I haven’t been here much. I spend a lot of time over at dailyKos, and I can’t handle being very active on both sites.
But maybe I should be here instead.
Tomorrow, I will write a diary over there entitled “Memo to admins: Do you want us to leave?” in which I will say why I am considering GBCWing over there.
There are some aspects of dailyKos I really like. I like a lot of the people. I like playing to the big crowd. I like how, in an active diary, you can have hundreds of comments and all sorts of interesting threads. I like the huge variety of diaries
But it’s bad over there. The candidate diaries suck up more and more oxygen, and good diaries scroll down the recent list into oblivion. Many people have left, others are thinking of it.
So, maybe I should be here, instead?
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… It’s an extremely difficult time now for the DKos community. Kos is in political mode, nothing is going to shake that, at least I hope nothing does, because I think that’s his best skill, political horserace writing – at his best he really cuts through the distractions and says exactly what’s going on, which I find helpful.
The candidate diaries are an embarrassment, I know. I honestly believe that to even begin to read the comments exposes the reader to a contextual vortex that once entered cannot be so easily escaped! It’s a very strange phenomenon and an unpleasant one.
I think the two sites can complement each other. As you said, you can get a hell of a lot of readers by writing over there, even if it the diary scrolls off the list you can easily get 30 or 40 comments which can make for a valuable discussion.
And when it gets too looney tunes, you can come here and decompress.
My 2 cents.
It would be wonderful if you spent more time here, plf515.
Many of us call this home because it is so welcoming. No
idea is too silly to advance. There are some great minds at
work trying to solve the problems of our country, not trying
to do whatever it is that’s happening over there. Over the
past several months I’ve stopped by there and find it way too
depressing. What in hell are they all fighting about?? Aren’t we on the same team?
Short answer – YES! Selfishly, now I can once again enjoy your writing 😉
on dkos, and read diaries from people whose writing I enjoy. I can’t stomach most of the candidate diaries; every now and then I find a good one. There are people affiliated with the site who consistently disrupt threads and berate other participants. That drives me nuts. It’s one thing to get into a disagreement with someone. It’s completely different to regularly seek out fights.
I’ve never written a substantive diary for a number of reasons: I don’t want it to go unnoticed after having spent a huge amount of time to prepare the diary, I don’t have a huge amount of time to give and I don’t want to deal with the name-calling and irrational behaviour that is all too common these days.
clammyc had a diary about bill clinton hurting the democratic party. the title stuck with me and today, i finally reacted to it: the democratic party is a cohort of the republican party…. the damage has been done and bill only punctuates it.
i think it’s foolish for us to be blind to the real possibility (given all that’s happened) that the dems are just the lesser of two evils here. not a real option. just not as bad. but they’ll still devour your soul.
so i say: come here. let’s make this a multi-cultural place… people of all different colors, ideas, politics, countries, religions… let’s be affiliated to our Constitution and to the broader idea of our social justice for all earthlings (because jessical is right about the scope of how we should position ourselves)
so my protest vote has to be Ron Paul.
In the beginning dkos was good but my hope for that venue failed just as Pelosi failed. Strange as it is Alex Jones type sites now pass as reality as even the internet is starting to look more and more like Faux News every day.
Pod people indeed.
lately, I feel like docudharma is like DK’s bizarro world. it’s polite, there’s substance, harmony and good vibes. discussion, not just argument.
but actually I don’t mind the candidate wars. I find them interesting in their own way and know they’ll be gone soon. then the substantive diaries will reclaim the reclist and it’ll be a place to learn and grow again.
nightprowlkitty put it best — the sites are complementary. every time I miss that community feel, I swing over here and go “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh”.
…plf, I suspect we get fairly different things out of this process…and you are a regular contributor type person and that undoubtably has it’s own filter… but wouldn’t it entirely depend on what you wanted out of the experience? Here as you’ve probably noticed we’ve got some high end writers — a nice consistent bunch of social justice types with a flair for the language. But it’s kind of an indoor meeting compared to the dkos streetcorner at noon thing :}
I took off from the Big Orange last Tuesday. I’ll still lurk. And I have a WYFP to write in a few weeks. But trying to sort through the bullshit has just gotten too hard. It was reaching the point where I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep myself out of trouble.
It’s nice to find familiar names out and about.
DK feels like someone opened an interesting innovative restaurant, some people happened across it, it got some great reviews and word-of-mouth and grew to a point that there were quantity-versus-quality issues… and all the while, the guy who opened the place had opportunities to write books about cooking, go on cooking shows, write articles about cooking, open other restaurants… and the original place suffers for it….
but a gbcw is probably not necessary. firstly, it always comes off as immature-ish. stay, go…whatever…but the need to state said usually comes off as attention-whoring…imo…
also, it will probably settle down over there after the elections, and you may find yourself wanting to return there. that could be awkward if youve gbcw-ed yourself
Dkos refugee.
Its not just the candidate diaries but the complete lack of respect for other people’s opinions and the pack mentality that shouts down a comment or opinion simply because it is disagreed with. Its like children have taken over the place and they tolerate no dissenting points of views.
The other day a candidate’s Internet Director posted a diary explaining his candidates position on something. His diary was respectful, perhaps a bit controversial, but hey, isn’t that the point of the blog, to challenge people’s opinions? His tip jar received more than 20 troll ratings and some posters actually shouted “F U” and were uprated by the pack. If this continues, candidates and politicians are not going to be going back there.
I don’t mind all candidate diaries; what I mind are the he lied/she lied fights. I don’t give a rat’s behind who lied about what; politicians are wrong about stuff all the time. But the problem is that normally intelligent people are turning themselves into sheep following one candidate or the other and screaming bloody murder when someone challenges their Candidate who Walks on Water. And all of this starts at the top: Obama’s and Clinton’s acrimonious feud is fueling all this.
partly due to the dkos candidate sewage, partly due to the candidates themselves, partly due to my life as an American.
Meh. This, too, shall pass.
wherever you want to be. And you know, this is a pretty good place to be, actually.
What are “candidate diaries”? Stories about dates with Candi?
Ahem. 😉
Generally Markos has a good sense of what will and won’t work, but his damn laissez-faire libertarian instincts sometimes work to the detriment of his own site.
A lot of the problem could be solved simply if candidate diaries were ineligible for the Rec List. If that were so, then the site would still seem more like its own self, despite the series of candidate diaries streaming down the Recent List. It’s the desire to claim the Rec List, and establish it as a sort of a Potemkin Village for one’s campaign, that leads to a lot of the problem. If it weren’t for that, the candidate diaries would be much easier to ignore.
The technological fix is to segregate out candidate diaries — based on their tags, most likely — from the Rec List and allow up to eight candidate diaries to be on their own “Primary List” to be placed below it, or even below the Recent List. (I’d apply this not just to Presidential primaries, but to any race being primaried.) If a candidate diary has more votes than the current 8th-place diary on the Rec List, it should go there. Again, up to 8 could qualify.
I wanted to say that I’ve been pushing this for the past year and a half. I did a search on my comments with the words “segregate” and “candidate” and the earliest comment I found was this one back on 2/5/07. In a comment below it. I note that I had been pushing the idea for a long time. I posted similar comments in March, April, and September. No doubt I posted others as well without those keywords. They got many favorable comments, but no traction from higher-ups.
Kos apparently doesn’t want to do it because he thinks it should not be necessary. He often doesn’t like to attend to the things that are screwing up the experience on the right side of the front page, after which an explosion sometimes occurs. I hope that this endless season of vitriol — less defensible now than in 2004 given the greater prominence and importance of the site, and worse than ever given how long the race may go on — convinced him that he really does need to fix the problem, and segregating out these diaries is the only alternative I see to either letting the wounds multiply and fester or to censoring them in an unacceptable way. Take away the motivation to benefit at the expense of the commons and you solve the problem.
The tidal waves of (mostly excruciatingly boring) candidate diaries and the nastiness of the candidate wars being fought in the comments at Dkos has caused me to spend less time there. But it’s temporary-even though it’s been going on way too long for me already.
Besides, if I hadn’t been reading Dkos, I wouldn’t have read Bhudy’s diaries and found out about DD. I think there are still some gems to be found in all the mud there-just remember to wear your waders when you go there!
I’ve posted a few hiatus diaries, and at least one semi GBCW at dKos, but somehow I keep putting things up. That shows how very dysfunctional I am.
The point is that I like my diary to be read by a lot of people. That’s why I post. But lately, when the comments arrive. Yuck. I honestly don’t know why people are so intent about hyjacking the thread, saying nasty things to each other, offering a drive by slashing, and so (dare I say it?) stupid. Yuck. I just don’t want to hear anti-Union, anti-Immigrant, anti-Latin, anti-Black, anti-socialist comments or innuendo. I have no idea how many more times I’m going forget this observation and post anyway, only to look at the comments and say again, “Yuck.” Dysfunctional I am.
Part of this may have to do with Kos himself. Since I really don’t care that much about electoral politics, I don’t find the direction of the site all that inspiring. I post there, I suspect, because it’s big, generally sort of leftist, and occasionally has issue diaries that are worth reading. I avoid the all the candidate diaries and I/P. That leaves about 10% (?) of the content I will even look at, and that scrolls off quickly because there is a tsunami of candidate driven drivel.
OTOH, I love it here. It feels comfortable and right. When I’m clear, I think of posting at dKos as one of my several bad habits. I wish it weren’t so. I do hope I can come to peace with this.
And I have no patience for it any more.
I already lived through Junior High and didn’t really care for it the first time.
I’m also shocked at how the place has degenerated into this circus — a place where, after everything that has happened, the vast majority are completely caught up in the cult-worship of The Three candidates and seem to think that any of them actually represent something other than the status quo.
It’s just bizarre to me now, having been down the path I’ve been down the last eight years (and I thought that more had been on the same path, but I was wrong).
Boggles my mind. And is gravely disappointing.
I’m in a smaller minority than I thought. It’s tiny.
OPOL’s latest, posted here, is a perfect example. You could tell over there that his diary was a total buzzkill for the children, who really didn’t want to have to face reality, just wanted to stay at recess forever.
all of our options, without limiting our discussions by an agenda to gain a Dem majority and President at any cost. IMO, there are some things worse than not getting more Dems in D.C. – one of them is losing our right to creative thoughts, and the freedom to express them.
If you’re asking? Yes, you should. I’m just now finalizing the ‘switch’ myself.
But I’m not going to “GBCW” over there or anything, I just plan to slowly fade away; like an ‘old soldier’…heh…
Besides, I still have an outstanding commitment or two over there. And to be fair, I do enjoy a couple of ‘series’ diaries over at the orange place…so I’ll check in on them whenever I get the chance…however, it’s just been made clear to me very recently that I’m no longer welcome in the one ‘community’ that I used to spend the most time in. So who needs that, eh?
…………………………
I like the general atmosphere here. More laid-back (like me!), and it’s actually possible to get back to somebody on something a day or two later on things…and there’s also more of a ‘freestyle-type’ vibe here that just doesn’t exist over there anymore.
But I don’t know? I also only have enough time to focus on one blog, so this will be ‘the one’ pretty soon. I’ll miss some people over there, too; and certain others, I won’t miss at all. Take the good with the bad, eh? And as far as I can tell, there ain’t much (if any…) bad here. So…
I’ll check over there in a bit for your diary, then…
This is a crazy time right now. I’m too young to have anything to compare it to politically and grandma Vera has sadly passed on now with all of her political history. This is sort of my home blog spot. I like Talkleft too but it isn’t homey 😉 If I write a diary about something I think deserves a larger audience I post it at Orange as well as here. This blog tends to have commenters and posters seeking a deeper understanding of things and solutions verses opinions and I like that.
Just as I sort of expected…
There was actually, for at least an hour or so, a decent conversation going on in your diary over there. And then it hit the “rec list”…
After which, of course…came the inevitable barrage of “it’s not our fault! It’s (candidate x) or (candidate y)’s fault! They are teh sux!!!“.
Oh, well…
I just responded on dkos–using my other “name”-melvynny–real name is Mel
“So many posters here are getting childishly caught up in Fox stupidity. Don’t knock your own team–go after the enemy. I love all of our candidates–one says everything I want to hear–the other two represent fundamental change–America becoming less elitist–less WASPish–less manly (I mean manly in a bad way).
There should be two columns on the site–election and other. I’ll read other most of the time. Maybe a third column–negativity and dirt about Republicans could be fun.”
and I hope you do spend more time here.
I don’t see so many sharp elbows.
Missed Woodstock too. Of course, I was only eight.
and going to the country, have to be able to hear yourself think.
More drawbacks at Big Orange than here, but even so, if you want a wide readership and if you want to get a lot of responses fast… fast… fast!!!, then D-Kos is worth posting in. That site appeals to my lobes of Impatience, and of Wanting a Response Right Now!
The trouble with D-Kos is that, when it’s in full-on campaign mode–and that, increasingly, is all the time now, since our “political campaigns” now begin in August or September of the year preceding the election year, and have reached everybody-hates-everybody-else meltdown by January of the election year–it really ceases to be an alternative to the mainstream media, and becomes just another one of them. It’s all horserace-horserace-horserace from Kos himself and most of the front-pagers–but the MSM can report the sheer horserace aspect of the campaign about as accurately as Kos does, and meanwhile nobody’s talking about the policies that any of these racehorses might pursue once in office, and whether any of them might be good ideas or bad ideas, neither in the MSM nor on the front page at Kos. The campaign diaries that now dominate the rec list are mostly people shouting campaign memes at each other–memes they’ve picked up, mostly, from the MSM! Thus at its worst D-Kos becomes just a repetition of what they’re saying in the MSM, only with extra added rudeness.
The besetting weakness of D-Kos is the majority’s abiding (and almost touchingly naive) belief that The Anointed One–the MSM-Anointed One, of all people!–is somehow going to save them and make everything right. First this person was John Kerry, then it was Harry and Nancy and their gang of congress critters, and now it seems to be Barack Obama! Oh, what a letdown some of them are in for . . . again.
That having been said, I hope it isn’t going to prove to be true that the besetting weakness of this site turns out to be the false belief that all Democratic candidates are alike, and that therefore they should all be equally ignored. There are real differences between the available Democratic candidates this year, as there usually are. None of them is perfect, but one is quite a bit more perfect than the others. No, I’m not going to campaign for anyone here in this comment, but I think it’s worth making a general reminder to anyone reading this that nothing real gets accomplished in the real world without getting your hands a little bit dirty.
btw, if you want a lengthy break from the candidate diaries, you can always read my lengthy diaries! 😉 Candidacy-free, eh?
At any rate, while we’re mulling over the GBCW thing, we should also consider the variations on the GBCW diary:
HCW = “Hello Cruel World” — this is where you proclaim with a dramatic flourish that you’re staying — the advantage here is that you can do it as many times as you want…
GBNW = “Good Bye Nice World” — this is where you announce a promotion beyond DKos, telling them “so long suckers!”
GBHEW = “Good Bye Hideously Evil World” — this is where you really rip into them, suggesting that orange is the color of Satan…