I think that if a person isn't getting views and recommends, they will stop being a problem in terms of diary clutter.
Of course, I'm not sure of any of these things, but just playing around on the beta I feel pretty confident that the new site is going to be a huge success. I'm certainly not going to abandon DK because I don't like the page aesthetics! I was initially a little suspicious of the new site, but after reading Kos's explanations, and spending some time on the beta, I'm actually now very excited about it. I'm already using it as much or more than DK3, as as far as I'm concerned the changeover can't happen fast enough.