This is not much of a diary. This is just to express a feeling that the old DKos has taken a wrong turn and now looks like any other web site. More editorially steered front page at least… maybe less prominence for community diaries in a sense… just too icon driven to fit with the shorter attention spans and fit mobile devices better. Wave of the now. Feels like a totally different entity, probably meant to be more user friendly for newcomers… less familiar to long time members. Waking up one day and the town outside is all changed.
Regardless of the reasons for the change… maybe it is necessary to broaden the appeal of this small backwater site… (sarcasm note)… or to fit or work on mobile devices even more than previous changes… Maybe it took longer to show up on servers that feed European DKos members… I read an allusion to some sort of change that was not very positive. Now I know what they were referring to.
Yes, I have been/lived through previous reinventions of the site, reworked programming, functions and layout and usually the changes were needed and overall improved things way more than the lost familiarity and in hindsight beefs with it were minor. Can’t even recall what they were. This will probably be the same. No more enraging than the supermarket changing its layout and you have to spend a lot of time getting used to the new set up.
I’ve been a member for a good few years and sure there was a period of chafing and readjustment each time there were changes but this one is a lot more of a look and feel and use change. Time will tell but the way I used the site… seemingly gone… have to adjust I guess but it is like a sudden personality change or extreme cosmetic surgery that immediately elicits the question… WHY? But each to their own. People have their reasons for their choices. That does not mean the choices are entirely for the better. But, if underneath the plastic surgery, or if the personality change is not harmful or so different as to end a relationship… what can others do but go along with it, adjust or just walk away. And maybe things aren’t actually all that different. Like a family member has moved back in and rearranged all the items in the cupboards because they know better and you have to hunt for things that were always where you expected them to be.
I tend to spend way too much time looking over all the community diaries showing at a given point in time (and the front pagers) but I am retired and have the time to spend. I open multiple tabs in my browser for all the diaries that I want to read and over the rest of the day or the next day I will read through them intermittently. I read way too much all day on multiple sites and Facebook wall but DKos is one of my main choices. Stopped writing diaries years ago but I still comment a fair amount. For me, diaries, well done diaries, take too long to get right. I can write fast and from stream of thought but then nailing down quibbles, rewriting, fact checking adding links etc… to do it right takes time.
So I guess for people who do not have a lot of time, getting the gist of the main stories and opinion each day requires a layout and organization more like every other site whether new upstarts or the on line incarnation of major old line media outfits. And DKos has to become more like them in some ways. The price of success… choose the path to even more potential success and/or growth.
All I can say, is good luck with it. I will probably adjust as always as will most others but I will miss the familiar feel of the old set up… long time members of anything will come to have a partial feel of ownership or kinship or belonging to it. Even residents of a huge city will still feel like it is THEIR city. And have a quasi proprietary or family member vibe going. So even though I have been around for quite a while and have this same kind of feel, like this is in some way a shared “mine” of a special place. Being among the chosen if you will. That of course is a conceit that we all have about many things in our lives to a greater or lesser degree but there is still some truth to it.
Any group is what most of its members make it as well as the leadership, founders, even older old hands who of course have more claim to its identity. But since it is not a democracy it does what its helms-people see as the best options going forward. That is not to say that there is and always has been good Beta testing and requests for input from the larger and churning mass of members with all of their own notions. But let’s face it, the majority of the members are like voters. Most are not deeply involved and adding their own input to the extent that it would better inform the administrators and planners for future iterations. But hey… “nobody asked me!”… heh… or in other words I never noticed or followed up on announcements of upcoming changes. In the past I recall being more aware. I guess with 2020 being what it is… too many issues and distractions and madness going on in the world so nuts and bolts changes are likely not registering as well as they might have in the past. Yes… just like Covid19… the DKos change “Just snuck up on us… came out of nowhere”… (channeling a Trump alter ego who is for some reason a member here and still thinks they are progressive.)
Hello cruel world. New and different but still the same. Time to get past the “WTF happened to MY favorite site!!” moment and just get on with keeping up on the craziest year of my life since 1968.