DailyKos FAQ

From dKosopedia

Quick links

What are Tags and how do I create good ones? See Tag Guidelines
How do I put text in a nifty grey box? See Block Quoting
I'm having trouble reading and/or posting comments! See Comment problems
How do I make text bold or italic? See Auto Format
How do I include a picture? See Pictures and images
How do I find my user ID number? See UID numbers
Why are the times on all my comments off by an hour? See Time Zones
Why did my 'First!' comment disappear? See First comments
What's a Tip Jar? See Tip Jars
Why are people yelling at me for posting a link to my diary? See Diary Pimping
I like the previous version of the FAQ better; where is it? See DailyKos FAQ 1

1 Introduction
2 What is Daily Kos?
3 Parts of daily kos
4 Contributing to daily kos
5 Technical Problems
6 Ongoing diary series
- 6.1 Diary Series Calendar
7 Links to other resources
8 Some useful dkos diaries
9 Common terms and acronyms
10 One final note

Introduction

This FAQ file is intended as an introduction to the daily kos website and community. It includes an overview of the site, a guide to reading and posting diaries and comments, and answers to some frequently asked questions.

What is Daily Kos?

Who is kos?

"Kos" is the US-Army/screen nickname of the founder of Daily Kos, Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúniga. (See also the in-progress dkospedia entry Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, and the Wikipedia pages Kos and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga.)

What is the purpose of this site?

(Condensed from this diary written by kos in late 2004)

This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable

Who speaks for this site?

(from Who "represents" Daily Kos? by kos, Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 09:35:47 AM PST)

... here's a quick rundown on who can "represent" Daily Kos.

First of all, no one speaks for Daily Kos other than me. Period.

Those who could be said to "represent" the site are the following Contributing Editors:

BarbinMD
Darksyde
DavidNYC
DeminCT
Devilstower
DHinMI
Hunter (fellow)
Georgia10
KagroX
Mcjoan (fellow)
Meteor Blades
MissLaura
Plutonium Page
SusanG (fellow)
Trapper John

On tech matters, Jeremy also "represents" the site.

That's it.

Update: Actually, that's not it. One more:

Adam B. represents the site in regulatory and legal matters, and is also an occasional contributor on such issues.

Jeremy's user name is 'ct'.

Who posts here?

The quick answer is "anyone who wants to". There are a wide variety of people writing diaries and comments on dkos. They include elected politicians, candidates hoping to become elected politicians, experts in a range of fields, and active bloggers from around the net. The vast majority of writers, however, are ordinary citizens interested in talking about and participating in the political process. The majority of people posting here fall on the liberal side of the US political spectrum, however people of conservative views are welcome to come and debate. If you are polite, you will be treated politely. Unfortunately, there are some people who post comments or diaries with the sole purpose of provoking others. These people are called trolls. Some tips and techniques for dealing with trolls are described below.

Is that post really from Somebody Famous?

Fairly often, there are diaries that claim to be authored by Senators, Representatives, and other people in the news. The site administrators make every effort to ensure that posts claiming to come from a Senator really do originate from that Senator rather than a prankster or dirty trickster. To date, there are no known cases of anybody impersonating a Representative or other noteworthy person. However, it is better to be safe than sorry; if in doubt, ask, especially if the person is a candidate looking for funds. In addition, it should be noted that diaries that are listed as being by a particular elected official are sometimes written by someone on the staff, rather than by the official themselves.

Anonymity

Many people chose to post to Daily Kos under pseudonyms, keeping their real names confidential. There are many reasons why people would choose not to reveal their real names. Revealing the identify of someone who has chosen to remain anonymous is a bannable offense. It is also a morally reprehensible thing to do.

UID numbers

Often, people refer to UID, or User ID, numbers. Every registered user has an ID number; these are assigned sequentially in order of registration. To find a UID, either yours or someone else's, find a comment written by that author. At the bottom of the comment, there are two links, one with the name of the author and the other with the date and time of the comment. The one with the author name contains the UID. For example, a comment by kos will have a link that looks like http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:3, indicating that kos has UID 3. Note that the UID appears in the address bar at the top of your browser, not on the web page itself (it will look something like: http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:1234567). At the time of this writing, there are over 100,000 registered IDs. User IDs 100K (the 100,000th) and 100K+1 (100,001st) have been reserved by Kos to be auctioned off at a later date.

How can I post here?

First, you need to create an account. The registration link is in the menu of links, or you can click here. Choose a username, fill in the rest of the fields, and send in the form. After a 24 hour waiting period, you will be allowed to post comments. After a 1 week waiting period, you will be allowed to post diaries. These waiting periods are intended to discourage "drive-by" trolling.

Parts of daily kos

This section of the FAQ gives an overview of the different components of the dkos environment. More detailed information on these components is given in the next section on Contributing to daily kos.

The front page

The first thing that you see when loading Daily Kos is the front page. Most of the stories on the front page are written either by kos or by a small set of people designated by kos as front page posters. Currently, there are approximately half a dozen front page posters at any given time, serving one-year terms.

Diaries

Most of the action takes place inside of diaries. These are written by users, and then read and commented on by other users. Diaries can be found in three places. Most diaries appear in the Recent Diary list on the right-hand side of the screen. By default, this shows the last 20 diaries that have been posted; this can be reset as high as 50 diaries using the field at the bottom of the list. People reading diaries can recommend them (see below). If a diary receives enough recommendations, it will automatically be promoted to the Recommended Diary list, which sits above the Recent Diary list. Recommended diaries tend to attract a wider audience and more comments than most diaries. The length of time that a diary spends on the Recommended list depends on how many users recommend it; it can vary from a few minutes to more than one full day. Diaries moving to the Recommended list is a democratic process; the diaries on the list are the ones that received the most "votes" to be there. For more detail on this process, see this diary. The third, and most prominent, place to find diaries is the front page of the site. These are the articles that are seen when going to www.dailykos.com. Front-page stories have two sources. First are diary entries written by kos, or by one of the half-dozen or so people that kos has given front-page privileges to. In addition to writing their own diaries, kos and the other front-pagers often promote interesting diaries from the Recent list to the front page. These promotions are at the discretion of the front-pagers, unlike the voting process which governs promotion to the Recommended list.

Comments

Inside diaries and front page posts, users can post comments. Generally, these comments are in response to something in the diary, or are responding to other comments. Next to the title of each comment are two numbers inside a set of parentheses. These numbers are the number of people who have recommended and hide-rated the comment respectively (see #Rating_comments).

Comments can be shown in expanded form (showing subject, author and text) or shrunken form (just the subject and author); clicking the small triangle to the left of the subject line toggles between the two forms. An useful shortcut is the ability to expand or shrink an entire subthread at once. Simply hold down the control key (on Windows/Linux, or the Command key on Mac) while you click on a triangle. The comment and all its replies will be expanded or shrunk. In between the diary text and the comments, there are a set of buttons which will Expand, Shrink, or Hide (completely hide) all of the comments in the diary. If you select the 'Always' checkbox after clicking one of these buttons, your user preferences will be set to default to that comment display type.

With AutoRefresh selected, the comments list periodically refreshes (without having to manually hit the 'Reload' button). When new comments come in, a little panel slides up in the lower right-hand corner offering links that scroll to view them. Comments that are marked as 'new replies' are replies to comments that you have made; all other comments are marked 'new comments'

User Pages

Every user has a User Page. There is a link to this page in the menu sidebar. The User Page contains a collection of links gathering all of the diaries and all of the comments written by that user. The 'My Profile' tab on that page is the place to change all of your preferences. The User Page is also where you can edit your blogroll. To do this, go to the 'Blogroll' tab of your user page, and fill in URLs and titles for the sites which you wish to add to your roll. These sites will then appear on your user page and in all of your diaries.

From the User Page, you can also add a signature, a short bit of text which will be automatically appended to all of your comments. This can be set by going to the 'My Profile' tab and clicking on the 'Account Info' link. The signature field takes HTML code, so if you wish, you can embed links. It is not a good idea to put images in your signature; besides the visual clutter, it's very unfriendly to people on slow net connections

Hotlist

The hotlist, found under the Tools sidebar, is a place to store links to diaries that you want to refer back to. Next to the title of every diary is a ; clicking this icon will add that diary to your hotlist for future reference. Clicking the 'Subscribe' link next to a diary author's name will automatically add future diaries by that author to your hotlist. Once you have subscribed to a diary or diarist, the icon will change to a . Click this to remove the story from your hotlist. Comments that are replies to any of your comments are automatically added to your hotlist.

Search

(note: this is a very brief overview of the Daily Kos search engine. For more detailed instructions, see the search help).

There is a vast amount of information and writing contained in Daily Kos. One tool which is useful for finding specific pieces is the Search function. To use the search function, go to the page, type in the search term or terms, and hit the 'Search' button. A Search can be restricted to look only within certain categories of text, including authors, tags, links, and images. See the search help for a complete list and examples.

The type of search performed depends on the setting of the 'Find' pulldown menu. By default, it is set to Stories; these are front-page articles. Setting it to Diaries will return results from user diaries; Stories and Diaries will return hits from both sources. Setting the 'Find' menu to Authors will return links to the user pages of the writer you are looking for. The 'Diaries By' and 'Comments By' options use the previous version of the search engine which only supports author searches and only returns date-sorted results.

The results can be sorted by several criteria. Relevance, the default, is based on such things as where the search terms occur (near the beginning is best, in the title even better). Comments, Recommendations, and Impact result in lists sorted numerically, with highest values at the top of the list. Impact is a measure that combines the number of comments and the number of recommends into a single value. The other pull-down menus allow you to restrict the date range for the search and change how many results appear per page.

Important note: If you use the 'Diaries By' or 'Comments By' settings in the Find menu, the sorting is strictly by date. If the 'Search Archive' checkbox is not selected, the search is over the last 30 days and if the checkbox is selected, the search is over everything older than 30 days. The 'Search Archive' checkbox has no effect for other search types.

dKosopedia

The dKosopedia is a reference work associated with daily kos. It is modeled after Wikipedia and contains a large amount of information on a wide variety of topics. Anyone can register at dKosopedia and add/edit articles. Note that registration at dKosopedia is separate from registration at daily kos, though most people register using the same user name.

Advertising

On the right side of the page, there is a column of advertisements. The cost of maintaining a large internet site such as dkos is signficant; the great majority of this cost is covered by the sale of advertisements. Advertisements can be turned off by purchasing a subscription; subscribing currently costs $4/month, $40/year, or $100 for a lifetime subscription.

Advertising policy

The site's ad policy is mapped out by kos himself in the following piece:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/14/121448/33

IRC Channel

For those of you who just can't get enough Kos from diaries and comments, DailyKos has a little used IRC channel on EFnet, #dailykos. For more info on how to get to IRC, [1].

Contributing to daily kos

Registration and posting privileges

To do anything beyond simply reading diaries and comments, it is necessary to become a registered user, as described above. When you first register, there is a one day waiting period, after which you can write comments. After one week, you can write diaries, recommend other people's diaries, and rate comments. Posting and other activities are privileges granted by kos, who owns this site. Sufficiently obnoxious behavior, at his discretion, can result in banning.

Deleting Accounts

Accounts are forever, or at least as long as DailyKos remains in existence. Don't ask to have your account deleted. Especially, don't publicly demand that your account be deleted, as this is virtually certain to lead to large amounts of mockery. See GBCW.

Writing comments

Once you've been registered for at least one day, you can post comments inside diaries and front page stories. To post a comment to the diary or story itself, click on the 'Post a Comment' link immediately beneath the diary or story text or at the very bottom of the page. To post a comment that replies to a comment, click the 'Reply To This' link underneath the comment text. Either way, a Comment window will open up in the middle of the page. Choose a Subject (a title for your comment), and write what you want. The buttons beneath the comment window give some common formatting shortcuts. Once you've written your comment, click the Preview button. If the preview looks OK, click the Post button; otherwise, edit your text and Preview again.

The first thing to remember when writing a comment is that it is going to be read by other people. Personal attacks are strongly discouraged. If you disagree with what someone is saying, express your disagreement, but don't go directly after the other person. Because tone of voice and facial expressions are lost in online discussions, it's easy for something to be taken the wrong way. Flame wars do nobody any good.

First comments

On many sites, such as Atrios, it is a tradition for the first commenter on a new thread to post a message of 'First' or similar. That tradition is not followed on dkos. Posting a 'First' message here is likely to get your comment hidden (see Rating Comments below) and/or yelled at.

Diary pimping

People sometimes post comments urging people to read some other diary. This practice is known as "diary pimping". It is a legitimate thing to do under two circumstances. Firstly, when the subjects of the two diaries are closely related. Secondly, pimping is accepted in open threads, generic storyless diaries posted to the front page at regular intervals. Pimping in random diaries (or, especially, diaries on the Recommended list) will likely result in the comments being hidden.

No Text (NT, n/t) and End of Message (EOM)

You'll often see comments whose titles end in the acronyms "NT" (also "n/t") or "EOM." NT stands for no text, while EOM stands for end of message. These acronyms indicate that the commenter's message is short enough to be contained entirely within the comment's subject line, and let you know there's no point in expanding the comment to read the body of the message.

Writing diaries

Writing a diary is, in principle, quite simple. Click the 'New Diary Entry' link in the Tools sidebar, pick a title, write some text, choose a tag or two, and hit 'Publish'. Well, OK, maybe there's a bit more to it than that. For starters, The Rules, as posted by kos on Jan 3, 2006:

Diary guidelines
All users are limited by the system to one diary per calendar day.
New users cannot post diaries for one week after an account has been created.
"Intro" box for new diaries has a three paragraph limit. If you exceed that limit, use the "Extended Body" box for the remainder of your diary.
Diaries should be substantive. A good guideline is that if you don't have at least three solid paragraphs to write about your subject, you should probably post a comment in an open thread, or in a recent diary or front-page post that covers a topic relevant to what you wish to write about.
Copying and pasting complete copyrighted articles without permission from the copyright holder is absolutely prohibited by both this site's policies and copyright laws. Copyright infringement can expose both you and the site's owners to financial liability. Just don't do it. And if you see someone else doing it, please politely ask them to edit their diary accordingly. This is a bannable offense.
Limited copying within the bounds of the doctrine of "fair use" is permitted. A reasonable rule-of-thumb is that copying three paragraphs from a normal-length news article or editorial is acceptable. (This, however, is not a safe-harbor. If even three paragraphs seems like "too much," then copy less or nothing at all.) For more on fair use, please visit this site.
When you quote material that is not your own, please provide a link whenever possible. Also, use the blockquote tags to set off the copied material so that your writing is distinct from the material you are copying. For more on HTML tags, see the #Formatting section.
Hotlinking images without permission is prohibited. Hotlinking means using the [img src] tag to display an image on a diary which is hosted on someone else's server. Hotlinking, especially on a site as popular as this one, can cost people real money in bandwidth costs. It's essentially stealing. If we get complaints from sites about images being hotlisted, we will consider that as possible grounds for banning.
Duplicative diaries are prohibited. Please scan the recent diaries and front-page posts before starting to compose your own diary. This rule operates on a sliding scale. A repeat diary with minimal analysis or originality (particularly on "breaking news" items) is prohibited. Such diaries are subject to deletion without notice. But if you write on a recently-covered subject and provide original analysis or research, that is acceptable and in fact welcome.
If you receive a reasonable request from a fellow Kossack to delete your diary (i.e., your diary is duplicative as per above), please do so.
Cross-posting from your own blog is welcome. Remember, though, that you can only write one diary a day at Daily Kos.
Diarists are strongly encouraged to back up all assertions with facts (and preferably links to supporting materials) whenever possible. Use reputable sources whenever possible. If you can't find a reputable source that supports your position, then perhaps reconsider writing your diary.
As a corollary, diarists should always make it clear when they are expressing an opinion - please do not assert opinions as facts, as this tends to be needlessly inflammatory.
Diaries which engage in wild speculation without any proof are strongly discouraged. Repeatedly posting diaries consisting largely or entirely of wild speculation is an abuse of site policy. Bear in mind that that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Diaries which contain hateful or defamatory writing are prohibited.
Diaries which are deliberately designed to inflame are prohibited.
Deliberately inflammatory titles, or titles which contain attacks, are prohibited. Also, while this site doesn't prohibit profanity, please think very carefully before using any curse words in a diary title.
"Calling out" other site users by name in diary titles is prohibited. Diaries which "call out" another by name tend to needlessly inflame. If you feel compelled to address another user's comments or diaries in a diary of your own, please do so cautiously. Avoid ad hominems and stick with substantive, constructive criticism only.
Some topics which tend to make for poor diaries: Breaking news. Something you just saw on a TV show. Something currently on the front page of a major news site (eg, New York Times). Something currently on the front page of a major blog (eg, Atrios).
What makes for a good diary: Anything which showcases original research or original analysis. Political calls to action with substantive information on how to get involved. News (plus analysis) on interesting/relevant topics that are not widely discussed.
Diaries on contested Democratic primaries: Be positive. Make an affirmative case for your favored candidate. If you do criticize a Democratic candidate, don't make ad hominem attacks - stick to substantive criticisms, and back them up with hard evidence. Be very cautious if you go after a fellow Democrat. Odds are, that candidate will have supporters on this site. Reasonable people will accept reasonable criticism - unfair criticism will only needlessly inflame. And remember, deliberately inflammatory diaries are prohibited.
"Open Thread" diaries: Diaries designed to serve as "open threads" for discussion on major, breaking events (such as a speech or hearing) are permissible. Please provide links to information about the events (such as news articles or webcasts) in such diaries. Do not post duplicate diary open threads unless an earlier open thread exceeds 150 comments.
When writing a diary on a political race, prefixing the title is always helpful. For example: FL-Gov (Florida governor's race), NY-Sen (New York senate race), CA-25 (California's 25th congressional district race).
Do not use ALL CAPS or exclamation marks !!! in diary titles.
Do not put "Please Recommend" or similar language in diary titles.
Please read an entire diary before hitting "Recommend." Recommending based on just the first few paragraphs or the author's name is strongly discouraged.

These rules are mostly common sense and courtesy. There are a lot of diaries posted here; keeping up is like trying to drink from a firehose. Adhering to these rules helps cut down on duplicate and low-content diaries, and makes everyone's life easier. Please follow The Rules.

Diary drafts

New diaries exist first as drafts. When you click the 'New diary' link, a draft is automatically created. Once you have a draft, you can fill in the content you want. A draft stays around for 3 weeks after being created; during that time, the author can make changes, add text, and so forth. A list of all drafts that an author has is listed on the right side of the dkos hompage. Drafts are only visible to the diary's author. Once the author publishes the draft (hit the 'Preview' button, check the preview for any mistakes, and then hit 'Publish'), the diary becomes visible to other people to read and comment on.

A diary can include a poll. To create a poll, fill in the fields at the bottom of the New Diary screen. You need to specify a question, and at least 2 answers.

Diary titles

When choosing a title, please avoid the following:

Profanity in titles is disallowed. The use of asterisks is acceptable. Profanity in the title of a diary will be changed by an admin to contain asterisks (e.g., "Fuck" => "F**k"). Profanity in the text of diaries, and in comments, is OK; just keep the curse words out of the diary titles.
"Calling out" other users. This consists of referring to another user, by name, in the title of a diary with a negative connotation. So, diary titles of the form "UserX is a moron" are not allowed. More neutral titles like "A response to UserX" isn't technically "calling out", but many people will interpret it as such. The best strategy is simply not to mention other users in diary titles at all.
"BREAKING". If some piece of breaking news happens, feel free to write about it, but putting 'BREAKING' in the title won't make you any friends. Just use the news headline itself for the title.
ALL CAPS. STOP SHOUTING
'Please Recommend'. Chances are, people won't.

Editing diaries

After a diary has been posted, its text can be edited. To edit a diary, click on the 'Edit diary' link just underneath the title. The page that appears is similar to the New Diary screen, except that the existing text of the diary has already been filled in. Make the desired edits, click Preview to check that everything is displaying correctly, and then click the 'Publish' button to change the text.

Updates can be timestamped by placing [UPDATE] (including the square brackets) in the diary; when the story is saved, this will be replaced with the date/time of the update and the user ID of the updater (almost always the diary author).

If the edit consists of removing text, it is preferable to use strike-out (use the <s></s> tags) rather than simply deleting the text.

Diary deletion

There are some times when you will want to delete a diary. To do so, click on the 'Edit Diary' link next to the diary title. Down at the bottom of the edit screen, there is a 'Delete Diary' button. When you click this, a dialog box will pop up asking you to type in some text and then click OK. This is to cut down on people accidentally deleting diaries by clicking the wrong button.

When should diaries be deleted? If there are two (or more) near-identical diaries on the same subject, people will request that all but one be deleted. This often happens when a news story breaks, and several diaries are posted consisting of a link to the story and a few quotes from the AP wire. Please consider deletion if your diary isn't the first diary to break the news. Front-page posters will sometimes delete diaries if there are too many covering exactly the same content. Additionally, sometimes diary authors just have second thoughts about posting a particular diary. Don't delete a diary just because a discussion in the comments has gone off in some direction you don't like.

Please delete your tags before you delete your diary. If you cannot delete them for some reason, replace your tags with the "deleted diary" tag.

Note that when diaries are deleted, the associated comments (if any) are not deleted. A search, or a user's comment history, will still be able to access any such comments.

Tag Guidelines

You cannot post a diary until you have entered at least one tag. Tags are keywords that identify the concepts and content of the diary. The diary author must choose at least one tag for the diary to be posted. After the diary is posted, any user can add tags to their own diary; trusted users can remove or edit tags in any diary. We strongly suggest that you enter one tag, publish your diary and then spend a few minutes creating GOOD tags to add. Tag abuse (changing the tags in a diary to express your editorial opinion of the diary) is a bannable offense.

The best and quickest way to find good tags is from the list of approved tags. The Tag Search Tool also makes it very easy to find good tags being used by the community. You can also find a complete list of tags in the tag cloud. By clicking on a tag, you get a list of all diaries that contain that tag. However, generating the list via the tag cloud" is slow (30 minutes on a dialup connection), so we suggest that you use the Tag Search Tool or do a search specifying tag=xyz, where xyz is the string you're looking for (surrounded by quotes if the string contains spaces).

Trusted Users (TU) can edit the tags in any diary, and that is a community job as important as hiding inappropriate comments. See: Tag Editors Workspace and the DailyKos Tag Cleanup Project. If you want to help, a list of simple clean up jobs can be found here: Tag:cleanup jobs. If you want to be more involved in tag cleanup as a Tag Librarian, please add your name on the Tag Librarians page and join our Google Group.

Some guidelines for choosing tags:

Please remember that tags are an indexing system, not a tool for demonstrating creativity. This is a tool to help organize content, not show how clever you are by inventing keywords such as "HUNTERRIFIC" to praise a diary by Hunter.

When using a person's name as a tag, use both their first and last name and use proper capitalization.
If there is an ambiguity, include middle initials (with a period and space following each initial). For example, don't use Bush as a tag; use the George W. Bush tag or the George H. W. Bush tag depending on whether the diary refers to the current President or his father, or Laura Bush for President Bush's wife, etc.
Do not use titles. Use John Kerry, not Senator Kerry or Senator John Kerry.

Use combinations of simple tags rather than inventing complex ones. For instance, use tags CIA, LEAK and INVESTIGATION, instead of CIA-LEAK-INVESTIGATION. (note that Plamegate is the most used tag for this issue,)
Re-use existing tags and use the ones already used the most.
You can find an easy to use list of approved and most frequently used tags here: List of approved tags
Keep it simple. Don't use tags that are redundant. Example: Don't use both "health care" and "healthcare".

For election related diaries:
Add the first and last names of candidates being discussed and their party affiliation (EX: Hillary Clinton, Democrats)
Add the office being discussed. EX: "President", "House", "Senate", "Governor", etc.
Add the abbreviation of the race (two digit state abbreviation and race). So a governor's race would be CA-Gov, a secretary of state's race would be CA-SoS, a Senate race CA-Sen, and a congressional race would be CA-06. (Use "AL" [at large] for states such as VT, which have only one congressional district.) In all other instances spell out the name of the state.
Add the year: 2008
For state elections add the tag "statename elections" EX: "California elections"
Use the "primaries" tag during primary season.
Review all standard election related tags in one place.

'/' characters are not allowed in tags, and will be converted to '-'. Other punctuation like "?" or "=" or "*" will make your tag unreadable.
When posting a diary that is primarily about, or in reaction to, a story from a conventional media outlet, include the name of the outlet, e.g. New York Times. This will help cut down on the number of repetitive diaries covering the same "breaking" story.
Use commas between your tags. Not spaces, not periods, not semicolons.

Note: As of September, 2007, the Daily Kos tag guidelines have changed. While all of the above guidelines are still recognized as "best practices" and are strongly recommended, the editing or deleting or existing tags is to be limited to the correction of obvious typos or malformed tags, and the deletion of insulting or derogatory tags. It is understood that this might lessen the utility of tags as a research tool, but the administrators felt the trade-off in terms of user freedom and the avoidance of tag deletion "wars" was worth it.

The new tag guidelines are as follows:

Always err in favor of adding new tags, rather than deleting or modifying existing tags. Some folks have expressed concerns about the size of the tag database. In terms of server strain, we can assure you, there is no need to worry. (The tag db is comparatively very small.)
Tags should generally only be modified when you see misspellings (eg, Gorge W. Bush) or obvious ambiguities (eg, George Bush instead of George W. Bush, to distinguish son from father). If an ambiguity is not clear-cut, please add a new tag rather than modify an existing one.
If a diarist chooses a particular tag that might be different from what you've chosen (say, "bellwether state" instead of "swing state"), please respect the diarist's choice, even if your preferred tag is in wider use. Feel free to add your suggested tag as well - just don't modify or delete the diarist's tags.
Tags should generally only be deleted if they contain abusive language (eg, "this diary sucks," "sh*t diary", etc.). We emphasize in the strongest of terms that these kinds of tags are completely unacceptable. The use of abusive language in tags will be treated as a bannable offense.
If you see a tag that seems to be completely out of place, please post a comment asking for clarification (there might be a good reason for it) rather than deleting it.
Don't use the "troll diary" tag, or any variant thereof, when you think a diary is trollish. Tags are designed to help folks search for information. There isn't a need to be able to search for alleged "troll diaries" - the administrators have many tools at our disposal to find trolls, and this one is not necessary. It also creates needless flamewars and thread hijackings when people disagree over whether a particular diary is, in fact, a troll diary. (Obviously, if a diary is discussing the issue of troll diaries, then this tag might be appropriate.)

Controversial Diary Topics

Diaries on certain topics are likely to generate angry responses. Most of these topics fall under the general heading of "conspiracy theories", e.g., "JFK was killed by Martians". The rule for posting such diaries is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The more extreme the claim, the higher the burden of proof that commenters will demand. If you can't provide evidence to back up your claim, it is best not to post the diary. This guideline also applies to recommending extraordinary-claims diaries. If a diary makes an extreme claim with little or no evidence to back up that claim, it shouldn't be recommended, no matter what that claim is.

Addendum

Some people have been confused by the above discussion. Let me make it perfectly plain. Diaries advancing 'Conspiracy Theories' are subject to ridicule and derision from the community at the very least. Repeat offenders can and will be banned. Yes, this does include 'controlled demolition' of WTC 7.

Here is what kos has to say-

The conspiracists by kos
Fri Jul 08, 2005
Today I did something I've never done before (not even during the Fraudster mess), and wish I'd never had to do.
I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarassing conspiracy theories.
I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones -- Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can't imagine what fucking world these people live in, but it sure ain't the Reality Based Community.
So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake -- this is a purge.
This is a reality-based community. Those who wish to live outside it should find a new home. This isn't it.
Update: I've been reinstating some of the banned accounts as they email me. Some people wondered why there wasn't any warning. There have been warnings from others -- repeated pleadings for people to ground themselves in reality.
It's telling that I have NEVER done something like this before. Because this has been an extreme situation. This isn't about disagreeing with what people are saying. If that was the case, everyone would've been banned by now. The myth of the "echo chamber" is just that. A myth.
But as for warnings, well, this has been my warning. I wanted it clear that I was serious, and I think that has come through. I am reinstating those who ask to be reinstated. But the message has been sent.

But, what about Freedom of Speech?

Doesn't the First Amendment give me the right to talk about whatever I want here?

No. Daily Kos is owned by kos. The servers are his. He pays the bandwidth charges. He makes the rules; we are here as his guests. If he decides tomorrow that anyone not posting in iambic pentameter will be banned, your options are either to brush up on your poetry skills or find/start another forum.

Controversial 9/11 Diaries

DailyKos accepts that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by agents of Al-Qaeda. It is forbidden to write diaries that:

refer to claims that American, British, Israeli, or any government assisted in the attacks
refer to claims that the airplanes that crashed into the WTC and Pentagon were not the cause of the damage to those buildings or their subsequent collapse.

Authoring or recommending these diaries may result in banning from Daily Kos.

Webbugs, Scripts, and other mischief

From time to time some bright bulb decides to post an executable script or a webbug...such as an image linked to a browser stats package...in a diary or comment. Doing so will result in the immediate banning of that user.

Liveblog diaries

From time to time, there are events that people want to track and talk about in realtime, in what are called "Liveblog" diaries. Diaries of this sort can attract a large number of comments, so to keep things manageable, there are a few special guidelines for liveblogs:

No pictures. Not even cute cats. Not everyone is on a fast network connection.
For high-traffic liveblogs, multiple diaries may be necessary. Once roughly 300 comments are in a diary, a new one should be created. If the old diary is on the Recommended list, people should unrecommend it before recommending the new one. This keeps the Rec list from getting dominated by a liveblog series.
Have people volunteer ahead of time to post the next diary in a series; this will prevent two or three people from posting "Part IV" simultaneously.
Part n should have a link to at least part n-1, and preferably all of the prior parts. It's also a good idea to have a link, or links, to sources of streaming video/audio of the event in question.

Formatting

Auto Format

Comments and diaries are both written using HTML, which stands for Hyper-Text Markup Language, the basic "language" or set of invisible instructions that your browser software uses to format all the text, images, and other data in a way that makes sense for viewing. On dKos sometimes people use a very few simple HTML formatting tags to spiff up their posts. But please know that you need not do anything other than type in your ideas to be able to post. The default formatting of the site will make sure you look pretty good. If you want to embed a hyperlink to somewhere, you enclose the link in square brackets:

[http://www.dailykos.com Daily Kos]

gives

Daily Kos

A shortcut to link to dkosopedia pages is to enclose the name of the page in double curly brackets with 'dk' in front:

dk{{DailyKos_FAQ}}

becomes

DailyKos_FAQ.

Two sets of square brackets: [[DailyKos_FAQ]] will also link to a dkosopedia page.

A shortcut for inserting links (and pictures, see below) in comments is to use the link editor. When posting a comment, click on the 'Link' button at the bottom of the editor. In the 'URL' field, put in the URL that you want to link to; in the 'Label' field, put in the text that you want to appear in the comment. When you click the 'Add' button, the link will be inserted into your comment.

Most additional HTML formatting spiffiness for dKos posts can be accomplished using "Auto Format Mode," the default writing mode here, so you don't have to be an HTML formatting expert to add a little shine to your prose. Think of Auto Format Mode as little cheater characters or shortcuts so you don't have to remember a bunch of HTML tags. Some of the things you can do in Auto Format mode include:

Bold text, by putting an asterisk on either side of the text you wish to bold, like *bold text*.
Italicized text, by using the underscore character: _italicized text_
~~strikeout text~~ by using hyphens: -strikeout text-
Lists, by putting a * or a - followed by a space at the beginning of each line in your list. And if you get really wordy, like this list entry, notice that the indentation is automatic when the entry drops to the next line,
and starts over again when you create a new line with a carriage return and a new * or - character.

Numbered lists are created similarly. Use a numeral at the beginning of each line, followed by a period or a right parenthesis ')'.

Numbering each line like this
produces a numbered list
and periods after the numbers
are optional.

Lists can be automatically numbered (starting with 1 and going sequentially) by starting each line with a '#' character.

There are a few other common effects you'll see here that do require actual HTML tags. A tag is always preceded by its tagname enclosed in <brackets>, then the text you wish to format, then a closing tag, which is the same as the tagname but preceded by a forward slash "/", also enclosed in brackets. Like this:

underline is made by <u>underline</u>

Finally, remember that Preview Is Your Friend. Before you post a comment or a diary, you need to Preview before posting it. Don't just assume that the preview is correct; check to make sure that you are getting what you want. This will save you LOTS of embarrassment. Trust me, a person who has been shamed many times by many "oopses" that could have been avoided if I had previewed my otherwise brilliant post first.

Block Quoting

A common sight in diaries is some text set off from the main body by a grey box. To create this effect, called a 'blockquote', you type

<blockquote>some text</blockquote> to get

some text

Tables

Unfortunately, there is no straight-forward way to create tables. The two options are to do it manually (insert a bunch of spaces and blank lines between elements until things look right) or to use the table tools built in to HTML. A brief overview of the latter is given here. Tables require some care to get right; be sure to preview your diary/comment carefully before submitting. Information in a table is contained within 3 seperate layers of HTML. First, every cell (entry in the table) is enclosed by a table-data tag:<td></td>. Then, sets of cells are combined to make rows, using the table-row tag:<tr></tr>. Finally, all of the rows are combined into a table using the table tag: <table></table>.

As an example, let's say we want to put the names of four US cities into a table, with two rows and two columns. An individual cell would be <td>New York</td>. To get a row, put a couple of cells together, along with a table-row tag:

<tr><td>New York</td><td>Chicago</td></tr>

Finally, put a couple of rows together, and enclose the whole thing inside a table tag:

<table>
<tr><td>New York</td><td>Chicago</td></tr>
<tr><td>Houston</td><td>Los Angeles</td></tr>
</table>

to get the table:

New York	Chicago
Houston	Los Angeles

A cell which is a row or column header is created by using the <th></th> tag instead of <td></td>. A row of headers for the above example:

<tr><th>Column 1</th><th>Column 2</th></tr>

Putting this immediately after the <table> command gives:

Column 1	Column 2
New York	Chicago
Houston	Los Angeles

Finally, you can add a border around the tables by changing the <table> command to <table border="1">:

Column 1	Column 2
New York	Chicago
Houston	Los Angeles

Over-riding AutoFormat

Sometimes, AutoFormat is too smart for its own good, doing things to your comment that you would prefer it didn't. For example, if you try to use the '<' character, AutoFormat will try to turn that into some sort of HTML command, probably not what you want. The way around this is to use the '\' character to tell AutoFormat to leave the next character alone. To get a '<', type '\<'. Similarly, to get a '[', type '\['. To get a backslash, type '\\'.

Browser extensions

Users of the Firefox browser can download an extension which provides access to many of the formatting shortcuts in a convenient right-button menu.

Pictures and images

Another common thing to do is put an image into a diary or comment. Before you do this, please stop and think for a moment. Pictures require much more in the way of network resources than text. Big pictures make life difficult for people without fast net connections. Keep your pictures small, and only use them when it really adds something to the point you want to make. That said, there are three steps that need to be followed to insert a picture into a diary or comment:

Putting the image on the web

The first step is to put the image on an approved Web image hosting provider. This is required: you are not allowed to directly link to images from news media, personal sites, or others. This requirement prevents those sites from suffering large bandwidth fees if not being taken offline due to the enormous traffic Daily Kos can cause for them.

The approved image hosting services are currently:

Many of these services offer image hosting for free; you simply need an account with them to get started.

Daily Kos makes no guarantees about the quality or security of these services, and including them on the allowed server list doesn't imply any endorsement of those companies or their services. These were simply selected as a subset of sites that were already in use by Daily Kos members that appeared to satisfy our policy at the time they were examined. Use of any of these services is strictly at your own risk. You are advised to read and understand their terms of service before deciding whether to use them.

You may request others for approval using the Contact Us link; approval will only be given if the provider is willing to support this traffic and does not allow the images to be used as "web bugs" (this is a security measure). No, your own ISP or your organizations' will not be considered, this recommendation ability is intended to allow a list of sites that specialize in hosting images for these purposes. Please don't bother the admins with requests to allow your own servers to be included on the allowed image hosts list.

The homepages for the hosting services, and the technical-support pages for the ISPs, will have instructions for how to upload an image from your home computer or from elsewhere on the web. Once you've uploaded the image, the hosting service or ISP will give you a URL for the image.

There are some issues to be aware of when uploading images; see the section #Image_sizing_and_hotlinking below.

Linking the image

Once you have the image on the web, you need to link it into your diary or comment. There are two ways to do so; linking and hotlinking. Linking an image means that in the text of the diary/comment, the reader will see a URL; clicking on that URL will open the picture. Hotlinking, by contrast, will cause the image to show up alongside the text, without the reader needing to click on a hyperlink. Hotlinking can result in significant loads on whatever server is holding the image; pure linking is to be preferred whenever possible.

To link to an image, you create a hyperlink pointing to that image: <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/images/6/67/Elephant-new3.jpg">Elephant</a> The URL of the image goes between the quotation marks; the text immediately before the </a> is the text that the reader will see marked as a hyperlink.

To hotlink an image, you need to put an 'IMG tag' into your diary or comment. This tag contains the URL pointing to the image that you put on the web: <img src="http://www.dkosopedia.com/images/6/67/Elephant-new3.jpg"> which will insert the image into the text. Hotlinking is only allowed from a few hosts; see #Image_sizing_and_hotlinking below for details. The URL pointing to the image goes inside the quotation marks:

There are a couple of shortcuts for inserting images. If you use a hosting service, it will typically generate the necessary code for you; just copy and paste. You want to use the code labelled 'For Websites' (Imageshack) or 'Tag' (Photobucket). Other hosting services will have similar labels. The other option is to use the link editor. In comments, you can use the 'Link' button at the bottom of the comment window. Click this button, fill in the URL to the picture and a title. Select the 'Image' checkbox, and then click the 'Add' button to insert the link into your comment.

Formatting the image

The final step in image insertion is to format the picture. The most important formatting issue is the size of a picture; many pictures have a lot of pixels, and if they appear in a post at full size, they can fill the window and screw up the rest of the page's formatting. For large pictures, you can specify a "width" field when you are putting in an image. Using the same image as an example,

gives

A width of 500 is the maximum that can be accomodated without causing problems.

In addition to changing the image size, you can change where the image appears in the text. By default, it appears at the left margin, and any following text starts beneath the image. You can get text to wrap around an image by using an "align" field:

Text that comes after the image now wraps around the picture. You can get the same effect, but with the image on the left, by using align=left instead.

Lastly, to keep space between the image and the text, use the hspace field, e.g. hspace=2

Image sizing and hotlinking

Unlike text, images require a significant amount of network bandwidth to transmit. To minimize the impact of images, there are two things to keep in mind: don't hotlink images, and keep the file size small. A hotlink is when you find an image somewhere on the web and plug its URL directly into a IMG tag. When you do this, every time your diary or comment is loaded, that external site has to supply a copy of the image. With the sort of traffic that dkos gets, that can amount to a significant load (and cost) to the host site.

Hotlinking is only allowed from certain approved hosts. In other words, you can't hotlink to some random image that you saw on the web. Currently, hotlinking is only allowed from images hosted at the following sites:

For images under your control (photos that you took, for instance), you can reduce the bandwidth load on everyone by decreasing the file size as much as possible before uploading to the web. Try to keep image sizes below 50 kilobytes; below 20 is better. Dropping the resolution to 640x480 in an image editor and saving as a jpeg with a low quality setting (high compression setting) will help a lot in reducing file sizes.

Embedding YouTube Video

To embed YouTube videos, put the word youtube and the video ID of the clip in question in a double set of parentheses: ((youtube vid-id)). YouTube URLs are of the format http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MpOy1ujOYo ; the video ID is everything after the equals sign, so for this example, you would type ((youtube 9MpOy1ujOYo)). You can also copy the YouTube 'embed' code and paste that into your diary/comment.

When embedding a video, it's a good idea to give at least a short recap or summary of what's in the clip; not everybody can easily play embedded video.

Note: At the moment, YouTube videos whose video IDs contain underscores (for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKm_zrxL0p0) will not embed properly if using the shortcut method, and must be escaped with a preceeding '\' if using the embed code.

Recommending diaries

Almost all diaries can be recommended; the exceptions are those that are posted directly to the front page. To recommend a diary, click on it, and then click on the 'Recommend' button on the right side of the window. Diaries can only be recommended in the first 24 hours after posting. When should you recommend a diary? Very simply, recommend a diary if you think other dkos users should read it. That may mean that the diary is covering a breaking news story, or it has an insightful bit of analysis, or even is an extremely funny bit of humor. Note that diaries can have much more content in the comments than in the main text; it is perfectly legitimate to recommend a diary because of an interesting discussion in the comments. Don't recommend a diary simply because of who the author is.

Note: Please use common sense when recommending diaries. Diaries that rely entirely on unreliable sources such as Wayne Madsen, Capitol Hill Blue, Jason Leopold, or Lyndon LaRouche are generally not considered acceptable. Recommending poorly sourced conspiracy theory diaries may result in banning without warning for all recommenders.

Rating comments

Any registered user can rate comments in a diary. Buttons to give these ratings are at the bottom of each comment. For regular users, comments can be recommended; trusted users can recommend or hide comments. The number of ratings that your comments gather, and their average value, determines your comment mojo. Mojo is used primarily for determining whether a user has trusted user status. So, when is each rating appropriate? Much virtual ink has been wasted in arguments, but the following is generally accepted:

Hide rating: Comments whose only purpose is to disrupt the discussion. Do not hide posts simply because you disagree with what the commenter is saying. Any given user can give out a maximum of five hide-ratings per day.
Recommend: Good comment. Also usually a shorthand for 'I agree', or also 'good job'. Most ratings given out tend to be recommends.

Note that there isn't a rating for 'I disagree'. If you disagree with something in a comment, post a reply saying so (and why).

If you wish to remove a rating that you gave to a comment, simply click the recommend or hide button a second time. Comments can be given ratings for 24 hours; after this point, ratings cannot be given or removed from the comment.

One piece of Daily Kos slang worth knowing refers to a recommend as a "4" and a hide as a "zero" or, by analogy, a "donut" (or "doughnut"). Hides used to be called 'troll-rate', and some people still use the old language.

Tip Jars

Because diaries can't be rated, many diary authors post a comment with the Subject of 'Tip Jar' or similar. This is intended as a place to give mojo for the diary; if you feel that the diary was worthwhile, it's a nice gesture to leave a recommend in the tip jar. A tip jar should only be posted by the author of a diary. Posting a tip jar in somebody else's diary will be regarded as an attempt to take credit for the diary; at the very least, you will be yelled at by other commenters. There is no rule, however, that says commenters must wait for the diarist to post a tip jar before they can legitimately comment on the diary.

Trusted Users

If a user gathers enough comment mojo, they become a Trusted User. To prevent people from gaming the system, the exact amount of mojo required is not publicly revealed. Trusted Users have a few additional privileges compared to regular users. A regular user can recommend comments; a TU can also hide comments. If a comment gets enough hide ratings, it becomes hidden to regular users (also see the trolls section below). TUs can, if they wish, see the hidden comments. TUs thus have the responsibility of deciding whether comments should be hidden or not. In addition, TUs can edit and remove tags from diaries; regular users can only add new tags. There are two easy ways to tell if you are a TU. First is to look at the Tools sidebar; if there is an entry reading 'Hidden Comments', you are a TU. The other way is to try to rate a comment; if there is a 'Hide' button next to the 'Recommend' button, you are a TU.

One of the factors that goes into determination of TU status is time. If a user stops commenting, or their comments stops getting recommendations, eventually that user will lose TU status. This can be easily remedied by posting more comments that meet with the approval of the readership community.

Dealing with trolls

Trolling is a sad reality of internet life. Most trolls tend to be blatant, posting comments or diaries that are clearly intended to provoke an angry response. Other trollish messages are posted simply to disrupt the conversation in a diary. Directly replying to the content of a trollish message is usually a waste of time; trolls tend not to be interested in actual debate. There are two methods in wide use to help keep the community as troll-free as possible. The first is hide-rating comments. Trusted Users (see above) can give comments a rating of Hide. If a comment has been hide-rated by two users and recommended by none, then that comment (and all replies to it) are automatically hidden. If a comment has been recommended at least once, then Hides must be applied to the ratio of 3x+1 (where x is the number of recommends) in order to hide that comment (again, all replies to the comment will also be hidden). Hidden comments and their responses can only be seen by Trusted Users. The second method is to post recipes; this is a method normally used in trollish diaries but can be used as replies to troll comments also.

Unfortunately, there is no similar mechanism for hiding trollish diaries. Instead of writing detailed rebuttals of whatever claims or argument the troll is making, the standard response to a troll diary is to post comments containing recipes for tasty dishes. Plenty of examples can be found in the Troll Diary tag (note: Most of those examples will probably be old, as the use of the "Troll Diary" tag is currently discouraged). An entire cookbook of recipes has been collected and is being sold as a fundraiser. Alternatively, some people post completely blank comments, or comments with a single letter or symbol, as a way of filling up the diary without actually rising to the bait of the troll.

Appropriate use of Hide ratings

An excellent discussion of when a hide-rate is appropriate, and some of the common types of trolls, can be found in the troll rating article, originally from this diary. Reading this article is highly recommended before issuing any Hides. Also read: An Exegesis for Troll Ratings posted by Hunter Tue Jan 01, 2008. (note that Hide ratings used to be called Troll ratings, and are referred to by the earlier name in these references)

Some posters create accounts at dkos strictly for the purpose of causing disruption. It is considered acceptable to hide all of the posts made by such people, even the ones that are not in and of themselves trollish. It should be emphasized, however, that this should not be done lightly. Before rating comments en-masse, you should be very very sure that the author is really a troll, and not just a regular poster who is having a bad day. If there is any shadow of a doubt as to whether a person is a dedicated troll, you should refrain from mass-hiding their comments.

To prevent abuse of the Hide button, as of June 2, 2006, trusted users are limited in the number of hides they can give out each day. Currently, the limit is five per day.

Hidden vs. Deleted comments

Occasionally, a comment disappears from view and there is some dispute (usually from the comment author) as to the fate of that comment. The following text is provided as a reference to use in such disputes:

Comments are not deleted. If you think your comment has been deleted, you are wrong. If you really really think your comment has been deleted, you are wrong. Yes, really. Your comment has been hidden, but Trusted Users can still see it, and have the option to un-hide it. Your comment is unlikely to be unhidden (trust us on this one).

Autoban

If enough of a user's comments are hidden, the site will automatically ban that user. Banning means that a user can no longer post diaries or comments, or give out recommends. The exact algorithm for determining how many comments are enough to trigger autoban is not publicly known. Kos has, however, stated that the determining factor is the number of comments that are hidden, not the number of troll-rates that each individual comment receives. In other words, once a comment has entered the Hidden Comments section, additional Hides have no effect. Since Trusted Users are limited in the number of hide ratings they can issue per day, it is recommended that they refrain from "piling on" additional Hides to an already-hidden comment.

Sock Puppets

(portions adapted from the Wikipedia entry on Sock Puppet)

Definition

A sock puppet is an additional account of an existing member pretending to be a separate user. This may be used to mimic community support in an argument or for acting without consequence to one's 'main' account. It is considered dishonest, trollish behavior.

At Daily Kos the term 'sock puppet' is also commonly applied to non-authorized accounts of previously banned users.

Identifying a Sock Puppet

Typically, the user has more knowledge than would be expected of a newcomer regarding the site's methods, rules, and community members; takes part in similar discussions and has mostly same opinions as the user's main account; and sometimes has an account name similar to those of other suspected sock puppets.

Penalties for Sock Puppetry

Though there is no officially articulated penalty for 'Sock Puppetry', there are many recorded instances of banning for the offense.

If you are banned as a user for any reason, the only court of appeal is Markos himself. Banned users posting using an account not authorized by Markos are subject to repeated, continued banning. It is the user, not the account, that is being penalized.

Technical Problems

Daily Kos is a large and complicated site, with much going on behind the scenes to make everything work. Sometimes, things don't work as they should. If you are having trouble with some part of the site, check here first to see if your issue is addressed.

Login problems

Most login problems are related to browser cookies. These are small files which sit on your computer and are used to keep track of various preferences and the like. You must have cookies turned on to be able to log in (and hence write comments) to dkos.

If you have cookies turned on (typically found in the Security section of your browser preferences) and logging in is still not working, first try logging out and then logging back in. If that doesn't work, try using your browser's preferences to delete all cookies that reference dailykos.com, and try logging in. If it still doesn't work, contact the technical team. Include the details of what operating system and what browser you are using.

Comment problems

In early 2006, the comment system was given a complete overhaul to deal with the ever-increasing volume of comments. The new system requires a relatively recent web browser to work correctly. Recommended browsers for different operating systems are listed below; for more details, see these diaries.

Windows
- Firefox 1.5 (recommended)
- Internet Explorer 5.5 or above (works, with some issues)
- Opera 8.5 (some rendering issues)
Macintosh
- Safari (recommended for OS 10.3 and above; not supported for 10.2)
- Firefox 1.5 (works; slower than Safari)
- Camino 1.0 (recommended for OS 10.2)
- Internet Explorer 5.2 (legacy mode only; works under 10.1)
Linux
- Firefox 1.5.0.1 (recommended)
- Mozilla 1.7.12 (works well)
- Konqueror 3.4 (has some rendering and posting problems)

The comment system is continuously being revised, both to eliminate bugs and to add new features. If you are having problems, please let someone know. Post a comment in an open thread or in one of the occasional diaries about the comment engine. If that doesn't work, try the Contact Form.

When reporting problems with the comment system, please include the operating system and web browser that you are using (including version numbers) and the type/speed of net connection (dialup, DSL, etc.).

Time Zones

To make sure that the comments show up with the proper time-of-writing, you need to set your time zone. To do this, go to your user page (link is on the right-hand sidebar), and click on the 'My Profile' tab. Click on the 'Display Preferences' link. On the pull-down menu labelled 'Your Time Zone', select the proper zone. Important Note: The software powering Daily Kos does not automatically adjust for Daylights Savings Time. You need to change the zone manually. For example, if you are located in the Central timezone of the US, during the fall and winter, select 'Central Standard Time' as your zone; during the spring and summer, change it to 'Central Daylight Time'.

Ongoing diary series

There are several regular or semi-regular diary series that are posted. Most of these series have dedicated tags; for those that don't, the link goes to a tag (which also have other diaries not in the series), the author's diary page, or a search shortcut for the series. Ordering is alphabetic within each category.

Political series focus on the nitty-gritty of politics and political issues
- Edwards Evening News Roundup is posted by a crew of Edwards Supporters, including Be Inspired, Cosbo, NCDem Amy, Predictor, Sarahlane and Tom P.
- Frameshop by Jeffrey Feldman is a recurring series on how to reframe various issues.
- Sunday Talk is posted by Al Rodgers, late Saturday evening. It provides a summary of the week's media coverage and a preview of the Sunday morning political talk shows.
- This Week With Barack Obama, posted Sunday evenings by icebergslim, covers the Presidential campaign of Senator Obama.

Specialty series represent in-depth coverage of some issue or subject
- black kos is a Friday morning series addressing African-American issues.
- bonddad writes a regular series on economic issues.
- BREAKING!...the Earth by jillian provides a digest of news on environmental issues
- Class and Labor is a Tuesday evening series looking at those issues.
- Countdown to $100 Oil by Jerome a Paris is a series investigating the coming of peak oil and the effects this will have on the global economy.
- dogemperor writes a series on the Dominionist movement.
- Eco-Diary Rescue is a Tuesday evening series posted by Meteor Blades, which brings to notice overlooked diaries on environmental issues.
- Feminisms is a series posted every Wednesday evening between 8 and 9pm Eastern. The series has alternating diarists and presents discussion on a wide variety of topics related to Feminism and the various Feminist philosophies.
- History for Kossacks by Unitary Moonbat, Sunday evenings (usually). Historical background for various current events.
- I Got the News Today IGTNTby i dunno and others publishes daily with death announcements of soldiers often adding personal details.
- Literature For Kossacks is a Tuesday evening series exploring the wonder of the written word.
- Marine Life by Mark H is a look at the wonders of the sea, posted Friday afternoons.
- The Music Room, Music and Musicians, by madhaus, Weekends (time varies).
- nyceve writes a regular series of healthcare diaries.
- Overnight News Digest is a compilation of the day's news stories, to help the late-night crowd keep caught up with important, interesting, and unique news stories. Started by Magnifico, the OND now includes a number of regular and periodic editors.
- Science Friday is a science-themed story posted to the front page every Friday by DarkSyde.
- Spider Friday by hekebolos. It's spiders. On a Friday. Honest. Graphic images of creepy crawly things, beware.
- Teacher's Lounge provides a collegial atmosphere and a venue for intelligent discussion on the topics of education, teaching and learning. Posted Saturday mornings by rserven.
- ilona covers combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other post-war reintegration issues.
- Vegetables of Mass Destruction posted by OrangeClouds115 on Sunday mornings. About Nutrition and Healthy eating, mostly vegetarian but carnivores welcome.
- What have you got to learn? (or teach) is posted Saturday mornings by plf515, and is a summary of the past week's diaries that teach some subject or another.

Meta series are diary series about Daily Kos itself
- High Impact diaries, produced by jotter, is a daily diary listing the most-recommended and most-commented of the previous day's diaries.
- Open Thread and Diary Rescue by SusanG summarizes and links to diaries that didn't make the recommended list and aren't likely to get very high on the high impact list but which in her opinion, or the opinion of her Rescue Rangers, deserve another look.
- Top Comments is a daily series posted each evening by a team of diarists. These diaries serve to highlight noteworthy comments made during the course of the day.
- The Recommended tag lists diaries that have spent time on the Recommended list.

Community series wander somewhat afield of the site's core mission, but do wonders for fostering a sense of community
- Ask A Kossak, W/Free Answers by buhdydharma, is a free-wheeling question and answer session, posted Sunday nights.
- Brothers and Sisters by pastordan is a Sunday night prayer/meditation/good thought/karma/mojo space.
- Bookflurries: Bookchat by cfk is a Wednesday evening bookclub
- Cheers & Jeers is the self-described "kiddie pool" of daily kos, written by Bill in Portland Maine with a daily dose of snarky humor. Reader participation is always welcome. "C & J" is posted Monday through Thursday mornings (east coast time) and on Friday afternoons.
- Dawn Chorus is a Saturday morning birding series by lineatus.
- The Daily Show/Colbert Report Chat is a place to talk and snark during the late-night comic shows. Posted weeknights by TiaRachel.
- DIDS (aka 'Damn, I did something') is a Tuesday evening chance for all of us to offer up the cool and awesome things we have DONE in the past week.
- Got a Happy Story is a weekly (Friday evening) series originated by Carnacki, alternately hosted by sobermom and Eddie C. You are invited to read a happy story and post your own.
- Friday Evening Photoblogging is a place to share photographs and talk about pictures. Posted by dmsilev.
- Friday Night at the Movies, posted by occams hatchet.
- Frugal Friday is a Friday afternoon series posted by sarahnity, and is a forum to share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.
- Iron Chef Kos is a Wednesday morning series which recreates the TV show. A theme ingredient is announced, and recipes using that are posted.
- Kossacks Under 35 is a Thursday evening series in which the focus is on topics that directly affect those under 35, though any age is welcome.
- Saturday Morning Garden Blogging is a weekly diary by Frankenoid. It is in fact about gardening and has a high graphic image content.
- The Grieving Room, posted Monday evenings, is for those who have lost (or perhaps are about to lose) loved ones.
- Mojo Friday, posted Friday mornings, is a place to chat, have fun, and garner large amounts of comment mojo.
- Saturday Morning Home Repair by claude. Covers Home Repair topics and provides questions and answers in the comments.
- Saturday Night Loser's Club by ChingChongChinaman. Blogging on Saturday night? What a loser! Come join the Loser's Club and tell us how pathetic your life is, loser (note- not for the snark impaired).
- Saturday Painting Palooza. boran2 explains the techniques he is using in his current painting and sometimes even accepts input on what the final work should look like.
- Storytime by Cronesense on Friday evenings. Personal reflections on mundane moments of wonder.
- The Tuesday Diversion by The Centerfielder, usually on Tuesday about mid-day, typically asks for opinions or recollections on something unrelated to the events of the day.
- What Are You Working On is a weekly series on crafting, posted Sunday evenings by emeraldmaiden.
- What are you reading this week? is a weekly book club, posted Friday mornings by plf515. Fiction and Non-Fiction, not necessarily political.
- What's for Dinner. Basic Cooking info & Recipes, published Saturday evenings by rotating authors.
- WYFP? is a Saturday evening series by musing85. Having a problem? Tea and sympathy available.
Defunct series are no longer being actively run, but are listed here for reference.
- Election Race Diary Rescue by sidinny is a supplement or complement to Diary Rescue, which collects links to diaries on House races each day in one place.
- Iraq War Grief Daily Witness, produced daily by RubDMC, is a series dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters.
- Math Mania by plf515 covers a variety of Mathmatics from the work of Godel to Number Theory.
- The Rhetoric of Now by kellogg examines the current political scene through the lens of rhetoric.
- Statistics 101 is a discussion of math and statistics by PLF515.
- Sunday Afternoon Action Diary is posted by Elise. It provides a comprehensive list of action links.
- Superibbie provides monthly rankings of the status of races for the House of Representatives.
- Planet of the Savage dKos Feminist SuperVixens, discusses feminism, women's issues, and anything even tangentially related. Thursday evenings, by hrh and others.
- Swordsmith's series on How To Get Published.
- Top Ten Good News of the Week by geri; Good News (for a change!) Environment, Business, Civics, Celebrities, Pets, Heros, and other Inspiring stuff.
- Ultrageek's 'Taking back the House State-by-state' series focuses on House races, one state at a time.
- Welcome New Users appears on Fridays after 9 pm Eastern if it does at all and is a good place to learn about the mechanics of using dKos and ask questions.

Diary Series Calendar

This table shows the various series in a weekly-planner format. Defunct series, and those which aren't posted on a regular schedule are not included here. A work in progress...

	Daily	Sunday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Friday	Saturday
Morning	Open Thread Overnight News Digest High Impact diaries Cheers & Jeers	Vegetables of Mass Destruction		Iron Chef Kos	black kos Science Friday What are you reading this week? Mojo Friday	Teacher's Lounge What have you got to learn? Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Saturday Morning Home Repair Saturday Painting Palooza Dawn Chorus
Afternoon	Open Thread		The Tuesday Diversion		Marine Life Frugal Friday
Evening