Because I’m not boycotting Daily Kos. I’m just not coming here very often, anymore. I think many of you will understand why. DK5 is why. It’s a hot mess. Hundreds (maybe thousands? tens of thousands? who really knows?) have already made that clear by describing their problems with the site in various blog posts, comments and/or private messages to Markos and the design team. Promises have been made that these matters will be addressed. Yet I return today to find not much has changed since the last time I checked in.
I just read two diaries — sorry, blog posts - here about the big brouhaha that could have been avoided (sorry, just a personal opinion). One of those posts was clearly and elegantly composed, and made its points concisely without condescension or with an over reliance on jargon. The other was, shall we say, less reader friendly, if I may be excused a small euphemism. Care to guess who wrote these two blog posts?
The first one (that would be the one I lauded above) was written by Yasuragi. It’s the most recommended blog post on the site as I type this. In it, Yasuragi doesn’t attack or assume the worst about anyone on the design team, or about Markos that matter, for DK5’s failure to launch. Yasuragi does indicate that the main problem we have here on Planet Orange is a failure to communicate. And that failure is principally because either Markos or other members of his staff didn’t adequately listen to people giving feedback during DK5’s beta testing.
The second diary — sorry, blog post — was posted by The Man in Orange, himself. In it he continues to indicate that he is still not listening, or, if he is, that he just doesn’t really care all that much what members of this community have to say about his brand new sparkly andsupercalifragilisticexpialidocious website. His blog post also isn’t written very well, at least from a standpoint of facilitating communication between those who created the mess and those who have dared to raise concerns about what all the new gadgets and gewgaws have led to.
Let me drop a few excerpts from Markos’ post on you to make my points. First off, how about this not so kinder, gentler moment in his DK5 update post:
EVERY SUGGESTION AND BUG REPORT MAKES THE LIST. Part of the sorting process is determining a) should we address it, b) if so, what does the fix look like and how long will it take, and c) where does it fit in our timeline of priorities.
Regarding that first step, the suggestions could be something like “bring back comment titles”. In cases like that, we can decide right away that no, we won’t be doing that. But we still give it its due consideration, to see if there was something we may be missing in that request, or something we might not have previously considered when making our decision. Because as much as we’re getting comments like “it’s obviously you don’t know how people use the site!”, fact is there are myriad ways people use the site. Dozens if not hundreds of ways. And when things change, it impacts different constituencies in different ways.
Now I don’t know about you, but when someone says he gave due consideration to a request to make a change to the site’s design, even though he already knew before the request was made that there was no way in hell that request was going to be granted, I interpret it this way:
I COULDN’T CARE LESS
GO F#@% YOURSELF
Of course, there are some other issues I have with Markos’ post, including an excessive love of jargon, such as this example:
So the feedback is always good, and the more explanation WHY you want something the better, because it allows us to contextualize the request.
which is not only condescending (was that WHY in all caps really necessary?), but is also essentially meaningless (wtf does “contextualize the request” mean — no really wtf does it mean? I have no idea) because it doesn’t use straightforward, plain English to tell us how he and his team’s “feedback” process is working to help resolve problems with the new site that users have identified and communicated to him and his staff.
And then there is this statement that directly (perhaps coincidentally or perhaps intentionally, I can’t tell) contradicts what Yasuragi wrote in regarding the feedback process during beta testing of the new design.
Incidentally, this was something we did throughout the entire beta process. Every suggestion was logged and discussed. Oftentimes, we’d spend hours on some minutiae, considering all those various angles and trying to make as informed decisions as possible. So if something that is dear to you is remiss, don’t take it as a personal insult that I was out to get you, or I don’t care about you, or it’s some nefarious form of social engineering. Sometimes, the way YOU specifically do something wasn’t something we considered, because other people did it differently.
If you read that carefully, it looks like Markos is calling anyone who suggests that user feedback during the beta testing process was often ignored by the design team a liar. At the very least, his statement is in stark contrast to, and demonstrates a wide gap between, those beta testers such as Yasuragi, who state unequivocally (if politely), that they felt their suggestions for improving DK5 before its official roll out were not given due consideration, and Markos’ direct assertion that au contraire, mes amis, we spent hours on ‘minutiae’ raised by those giving us feedback. By the way, the use of the terms and phrases such as “minutiae “ or “don’t take it as a personal insult that I was out to get you” seems a tad bit passive aggressive, but maybe that’s just me.
I don’t think a line by line explication of what Markos’ wrote in his update post is necessary. You get my point, or at least I hope most of you do. My view is that Markos’ response to the criticism of DK5 has been to get very defensive, while deflecting, denigrating and demeaning the valid concerns of many, many members of this community. It’s a sort of bunker mentality if you will.
And I get it. Markos has a big ego. He doesn’t like being told that he and his design team screwed the pooch. This is his baby after all. And that’s fine. It’s a shame he has chosen to take such an aggressive (some might say “hostile) attitude to the criticism he’s received, but it’s not completely unexpected, either. He's always exhibited a kind of “my way or the highway” type of approach to running this place from what I can tell, and that’s his prerogative.
In the meantime, though, Daily Kos is no longer the first place I will go on the internet each morning to get the latest political news or read about in depth analysis of those issues that are important to me. I’ll continue drop in now and then in the hope that eventually the problems with the site will be resolved (problems that so many others have written about in great detail, so that any additional list regarding my particular concerns would be redundant). I’d very much like Daily Kos to once again becomes my go to place on the web each morning. That moment has not yet come, however.