Anyone who knows me knows I am not a fan of change. Over the 18 years I have been a member of the Dkos community, I have been boldly against every change that was made to the way things worked with reading and writing diaries (Yes, I still refer to them as diaries. I will never no do so), comments, using pictures, rating comments, etc. I have gotten used to most of the changes, even liking a few of them. There are still some changes that I have never embraced thought those are few. However, over the last couple of years, a couple changes have occurred that I really dislike.
One such change is the number of prominent members of the community who have left, either by choice or not, that really made this community what it is. I know life always brings changes and some people decide to try other things to not be stuck in a rut, but it has left me wondering if some of those who left voluntarily did so because of what has happened behind the scenes.
Happily, there is one person who I always enjoyed reading who had left and has now returned, Kalli Joy Gray, formerly Angry Mouse. She was one of the first people of whose writing I read on a regular basis. When I saw the diary announcing her departure, I was devastated. Her diaries always seemed to express what I was thinking and feeling in way I never could.
The other change I really dislike is the way this site has become more of a news aggregator than a community of writers. The front page now seems to mostly be posts from various news organizations, most of them seem to be left of center, non-profit news sites, but it makes the site feel clinical. Perhaps there can be a way to create a section for those people who want to read these posts without them filling up the community and staff produced diaries.
There is one other change that seems to have diminished somewhat recently that still bugs me. When I first signed up with an account, there were a few rules that no longer exist. One was you had to wait a few days before you could post your first diary; another was you could only post one diary per day; and a third was your diaries has to be more than a couple of lines of text and could not be only links to articles or sites. This last rule was one I much appreciated. There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than opening a diary and seeing nothing but links to multiple articles on a subject with only short quotes from each article linked. With all the time it takes to write one of the posts, the person could pick one of the articles, quote some part of it, give some perspective about it and at the end of the diary add the links to whatever other sources are writing about the same topic.
I get there has been a marked change in the amount of money coming into Dkos and the costs have increased, I am just not sure the changes happening will help from that perspective. I would love to hear from the crowd on your thoughts.
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Top Comments for july 15, 2024
From thesphynx:
grumpynerd's superb discussion of the peak experiences fascists offer that bind their followers to them. [ed note: out of rec time, but I think it is an important comment.]
composernan's very informative post on who and how to call the most directly relevant members of Congress to help get Postmaster DeJoy removed.
From tampaedski:
Bring the Lions brings the high heat and truth with this one in Kos' "Biden is decent human. Trump is not" diary…
TOP MOJO july 15, 2024
First comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo.
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