No, it’s not perfect, but no version of DailyKos has been perfect.
I remember when DK4 rolled out, a lot of people claimed that they’d no longer participate. The uproar then was mostly about the addition of groups and followers: people feared that if they weren’t a member of groups or if they didn’t have enough followers, they wouldn’t be read. Off of the top of my head I remember two GBCWs (before those led to bannings) by people who knew they’d fade into obscurity when DK4 went live, and both of those diarists still regularly make the rec list. I’m not going to link to them now, but I’m sure others can attest to this happening.
The first day DK4 went live I went and followed a few people, then after a couple of weeks I quit following people, and I have no effin’ clue how many followers I have. I rarely, if ever, check my stream. I rarely, if ever, check how many followers I have. Because it doesn’t actually matter.
There are a few things that I don’t like about this iteration of DK. (I wish we could collapse sections like “most shared” because IDGAF what’s been shared the most, among other things.) And I do think the excessive white in the comment section is atrocious- it literally gave me a headache this morning.
But as a writer and reader, the upgrades are wonderful. As a commenter, they’re not so great. And while the comments do serve an important purpose for this site, they’re not what drives traffic. Kos has a job to do, and that’s to drive traffic here. The site is better looking if you’re not a regular reader and you just click on a link from facebook or some other site. That makes it more likely that a casual reader will come back for more content, and may eventually sign up. The tools that they have at their disposal now are much better (and more intuitive) than what we had when I signed up in DK3.
So, yes, there are problems, and yes, we should all take the worst of those problems to the help desk and hope for a response. But overall, the site looks nice and works well. And while in the past I’ve had my fair share of gripes about the responsiveness of the tech team, I think that right now they could use a little love. I know what it’s like to work on a massive project and only have the flaws pointed out, rather than a kudos for the progress that was made.
Oh, and for those of you who are threatening to leave:
You’ll turn right back around…..UPDATE:
I’m going to bed, folks. Have a wonderful evening and don’t hold it against me that I don’t respond to or rec your comment. I’ll do one, both, or neither tomorrow morning. I’m off to fall asleep to some underground nineties punk rock that I finally tracked down online.