Welcome New Users

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

I’d like to extend a genuine welcome to people who are joining the site out of a desire to find a spot that is a little port of orange.  When I joined dK it was to find a place where I could express myself without the fear that I might expose myself as a (shudder) Democrat.

And have no doubt about it, I am a yellow dog Democrat who stopped voting Republican even for dog catcher many years ago.

Equally I am interested in Democratic electoral victory since I understand that only with overwhelming majorities will our supposed Representatives overcome their craven, cowardly instincts and occasionally be persuaded to do the right thing.  Indeed I think the emergence of a Democratic Democratic Party can only occur after the Republican Party, the party of thieves, murderers, despots, and liars, is as dead as the Whigs so our Representatives can no longer threaten us like gangsters to choose the lesser of two evils.

Nice little country you’ve got here, shame if anything happened to it.  Vote for me.

I understand the mission of dK and agree with it, but I don’t agree with them on all things.  To choose a trivial but early example, I think the 0ne Diary A Day policy is stultifying and unnecessary and I have expressed that sentiment on numerous occasions.

When buhdy provided me the opportunity to be a Contributing Editor and later Admin here I was grateful for the opportunity to help shape a system that addressed some of the flaws I perceived.

Which is not to say that there aren’t rules and procedures.

There is no faster and more responsive blog on teh tubz than dK.  I’d argue that Greenwald all by himself is more influential, and if you combine him with Jane Hamsher and emptywheel, Josh Marshall and OpenLeft…

Even Arianna’s place, which I regard the vapid meanderings of D-List celebrity bloggers (not that it prevents me from having an account) can drive a little bit more message punch.  I’d advocate an Oxdown Gazette one since I’ve seen people who post here get promoted there, except I think their infrastructure sucks.

Without at least nested comments it’s very hard to have an interactive blog at all.

Soapblox

If you want to talk about influential bloggers you have to include pacified.  His little bloggy empire is based on his Java emulation of the open sourced scoop with some back engineered dK tweaks like the radio buttons which don’t let you take back Ponies so think before you rate.

He runs about half of all the lefty liberal blogs I know including OpenLeft (Chris Bowers thinks he’s too important to fail) and ourselves as well as My Left Wing and Free Speech Zone.  He also hosts a lot of the State Blogs like The Albany Project and Square State.

The beauty part is that you get things like nested comments which means you know who is talking to you instead of seeing cryptic messages like In response to XYZ @ #.  This is the interface you get at Firedog Lake and while the content is excellent, it’s hard to follow.  Don’t even talk to me about Halo comments, the only reason I chat at digby is that I know that she and each of her guest bloggers (I particularly admire d day and tristero) will read my comment because there are not that many of them.

Faster and more responsive

Though we have Ajax comments which allow you to use context based reply editing as opposed to scoop legacy editing (do you really want to know?  I can certainly explain it.), we don’t do a timed refresh so what you see is static until you manually refresh your browser page or enter a new comment.

On the good news front you return to the comment you reply to.  On the bad news side you open the whole essay (did I mention we call them essays here?) and reset your new comment markers (the way to cheat out of that at dK is to open a diary using View Story from a comment or rating display.  So sorry here.).

Your ratings take effect immediately and I’ll repeat that once you have rated you can’t unrate back to none.  One feature we have that is not duplicated is Your Page/Comments/Recent Replies.  Much better than Hotlist (if you are not logged in on dK this link probably won’t work).

Traffic

We have way less than 10,000 members and certainly don’t approach dK 4k+ a day activity.  If you publish here we expect a tip jar for credibility, but you can’t be disappointed if it’s empty.

Instead what we offer is freedom and creativity.  We are HTML friendly, your pony pics <center></center>.  We accept fiction, poetry, and videos.

That said I reserve the right to crush your ‘Artistic Vision’.

Group Blogging

This is a group blog with a focus on promotion.  We have 12 to 14 spots a day on our Front Page.  Promotion is a mixed blessing, you can last longer on the Essay side by far, but that does not protect you from our attention.  Every essay is considered for promotion.

If I decide to promote you I’ll ruthlessly edit your submission until I think it’s attractive enough to represent the site.  I also fix broken pages to the limit of my ability and do so without warning or apology.  Other people you can ask for HTML Help are Robyn and On The Bus.  They can also delete duplicate comments though we usually let them stand, helps pacified debug.

Other active people with Admin ability are Nightprowlkitty, NLinStPaul, mishima, Turkana, and kestrel9000.

Generally it’s buhdy and I who promote, though our Contributing Editors– Edger, exmearden, LithiumCola, Magnifico, occams hatchet, pico, srkp23, undercovercalico, Unitary Moonbat, and Zwoof can do so too.

We also have Guest Bloggers– clammyc, ctrenta, GreyHawk, News Corpse, Patriot Daily, stormchaser, thereisnospoon, TocqueDeville, Valtin, and winter rabbit.  They can post directly to the Front Page though they usually don’t.

When they contribute they mostly post on the right just like regular users.

Promotion

You will almost certainly last longer on our Recommended List which is 50% larger than dK’s (12 vs. 8) than you will on our Front Page which is limited to 15 Stories (about a day).  Because promoted essays are removed from the recent list you can linger a long time if you are ignored.  Try not to take it personally.

I promote about 5 essays a day and buhdy promotes about 5.  The remaining 4 spots are taken up by regular features.

If this sounds a little top down, most of the people I mentioned in Group Blogging have the ability to contribute their input to the daily schedule.

Discipline

Civility and it’s Reprint.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think about me.

To summarize Proust, there are two levels of moderation, one based on ratings and the other on consensus of the editors with buhdy as the final arbiter.

Hides work just the way they do at dK.  Ponies are the equivalent of Recommends.  Our additional rating, Wrong!, is meant to express the opinion “Your comment makes me question your motives and/or intelligence.”  

And that’s it.  You can hide things.  You can blacken and tarnish people’s reputation, making it that much more difficult for them to achieve or maintain Trusted Usership.

There is no autoban here.  Disruptive behavior is flagged by ratings or editors.  It’s reviewed by editors in a private forum and buhdy is given advice about how to handle the problem.

During this period your posting privileges will likely be temporarily suspended.  If you have posted offensive content it will probably be hidden.

It is not supposed to be permanently removed (though it can be) and abuse of that power has caused some Admins to lose their status.

Disruptive behavior does not include disagreement, you can’t use civility as a club.  Ratings abuse is merely laughable boorishness which really says more about you.

And did I mention that you can’t unrate?

The cardinal sins are outing, I/P, and kos bashing.

Outing is exposing someone’s personal information.  We discourage stalking too, but it’s a little more difficult than on dK so you don’t see as much of it.

I/P is discussions of the Israel / Palestine problem.  If you have a thoughtful piece you can submit it for pre-publication review to buhdy who is much more patient and understanding than I am.  Most discussions rapidly escalate to the level of disruptive behavior.

kos bashing is not all that difficult to define.  If you have a criticism of the content or the culture or indeed the public posting behavior of a particular individual, these are sentiments that are frequently the subject of conversation on the Great Orange Satan and are acceptable for discussion here as well.

If on the other hand you have a personal grudge that you are working out and want to post slander or proprietary information and pick fights you’re not going to find much traction.

When you have a problem buhdy will mostly try and negotiate it with you via email.

Random stuff

You can post up to 3 essays a day.  Please don’t spam.

Ctrl-+ will increase the font size.  Use Ctrl-0 to return to normal.

The Big Windup

There are other places you can be on teh tubz and we’re happy and grateful you’ve chosen to spend some time with us.  Hopefully you’ll find our content informative and entertaining.