This point was, I suppose, inevitable, the time when there can be a bubble of ideas and energy is always small, and it always gets pushed in one direction or another. Kos is now screaming. It will be better for top down organizations, since there is less substance, less there there. It will be worse for ideas that want to get out. Kos is now a road block, not a road.
The left blogsphere has a big problem – it is getting dummer. Alito was definitely the point of conversion – nothing but all screaming all the time. Now here is the kicker, the kossacks could have had a place at the fillibuster table – but they wouldn’t take it. They had a chance for a meeting early, but they didn’t take it. In short, they aren’t marginalized because they are being kept out, they are marginalized because they are too busy screaming at each other to get anything done.
What this means is that the idea energy is going to move out – to MyDD and the agonist and other similar sites.
This moment means that the community is about to go down hill in terms of its thinking – because as people with something to say leave, so too will others who have something to say leave.
Could this be fixed? Is it terminal? It can’t be fixed, because for the people who are screaming – the swarm – nirvana has been reached. There is now a screamsphere – where on any given day, any given screaming can win the screaming contest. The converse of fewer ideas, is more room for people who make noise.
This means that unless a much larger drive to link to ideas is made by the front page, the liberal sphere is about to completely fragment – where screamers scream only at each other, and head for group think non solutions, and the core gets on the wonkavator, and starts grading itself by the pound.
For campaigns this is great – more screaming consumers looking for a hero. For the creation of a movement, this is a disaster.
I’ve been reading for about a year, and I approach it much like I’ve approached slashdot.org for the most part. I read the article intros in an RSS reader, read the whole article (diary or link) some of the time, and read the comments far less often.
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This is a function of interest, signal/noise, and time required. Personally, I prefer slashdot.org’s style of moderation more, but that’s largely irrelevant.
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I have no idea how often folks write diaries, or how often they’re posted, but I’ve always just thought of them in a similar fashion to submitting a story on slashdot. The editors pick out the juicy ones, and aren’t perfect nor always judicious in their selections.
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I go to kos to get data (articles, information, references) and op/ed strategy style pieces, not to participate in bubbling up the next great ideas in Democratic democracy.
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In short, I pay no attention to the screaming. It’s far too big a community to bother. Instead, I consider it a hybrid news gatherer and op/ed gatherer. In that regards, it’s yet to jump any fishes.
Is if I browse slashdot at +4 generally the modded up things are either really funny or pretty insightful. At dkos they’re just the most rage filled.
I don’t think dKos is damaged beyond repair, but I do think Kos et al could do a better job of setting the tone of discussion. I will say that I DEFINITELY visited less and read less on Kos during the Alito hearings — it was frankly a waste of time.
I regard it more like open-mike night.
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If a diarist has something interesting to say, then fine. Eventually if a diarist becomes popular enough, or gets tired of the dKos pie fight soap opera, then they move on and start their own sites. Booman, Maryscott O’Connor, georgia10, pastordan (I’m bound to forget some of them) are good examples. I think it’s good for the blogsphere. They create their own communities. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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There seems to be two kinds of activists in the political blogsphere. Those who hang around on blogs and bitch about the political landscape, toss candidates money, and sign online petitions. Nothing wrong with this, and for some people, it’s all they can do because of time, life, whatever.
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Then there are those who use the blogsphere for a discussion of candidates, policies and ideas, but they also turn off the computer and get their asses to work. This works much better. Look at what Lynne at Left in Lowell was able to accomplish, using mostly her blog to organize Deval Patrick delegates.
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I don’t see people moving on as a bad thing. It’s like that old story that used to show up on mailing list after a flame war. People would complain that things used to be better, more fun, and now people are mean and now it’s time to move on to the next thing. Then they start their own community and it’s fine until people start disagreeing, then people start fighting and complaining that things used to be better more fun… etc. and so it goes.
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Stirling does have quite a way with a headline.
I started back in the early Dean days as my low number over there will show. While Stirling has made some legitimate points about signal:noise, I think much of what he says reflects his own fragile ego. After all, this is the 3rd time I can remember that he’s left Kos in something of a huff. This time it appears that with all the new posters and diarists, he can’t get his diaries to #1 with bullet the way he used to.
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The larger problem I see is Kos’s desire to swap out FP posters. Armando, Meteor Blades, DHinMI, and others have been the backbone of that site for some time. The current crop is not nearly as knowledgable, insightful, or politically astute. And yes, the average poster is not nearly as informed as s/he once was. Adding insult to injury, the emerging cult of personality (given the last pie fight still raging about one particular female poster) is prima facie evidence that the place is consumed with itself.
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All in all, however, the site will work its problems out, even if that means that knowledgable people go off and start their own blogs. It’s all rather Darwinian, actually.