Greetings, Cranky Users! The other day in a J Town diary, a sincerely puzzled commenter asked what the point of the diary series was. It developed that the commenter viewed Daily Kos solely as a source of information on politics and news, and so was mystified by the various "community" diaries. The question was both legitimate and entirely civil, yet its opening caused a sharp intake of breath in at least one or two locations where it was being read, because too often these days, such a question signals the onset of an attack on the diarist and everyone who posts a comment relevant to the diary.
It made me think about this community (the big one, not just the Cranky one) and what we're doing here. I don't really rant in the sense of getting angry and yelling, mostly, so I won't characterize this diary that way, but it will be light on html tips. If you are so freakin' tired of people saying anything about how the site's working, I warmly invite you to not read this. Otherwise, please join me below the squiggle.
I, too, came to Daily Kos to read news and commentary. I registered in August 2010, but I had been reading well before that. In the runup to the 2008 election, someone told me I could find well-reported political news from a left-ish perspective here. At first I just read the front page, and later I noticed and liked the diaries.
I discovered the comments and the community diaries at about the same time. I read them with fascination for quite a while; it was like an ongoing story with an interesting cast of characters. I resisted joining because I thought, correctly, that it would be time-consuming, but as I continued to read the words of intelligent, articulate, politically liberal people, not just about politics but about life in general, I finally just had to be able to talk with them. Because I work at a computer in my house, the workweek is sort of isolating for me, so Daily Kos is like a coffee room that's conveniently located and open all the time. I still come here to read news and political commentary, but the community aspect is exceptionally important to me.
"Community" doesn't just mean a bunch of cat ladies who can move over to a cat lady site if they don't like to see disgraceful personal attacks and various kinds of bigotry spilling over into every kind of diary and comment thread, or if they don't like to be attacked themselves for not writing about whatever a commenter feels is important. I'm here to begin with for a reason. If I didn't want to read good writing about politics, I wouldn't have come, and if I didn't want to see hundreds of the thousand flowers that bloom here, I wouldn't stay.
I want to see the diaries of people like navajo and Aji, informing me about humanitarian crises that the mainstream media are ignoring. I want to learn from Ojibwa's diaries, and from Mark Sumner's and weatherdude's, and from matching mole's and Nurse Kelley's and Crashing Vor's. I want to hear the songs that BFSkinner has collected for me in the middle of the night, and the ones that lockewasright's kids dance to on Sunday mornings. I want to see photos of remote national parks and of New York City, of birds in California and foxes in Wisconsin and the reef life under the water near Hawaii. I want to read about baking bread and about the history of sausage. All that stuff, and more that's not so easy to characterize; that's all been going on in the "neighborhood". I don't want to move away from the neighborhood and lose that community, AND I also don't want the neighborhood to get so bad, so dangerous and unpleasant, that these other people I value move away. That, I can't control, except to beg the mayor to do something about the conditions.
It's not clear to me why there are people here who approach disagreement as if it were war. As a resident of the New York metropolitan area, it looks a lot like road rage to me. Same out of proportion anger reaction to any insult, same willingness to act out the rage because you're anonymous and not sharing physical space. But I don't expect to modify the behavior of the people who are making the neighborhood unlivable for an increasingly long list of members I value. I do expect the site's owner to do something about it. I appreciate the movement in that direction that's been announced recently. I just think the problem is rather pressing, and also that tweaking automated responses to antisocial behavior is not going to be sufficient. Artificial Intelligence has come a long way, but there are things it's not up to, and one of them is, sorting out what the fuck is going on here that's making it possible for a relatively few people to make the site intolerable or nearly so for so many smart and heretofore committed members.
There's a nimbus of people who've stopped hanging out here but are waiting to see what happens, what is done to address the extremely obvious problems. Not all of them have announced their departure. Not all of them have completely sworn off coming here. I'd like to see them feel able to return completely, but that's going to take some moderating by a human moderator. It's going to take not just the promise of algorithm changes coming soon, but some immediate hands-on attention by site administrators. I ask for this "bug fix" in preference to any other, but unfortunately it's not the job of our excellent development team, so a bug report form isn't going to help.
But if you happen to need one, see the box! But first, the bibliography of places from which I've recycled bits of my wording here, just so no one thinks, Hmm, looks familiar. Where'd she steal that from? From me!
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/968453/41245961#c23
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/955791/40747534#c63
Thanks for listening! You're still very welcome to discuss Cranky topics of any kind in the comments! Less fraught DK4 tips will return next time.
WHERE TO TURN: LINKS
☀ For more stuff sort of like this, the Cranky Users group.
☀ For lots of official detail about the site and its workings, the DK4 FAQ (frequently-asked questions). The main Daily Kos FAQ is still here.
☀ To report something not working to the dev team, the bug report form. A bug report will not be directly responded to, but will be kept on file by the development team until the issue is resolved or otherwise closed.
☀ To get immediate response for technical help or urgent site problems, the contact form (be sure to select the tech support radio button). A tech support request will get prompt response, but does not get added to the bug report database. If you use it to report a known bug, you'll be told it's a known bug, and that's it.
☀ For immediate catharsis, complain in a Cranky Users thread. These threads are regularly scanned by kos and developers, but it's not a guaranteed way to bring an issue to the attention of these folks. But sometimes you just need some sympathy from other cranky people! (And sometimes, other cranky people have advice that can help you.)
Our thanks to kos, the development team, and the Dkosopedia contributors for their vigorous efforts to deliver a site that works well and to help us know how to work it!
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