Some kossers that have read my diaries in the past know that there was a one month period when I stopped posting at the site. Here is a little naval gazing on why I stopped posting, and why I started up again.
I started posting (just last Nov, kos was the first blog I got an account with) so that I could draw interest in my “freedom from the draft” work. I quickly realized that the way to draw traffic was to write diaries that would get on the front page. To do this, I did several things:
(1) I wrote either (a) highly charged narratives (revelations) related to the news of the day (or the koss internal news of the day) or (b) personal narratives with a compelling story and a strong moral lesson (parables).
(2) I gave high ratings to lots of readers – and left lots of positive comments, recommends all over the site.
(3) I recognized time of day, day of week patterns and exploited these patterns to gain access to the recommended diaries list on the front page.
Employing these three strategies, I was able to sustain front page (recommended list) access about 40% of the time. This generated between 400-800 unique visitors to my project sites.
After a while, I started to realize that there was a constant “arms race” of sorts, with a variety of strategies and tactics being employed by the small but active minority of kossers who “gamed the system” to gain access to the 5,000 or 6,000 readers that a recommended diary got you (or me, at least).
I also started to see that the kinds of diaries that I was writing were not going to attract the kinds of readers that I really wanted to work with me on pro-peace activities.
So I decided to stop writing those kinds of diaries, to use the site for news and information (not to drive traffic) and to post diaries that I thought were important to share with other progressives. I did these kinds of diaries for a few weeks.
I was a bit surprised that not only did the diaries not get on the front page anymore (I went from 40% to 0% in no time), but many seemed to not even get any readers at all.
At about this time, there was this really annoying person who totally annoyed me with her annoying comments – the only ones that I was getting. This person seemed to be online at all times, and seemed devoted to writing mean comments. The comments weren’t even mean in relation to what I was writing, but about assigned motives. Being annoyed, and not seeing a lot to be gained (no traffic) and having seen my own site traffic stabilize (even without the front page) I just drifted away from kos. The site seemed kinda pointless.
The reason I came back to kos is because of the small number (perhaps a dozen) of people who clearly were reading and responding to my diaries. These people were asking for specific material, and using it in their organizing work. Additionally, I met some people at a couple of conferences who had read some of my diaries. While the numbers were not there (so long as I wrote only “boring” diaries) it seemed as if I was reaching the kinds of people that I wanted to work with.
I am now only writing diaries that most likely will never move up to the front page – and am writing these for that dozen readers. Additionally, I now go right to the other diarists that I find relevent – skipping the rest of the kos site and not putting anytime into spreading my sig-line around. For me, there is a lot of content that I find very useful – in midst of content that I find totally unuseful to progressive issues.
I always enjoyed your diaries and probably didn’t post as often as I should have.
I try not to worry whether a diary makes the recommend list or not. I began a series about nine weeks ago on Friday nights called “Got a happy story?” because I felt it was needed (by me at least). It usually makes the recommended list for a while.
But my other diaries which usually focus on West Virginia issues, the theocracy movement or gay rights are hit or miss whether they are noticed.
And we probably disagree on what constitutes useful diaries to progressives or not. Personally, most of my involvement politically is writing letters to my representatives and working with two different county organizations. I spend more time on the community aspects of DailyKos than the political ones because I’m getting enough politics offline.
When I see your signature, I always look and read.
And I don’t read the happy story posts.
That is the great then about this medium. We can all be cherry-pickers.
to remember some episode where you changed your handle for some reason, too. But I’ve forgotten what that was about.
Glad you forgot.
In the end, it was to make myself more accountable for what I wrote online.
This is just another example of the tragic waste of progressive energy, good will and insightful contributions that are squandered because of the stubborn refusal by kos to fix the broken things, maintain the fixed things (more accurately, to provide the tools for the community to fix and maintain itself), and in general give a flying fuck about the community and the individual user experience.
The only reason good people still post there at all, is because they know that, at the moment, outlet garners more public exposure than nearly any other. But, the Internet is a fickle place, and people who don’t maintain their communities lose them all the time. Don’t be surprised if you find that your writing elsewhere soon garners more attention and more thoughtful response and reverberates more widely than it ever did on dailykos.
Believe me, I stuck around there from the very, very early pre-Scoop days until very recently, in the hope that someday, somehow, kos would live up to the community he derives his credibility from. I gave up, as have many others. Those that have swarmed in recently to dailykos don’t match those who left in quality of posts and constructive contribution. The place becomes more like a mirror-image LGF all the time.
The faulty dynamics you mention that encourage gaming the system, ganging up and mob rule, will, as I warned kos years ago, eventually collapse the community altogether. It has happened many times in the twenty years of online communities. What can you do? Some people refuse to learn from history and arrogantly dismiss the hard-earned experience of those who came before them.
They would rather jump into the alligator infested waters than heed the warnings of the one-armed people on the banks, pointing at the nice solid bridge to the other side.
The site is not perfect. It is undergoing some growing pains, and it is adjusting to a turnover of frontpage posters.
But it is currently killing all competition for political blogs, attracting Senators, representatives, and prospective candidates to the site.
That’s a serious accomplishment.
You strive for clarity of thought, and you shouldn’t let your disappointment with what might have been cloud the immense amount of good Markos has been able to do.
A real critique would be far more generous.
I would still be wandering around talking to myself if I hadn’t instead begun typing at Kos.
…
P.S. I have a strong gut-type aversion to promoting one’s own cause in any diary. On Bob Johnson’s fun spoof on the Senate steroid hearings, somebody promoted his new book. WTF! We all have pet projects or causes (wanna hear about the feral cats again?)… I prefer the osmosis method to being pitched.
Susan,
Are you a feral cats supporter? One of my coworkers is active in such a group and I (a dog person) actually attended one of their fundraisers a few weeks ago. Great cause, and they do great things!
Shhhh … not here. Seriously, e-mail me at susanhuatearthlinkdotnet
(one of the very few cruel experiences i had at Kos was on a diary about declawing cats and on a diary about being a vegetarian.)
You are joking? People gave you a hard time about that? And about being a vegetarian? That is ridiculous. Sheesh.
I got all kind of feral cat stories (3rd and 8th items tonight).
And I know what you mean when people constantly pimp other projects when it is unrelated. It’s terrifying people would do that.
But for what end is that serious accomplisment going?
So are reality shows. Doesn’t mean they have staying power, or will leave a lasting mark on society (thank goodness).
The revolution is happening elsewhere, not at dailykos.
The only place dailykos is making a real difference is within the minds of its acolytes. Believe me, when I finally stepped back for a couple months, I was amazed at how little dailykos registers, even within the blogosphere. It’s 80% hype, 19% tripe, and 1% substance – and all of that 1% happens despite, not because, of Markos.
IMO. YMMV. ETC ETC.
Slowly, but surely, all of my favorite bloggers are showing up here.
There is very little “left” as such in the US, “left” being defined as those who are strongly opposed to US foreign policy. No need to even talk about domestic policy, Somalia with money does not have domestic policy.
What passes for “left” or “progressive” or “liberal” generally tends to attract more of a “right light” audience, or with props to a Saturday Night Live skit, “us, too, just not as much.”
One of the best illustrations of this is the 2004 primary campaign, where Democratic candidates engaged in lively debate over the subject of how much crusade wetwork should be outsourced, and to whom.
All you can do is just keep on writing it, and if you make even one person think, that could save a life.
I think you are getting to the core of the problem — I didn’t just stop gaming, I also moved to the pro-peace message.
But there are so many people out there who care, and dKos is a good way to reach those people.
I lurk more than comment, here and at kos (frequently reading from work), but I noticed when you left.
I hope you’ll continue discuss your pro-peace work here.
thanks