Dear Kossaks,
Inspired by wee mamas my dream daily Kos and the focus dmsilev gives to the site here, I wanted to continue the discussion about the way information is utilized on the site in hopes of exploring new possibilities of interfacing between the user, news and other information that could be of value to us. So, for healthy discussion's sake, I have a few ideas, questions and want to hear what ideas you have, tweaks, etc...
(note: this diary originally went out at the onset of the disney/abc war and, needless to say, few caught it, but with this event still fresh in our mind, we should rethink how we use information effectively to pursue our aims.
so please stop by for a sec, rec if you think others may find this of value, enjoy...)
After searching through a few hundred diaries, I haven't found too many that touch upon or analyze the extents of how we use information or how we can better utilize it for whatever ends. I've seen some random questions in open threads or tied to other diaries, but ultimately that information is difficult to find again. I've started a new tag - kossite - that we can use specifically for issues related to the site. (TheBlaz mentioned that we should use the
meta tag, but it is already used for so many other things that it would just make info on the site proper harder to find...)
So, for the most part we have diaries, comments, an open thread and Koskpedia/FAQ...
First, I wanted to suggest we try to find a new method for 'news' similar to an open thread, but to serve initially as a meeting point where we can dump articles that are important must reads, when we don't have time to diary them with some big analysis, perhaps something in between a diary and an open thread, if you will, that might not disappear as quickly as some of our user diaries and the work they put into them.
If this could evolve a little, maybe we could find a better way to organize it around topics or articles themselves- one article, mulitple diaries linked further...
Along the same lines as a 'news dump' and a place to store links that we refer to, I often go back to Meteor Blades' How Do You Know What You Know for a variety of reasons, and I think that this could be an interesting idea to build upon this. It's hard to wear our brain on our sleeves for others to understand what we know and what we don't. So, this way, there could be a link page, or a bookmarks page, perhaps a rèsumè of sorts. A place where we can pull off our pre-html'd links, quotes or what have you...
This is perhaps naive and ideal, but if we knew a little about what others read, where they get their info, we wouldn't waste so much time debating issues with people who aren't in the know, we could instead quickly point them towards better information- which is a bit hard to do at every instance.
We are, after all, sharing information, learning and trying to make more properly formed judgements, and could cut down on the worthless 'paranoid' debates where we assume the other commenter or diarist is hiding something, or get caught up debating silly logical operations, because, after all, everyone can't lay down a resume based clearly on every single belief at every instance reveled before our eyes...
The recent discussion around the ABC/Apple/Path to 9-11 affair is a great case in point: there is one main topic and some relevant information, supported with news links, there could be one organized place for action information, links off to individual diaries if need be, and at least some comments in one place. It would save screen space, save the effort we have to spend mulling over fragmented repetitive information, and save time on actually getting something done about it. This could also help reduce duplicate diaries and help make our time more efficient. I'll come back to this point in a sec. One idea could be to structure a page almost like Google News as it serves as a collective information point... thoughts?
Perhaps this could also serve as a point with more immediate/timely information, perhaps even an events calendar. For example, the other day neo Nutzi Michael Ledeen was a guest on The Diane Rehm show and it was worth listening to as he was openly advocating war with Iran. I made a couple of posts on an open thread but am not sure if anyone saw it, or, if anyone might have been interested on the topic anyway... Is this a good idea? Could we configure an RSS feed to solve this problem? The Centerfielder says he's coming out with a Mac Widget, so we have to keep our eyes peeled...
In regards to actionable items, I have a few more ideas that I think might be worthwhile. First, I think we should have some sort of greater e-mail capability to send diaries to friends and family, like at Huffpo, and perhaps buttons, close by, that we can configure go directly to our representatives.
Anyone up for a Kosmail service like yahoo mail? Maybe help support the site and cause?
Looking back at the war with the mouse, as I mentioned above, we could have a link close at hand for the information we need. It was hard to track it down at times since they were contained in other's diaries and scattered, or that the info could be managed better, like one group of emails in one mailto link- hit it all at once, or in select groups. But, hopefully, never again a link to a page, where we have to search for a few other minutes to get what we need. Later, it was brought to my attention that Elise is the queen of the action items, maybe those of you who are more familiar with it could chime in? My point with this is- how do we translate our dissatisfaction with things into immediate action? What if there is little or no resonance to our discussions, especially if many others would see it the same way we do?
Now, with this in mind, our (my) focus should be on IRAN. I mentioned in a few other posts that we should start a pre-emptive email/info campaign a la Dis/ABC directed to officials, friends, fam, whomever, everywhere, not participating with this site- because they are most likely being inundated with misinformation from the MSM, and if there is anything we can do to stop a war, if our morals are concerned, we should something before people start dying.
A second idea, something I've been mulling over, is that maybe we should try to have a Friends and Family/Open House at Kos sometime soon where we invite our loved ones to take part in the community. My idea was to diary a letter, like a normal e-mail, explaining this wonderful site and community, etc, etc, and post it here. Invite mom and dad to read it, let them post comments, let others say hi, give tips, make friends...
This would be great opportunity right before the approaching elections and it would give us a chance to expand the readership. This, however, I feel is a task WAY over my head, I'm not exactly the best writer for the task... (honestly, if you saw my verbal GRE score, you wouldn't wait to take your socks off before stuffing them in my mouth. Besides, this could be such an opportunity for someone much more qualified...)
Furthermore, I also want to take the chance to get a discussion going on efficient tricks on how we use the site:
- like web browser tricks...
- or how do you compose diaries? (one trick- compose diaries in a comment pane where you can do all the html quickly)
- are there any good programs for composing in html, can anyone use Word
in an efficient way?
- how do you manage/organize information- if you deal with a bunch of hyperlinks- do you crawl over the web every time you need a link and text? (melvin mentioned using a wordpad file, but i wonder if all the html info will always be visible and visually confusing...)
So, hopefully this could find its way onto the FAQ for oldies and newbies alike...
....
my 2 cents, as a Mac user, I've found a few tricks with Safari that are just wonderful. Safari is a tab browser similiar to Opera and Firefox, so perhaps these tricks might work across platforms. With the `tab' option on, Safari users can `apple' click on numerous links on a page, or diaries, and they open in one browser, one after another the other.
Second, if you use the Bookmarks bar, (view/bookmarks bar) you can drop and drag URLs onto that pane. It will automatically ask if you to rename them and I typically just use a letter or two to save space. The cool thing about this feature is that you can also used the `apple' button in conjunction with a number as a hotkey to navigate you to a site. The numbers go from 1-9 and start with the first URL on your Bookmark bar. So, for me `apple' 7, 8, or 9 gets me to the Kos site, comments and hotlist respectively. If you wanted all three in opened in separate tabs, you could open them all at once holding down the `apple' key then t, 7, t, 8, t, 9 one after the other. Or you could always `apple' click on the icons in the bookmark bar too. Another cool trick, I have 4 folders on the left of the Bookmark bar, each with a group of news sites bookmarked inside. If you `apple' click on the button all the sites load in tabs too.
Also, for diaries or comments, Safari has an integrated dictionary, and if hold the cursor over a word and 'ctrl' click it, if the word is misspelled, the dialogue box will offer a correction at the top.
So, what do you do or how do you do it? Have any ideas or innovations to offer?
Some comments:
Dana in MN asked about subscribing to tags...
dotcommodit was wondering if there could be any printing options and has some really good points...
So, who has all the time in the world anyway, please let us know if you have some ideas.