We’re having a little internal discussion here at Blue Mass. Group over the “diary” feature of our new site. The discussion isn’t over whether it’s a good idea – it’s a great idea, and it’s the main reason we switched platforms. No, the discussion is about what to call it
As denizens of Daily Kos and other scoop sites are well aware, the “diary” feature allows anyone to write a blog post and put it on the site; the title appears in a sidebar, and anyone who’s interested can click the title and read the whole thing. It’s a great feature – it gives the community control over the site’s content, which means that a lot more information and commentary can appear on the site than a small number of “front page” bloggers could possibly generate, and it also gets the community involved and engaged in the site which makes it more interesting for everyone.
But “diary” is really not the right term for this feature. After all, when you think of a “diary,” you think of a teenager composing heartfelt missives to a locked volume that is never to be viewed by the outside world. And that is the exact opposite of the “diary” feature on a blog, which is designed to allow authors to tell the world what they think. Plus, if you’re not a regular at Kos or some other scoop site, it’s not exactly self-evident what a “diary” is supposed to be.
So we’re considering scrapping the “diary” terminology. What should replace it? Take the poll (it’s in the upper right-hand corner of the front page)! Got a better idea than what we came up with for the poll? Drop it in the comments!
I like “Community Posts” or something with “community” in it, since that’s what it is…dunno if that’s too long to fit nicely in the titlebar of the section, though.
but like Lynne says, would it fit? I chose myBlogs because it was short and to the point.
I voted for Diaries, but only because I thought it was better than the other choices. I like Lynne and Mariposa’s ideas of “community blogs” or “community posts” a lot better than diaries though.
I don’t care for any of the choices. While a diary does have the secret heartfelt missive connotation, a “user blog” seems more like a seperate entity, like Lynne’s blog or mine — we’re users and we have blogs.
<
p>
Diaries is the standard for Scoop-style blogs, it would seem, but I understand that new visitors might not get it. I don’t know what’s better, but I’m a computer guy not a marketing guy.
They’re “diaries”, guys. It’s too late. There’s precedent.
<
p>
You know, you can call my cat a “dog”, and after a while, I’ll understand that you mean the fuzzy thing with whiskers that meows, but every time someone new comes along one of us would have to explain that, well, you just have this thing about that.
<
p>
Let’s just give up, huh?
Problem is, outside of Scoop users, precedent actually goes against calling them “diaries” in this way, as I explained below. To anyone other than a regular Scoop user, “diary” implies a series of posts, not an individual post, but on Scoop (and soapbox) it’s the other way around. That makes it a very confusing term for new users. We should move to something that isn’t confusing, but that also has precedent behind it: “post” or “entry”, or some variant like “personal post” or “blog entry” or “diary entry” – though using the word “diary” in any way, would run into confusion with experienced Scoop users, who’d interpret the word differently from everyone else. So I think we should avoid the word “diary” altogether.
Precedent is only relevant to those who know about it. Sure, Kos users know the term “diary.” But not everyone is a Kos user. Those who are Kos users won’t mind changing names, if the name is a better one – they are already familiar with the concept and won’t be confused if it’s called something else. (Plus, most Kos users on this thread appear to dislike the term “diary” and would like to change it!) And for those who aren’t Kos users, the precedent means nothing, so why give a confusing name to what is for those folks a new feature.
<
p>
Precedent, shmrecedent. Let’s get it right.
I dislike the term “diary”, but for a different reason.
<
p>
The first large blogging site on the Internet was called diaryland. The next one was called LiveJournal – and it’s by far the largest blogging /community/ around today, with literally millions of active personal blogs and shared blogs (communities). The fuzzy boundary between personal and political blogging is all over the blog world.
<
p>
However, a diaryland “diary” is a blog, not an individual post on a blog. Similarly, a LiveJournal “journal” is a blog, not an individual post on a blog. Scoop’s terminology makes no sense. It’s extremely counterintuitive for someone to think of a “diary” as an individual post. People naturally think “diary” must mean a /series/ of dated posts – in other words, a blog.
<
p>
This stumped me literally for my whole first year on dailykos. I had no idea how to make a diary post of my own! Sure, I saw that link that said “post new diary” … but I didn’t want to create a “new diary”. The result was, I didn’t even know that I /could/ simply post a post. If I’d know that I could, I might have guessed that “new diary” was the right link. But I didn’t, so I thought that link was to some other feature and never tried it. Furthermore, when people talked about dailykos “diaries”, I thought they were referring to a users’ entire set of personal diary posts, not an individual one. That meant that I also didn’t know how to recommend a diary! Sure, I’d read one, and see the “recommend diary” button on the side… but surely that meant I’d be recommending that user’s whole diary, right? If I thought their posting quality was consistently good and I thought people should read all their new posts. But where was the button that would let me recommend this particular post? I never could find it.
<
p>
There are two simple words everyone already knows: “post” or “entry”. That’s what they’re called on every other blog software I’ve ever seen, besides scoop and soapbox. They make perfect sense and people will know what they mean when they see them. No need to get fancy.
I’m watching this discussion with interest, to see what comes of it.
<
p>
Dairies ?
Posts ?
Blogs ?
Missives ?
Screeds ?
Manifestos ?……..
<
p>
Nothing really quite works. I’d go for – ruefully – posts or “diaries” or……
<
p>
How about “journal / journal entry”
“entry” / “journal entry” is what LiveJournal calls them, so there’s several million users worth of precedent đŸ™‚ “post” / “blog post” is common at most other non-scoop blog sites, though of course many of those don’t let each user post their own entries in their own journal/blog/whatever that’s connected to a shared or central blog. LJ sort of does, in that all the members of a “community” can post top-level entries in the community journal, and if you click on their usernames, it sends you to their personal journals.
<
p>
I’d be happy with either term.
especially when I talk to non-bloggers about a specific “diary”.
<
p>
Diary to me sounds like the secret writings of a teen age girl.