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DK4 FAQ

From dKosopedia

Quick links

Note: this page remains under development, and will gain additional information as quickly as time allows.

Contents

Introduction

This FAQ file is intended as an introduction to the new Daily Kos software, aka DK4. It includes an overview of the software, a guide to new features such as Streams and Groups and Messages, a list of features on the old (Scoop) version of Daily Kos and where they can be found on DK4, information on the just-completed conversion of the site to DK4, and answers to some frequently asked questions.

For questions about Daily Kos in general, the site's purpose, and any similar questions, please see DailyKos FAQ.

DK4 Launch

The launch completed on Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 4:30am eastern time, after the Daily Kos site had been down for 16.5 hours starting at noon eastern time (9am Pacific time) on Saturday, February 12, 2011. The URL of the Daily Kos site remains dailykos.com.

My DK4 Account

Your Daily Kos account has been transferred over in its entirety.

What will have transferred

What did not transfer

Diaries that were deleted on Daily Kos before the move will not be transferring. Deleted diaries are inaccessible, but sometimes their comments can be found — comments on Daily Kos cannot be deleted or edited — either through old links given in other diaries, or by showing up in Search because the comment indices have not been regenerated since the diary's deletion. If the indices had been regenerated, the index creation process would have skipped over the deleted diary, so its comments would not be included.

Since all the comment indices are being generated fresh in the new site, no comments from deleted diaries will be included in these indices, and thus will be invisible to Search. Their disappearance, long delayed, is finally being made permanent.

Preparing for DK4

It's here. If you're not prepared yet, explore the site, read a little more of this FAQ, and get acquainted.

DK4 Beta

The DK4 development project has just launched under the new software at dailykos.com. The DK4 Beta site was closed for good at around 1am eastern on February 13, 10pm Pacific on February 12. (It was known to be down at 1:09am, but could have been shut down any time within the previous half hour.)

Anything created during the DK4 beta has been lost now that the beta has ended: diaries created there (as opposed to transferred during beta from Daily Kos to DK4), comments written there, even accounts created there for test purposes. The sole exception is some of the tag definitions and information.

What Remains the Same

To be written.

What Has Changed?

Many things have changed. Most obviously, the front page looks different. Some things have moved around, and some are new (see Where to Find things on DK4 for information on where things have moved to, and brief explanations on the new things).

Some things work differently. Checking out who the people are who recced your comment, for example. You click on the numeric ratings to open…but where's the red square with the "x" in it to close it? You don't need the red square: just click on the numeric ratings again, and it closes. The same thing for the "Dairy Recommended By" header bar, which replaces the old "View Recommenders" link, which had its own red square. You can click anywhere on the header bar to open, and anywhere to close again. No need to move over to the stylized plus or minus button at the right end of the bar. (If you want to close any of the other lists below it, click on the list's header bar; click again to reopen.)

Another difference is in using asterisks for bolding, underscores for italics, and hyphens for strikeouts. Here's how they've changed:

As I've mentioned before, changing your sig will not change your sig on old comments. Your sig only affects new comments as you write them. Once the comment is published with your sig on it, that sig stays with that comment permanently.

If you haven't visited it already, go see your Profile page. It's one click away: on every Daily Kos page, as long as you're logged in, there's a "Welcome Back" box in the right column under the top menu; if you click on your username in that box, you're taken right to your profile page. Lots of great information there. You can also get there from clicking on My Page and then the Profile submenu that appears just below it. Or you can click on your name in any comment you've written to go straight there. As with the previous version of Daily Kos, there are usually multiple ways to get where you want to go.

Note: this section will be expanded at a later time.

Where to Find things on DK4

Almost all the features on the old Daily Kos before its recent shutdown will exist on DK4. They just aren't all in the same place. Here's a quick list of those Daily Kos features as they were on DK3 and links to information about where to find them and what, if anything, has changed:

In addition, there are many features that have been added to DK4. These are as follows (sections to be added):

Front Page Blog

The contents of the front page blog is still be on the left-hand side of the Daily Kos front page under DK4, only a bit further down. Between the logo and the start of the blog are a horizontal menu and search box, and then the Community Spotlight, which is the old Diary Rescue, though diaries are added to it at any time, day or night, rather than only appearing all at once late in the evening.

Users can adjust the number of posts that appear on the front page by editing their Profile. The maximum number used to be 25, you can make it higher if you want. The higher that number is, the longer your browser page will be.

Previous Main Menu

On Daily Kos (DK3) until the switchover, in the right-hand column under the "The State of the Nation" header, you could see a series of orange bars with headers in them; under each bar was an area of white background with one link per line. The section headers were:

The above links will list all of the DK3 menu items,

Menu

This DK3 section had six items:

  1. Home on old Daily Kos maps to DK4's Home at the left side of the line of menu links under the "Daily Kos" banner. Click on it to take you back to the home page if you're on some other page. If you're already on the home page, it will refresh the page for you. You can also click on the "Daily Kos" banner itself (to the left of the flag) to get to the home page.
  2. [username]'s Page maps to a few places on DK4. To get the closest equivalent—your Diary list with other menu links/tabs—look on the right side of the page below the Feature box for a "Welcome Back [username]" box, and click on Diaries in that box (which takes you to My Page, the My Diaries submenu). Other options include clicking on the [username] in that "Welcome Back" box, which goes to your Profile page (My Page, Profile submenu) and from which you can click on "My Diaries", or click on My Page, which is second from the left in the menu under the "Daily Kos" header, which will initially display your My Stream listing (My Page, My Stream submenu), but from which you can redirect to "My Diaries".
  3. Diaries maps most closely to DK4's Diaries, which is the fifth of six menu links under the "Daily Kos" banner. By default, it takes you to a "list view" of the most recent Daily Kos diaries: each entry has a diary link (that, when moused over, will display the first couple of lines of the diary), author link, date/time posted, number of comments, number of recs, and number of people who have hotlisted the diary. There is no "blog view" of the Recent Diaries feature, which is what Daily Kos has now, though they are planning to implement one in the future.
  4. DKosopedia maps indirectly to DK4's top menu's FAQ link or the Frequently Asked Questions link way down at the very bottom of the page below the double black lines, to the right of the copyright notice, on the second line headed About. Once there on the FAQ page, you have to click either on the blue picture at the upper left, or on the "Main Page" link just below it, to get to the main page of the dKosopedia. (Note: this may or may not change before DK4 is released. It's odd that there is no direct link to the dKosopedia in DK4, especially as the "Post a Comment" Help button information explains how to link a term directly to its dKosopedia entry.)
  5. Search maps to the right side of the line of menu links below the "Daily Kos" banner (actually, it's under "The State of the Nation"), with the search term going in the textbox and the "Go" button taking you to the search page. Whatever is in the textbox will be pre-filled on the search page, where you can select between Diaries, Comoments, Users, Groups, and Tags searches. At the present time, both the Diaries and Comments searches are still under construction.
  6. Login/Logout map to the top orange bar on the page. If you're not logged in, the new Log In (now two words) will appear second from the right end; the new Log Out' will be on the right end of the bar.

About

This section has six items, and they all map on DK4 to the section at the very bottom of the page below the double black lines, to the right of the copyright notice:

  1. About (yes, the same term is used in the menu header and the first item) maps on DK4 to the Masthead entry in the About line. It's on the second line. Note that the History and Writers links currently take you to subheadings on the overall About page below the masthead.
  2. Advertising maps on DK4 to the Advertising Overview entry in the new Advertise menu line. It's on the third line, along with other advertising links.
  3. Contact Us maps on DK4 to the General Inquiries entry in the new Contact menu line. It's on the fifth and last line. DK4 has added a new Media Inquiries selection on this line.
  4. Daily Kos Store maps on DK4 to the Store menu line. It's on the fourth line; at the moment, the only link on that line is Shirts.
  5. FAQ maps to the Frequently Asked Questions link, on the second line headed About. It also maps to the top menu's FAQ link, to the left of the Search box.
  6. Candidates maps to the Candidates link, on the second line headed *About*. This is currently a link to the 2008 ActBlue Daily Kos "Orange to Blue" page; at some point it will presumably be updated to the 2012 version of this page.

Tools

The section has up to four items, depending on whether you're a subscriber and/or a Trusted User:

  1. New Diary Entry maps to a number of places. Two of these:
    1. In your Welcome back box, under Diaries, click New
    2. From My Page, the My Diaries submenu, click Create New Diary
  2. Your Hotlist has three distinct sections on Daily Kos now:
    1. The top section, "[username's] Hotlist", maps on DK4 to My Page, the Following submenu, and its Hotlisted Diaries sub-submenu
    2. The second section, "Diary watchlist", is now (on DK4) part of your My Stream list: all the diaries appear in chronological order there, including those on your watchlist of people you've subscribed to, which is now those people you're Following). The list of people can be found on your profile page: it's the "Following" list in the lefthand column there. You can also get to it by going to My Page, the Following submenu, and its People sub-submenu
    3. The third section, "New replies", maps on DK4 to My Page, the Comments submenu, and its My Recent Replies sub-submenu, but in somewhat different form. What's listed is the replies made to your comments within the past two days (48 hours), but without regard to whether you've read the diary the comment's (and hence the reply) since then. At the moment, the list is sorted by how recent your original comments was, rather than how recently the reply was made, but it should be changed shortly to order by how recently the reply was made. There may be further enhancements to the function in the weeks ahead.
  3. Show/Hide Ads: This only shows if you are a subscriber, and have the option not to see ads. In your DK4 Welcome Back box it will either say Show Ads if you're currently hiding ads, or Hide Ads if you're currently showing ads.
  4. Hidden Comments: This only displays if you are a Trusted User. You can find it on DK4 in your Welcome Back box under Comments. Trusted Users have both a Recent Comments link and a Hidden Comments link, while users with less mojo will only see Recent Comments in that box.

Diary Drafts

While Daily Kos currently allows you to see Diary Drafts information on the front page, it isn't located there in DK4. It is, however, only a click or two away:

  1. In your Welcome back box, under Diaries, click Drafts
  2. From My Page, the My Diaries submenu, click Drafts

Recommended Diaries

This list can be found on DK4 in the same righthand column; it's now called Recommended, and lists the top twelve diaries rather than eight. Furthermore, there is a "Next" link under the list on the righthand side, that will show you the next twelve diaries, and you can proceed through the list twelve at a time. You can move back toward the present in the list by using the "Previous" link that appears starting on the second page of recommended diaries.

Recent Diaries

The Recent Diaries list is not on the DK4 front page; instead, you need to click on Diaries in the menu directly below the Daily Kos banner. This will show the 100 most recent diaries; you can hover over their titles to see the starting text of the diary.

The ten most recent diaries also appear in a Most Recent list on the right column of the People, Groups, Diaries, Tags, and Search pages. It's the fourth list down, underneath the Hot Tags list.

The front page has, instead, a fifty-diary Recently Rec'd list. This is a version of the Recent Diaries list that only shows those diaries that have received at least one Recommend from a Trusted User.

DailyKos Feeds

I have no idea where this has gone (if it exists at all) or how feeds work. I can't see it on the DK4 front page. Sorry.

Blogroll

The Daily Kos blogroll is in the new very orange Table of Contents section near the bottom of the front page on DK4, between the final front-page diary and the "Browse Tags" section. It's in the third and fourth columns (the two on the right half of the box).

Diary Pages

The old diary pages and the ones under DK4 are quite similar, but there are some differences. Here's an analysis of your typical diary page, and where everything can be found on DK4:

Your Blog Page

You have to be logged in to see all the features on this page, and for you to be able to get there by the means discussed below. There are two quick options on DK4:

Here's how your old Daily Kos page—with Diary, Comments, Ratings, Subscription, Drafts, Blogroll, Recs, and My Profile—compares to your DK4 page (note: I'm using mixed case for DK4 even when it's all caps for easier reading):

  1. Diary maps to DK4's My Diaries in its Blog View submenu selection. This retains the blog look of your own Daily Kos diaries. List View offers a set of links to your diaries; you can mouse over these links to get a look at the first sentence or so of each diary. List View also offers these diaries 100 per page, so you can see more at a time.
  2. Comments maps to DK4's Comments in its My Comments submenu selection. It shows you 30 per page, with most recent comment first. It no longer offers a search screen along with it (though this may come later), but it will tell you how many comments you've written since you joined Daily Kos. (The beta shows totals that only include comments made as of late May, plus any added in the course of the beta.)
  3. Ratings maps to DK4's Comments in its My Comment Ratings submenu selection. It oddly doesn't tell you what your rating was, a 4 (Recommend) or a 0 (Hide). I'm hoping that the actual rating or rating number given will be added to the display before too long.
  4. Subscription maps to DK4's Profile in its My Subscription submenu selection. It tells you if you are a subscriber, and if so, when that subscription expires, if ever. Note that anyone who is a subscriber will have circular bronze version of the flag guy displayed between their Mojo graph and their UID and join date in the lefthand box at the top of their profile. (Other icons that can appear there include a "TU" blue ribbon, a red-and-white life preserver indicating that this is one of the people who rescues diaries for the Community Spotlight, and a silver Beta indicating one of the major beta testers.)
  5. Drafts maps to DK4's My Diaries in its Drafts submenu selection. As in the old Daily Kos, you can also get to Drafts from the righthand Menu (in DK4's "Welcome Back") box: Diaries is at the top; choose the Drafts link.
  6. Blogroll maps to DK4's Following in its Blogroll submenu selection.
  7. Recs, which showed the diaries you recommended, remains dependent on your Profile. To allow these to be seen, go to Profile in its Edit Profile submenu selection, and look under Display Preferences for Share diary recommends you've made: set it to "on" if you want people to be able to see it, and "off" if you don't. If you set it to "on", I think the recs will appear on your Profile page for people to see, though I'm not positive if they do so, or whether they appear elsewhere.
  8. My Profile in the old Daily Kos would show your current profile in sections, but in an editable format more like the DK4 Profile page in its Edit Profile submenu selection, thought that's displayed in DK4 as a single page, rather than several separate pages as used to be. To update your DK4 avatar picture, use the "choose file" button on your DK4 Edit Profile page to browse to an image file on your computer, then click the "save" button at the bottom of the Edit Profile page. Don't panic if your avatar picture doesn't change immediately; sometimes it takes several minutes. It is NOT necessary to upload your avatar pic from an image hosting site (like flickr); it can be uploaded directly from your computer to your DKos4 profile.

People

The People page gives you general information about your fellow Kossacks. It offers five ordered lists on the entire membership of Daily Kos, one 100-user page at a time. You can, of course, click on any username to see that person's profile. The four columns after Last Diary are Number of Diaries, Number of Comments, Number of Followers, and Mojo. (An infinity sign under Mojo means the person is a Contributing Editor, a site developer, or someone higher up on the food chain. Featured Writers do not have infinite mojo, with the exception of Bill in Portland Maine, who is Special.) What would be very nice is to have numbers at the top and bottom of the page for all of the lists, at least, to let you know where in the list you are.

  1. Most Recommended: this is the default, and gives you a list of the Most Recommended Authors. I'm guessing that this means authors who have received the most diary recommendations since they joined, rather than comment recs.
  2. Frequent This Month: This tells you who has published the most diaries in the past month (the header reads: "most frequent authors this month").
  3. Most Prolific: This is who's written the most diaries ever. Again, it's mostly front page to start, but jotter and teacherken have slipped into the top twelve.
  4. Most Followed: This lists who has the most followers around here. Mostly, that means who has the most subscribers on the current Daily Kos, and will show up in the most Streams on DK4.
  5. Highest Mojo: This is based on the new DK4 mojo calculation. Having "infinite" mojo, as most of the front-pagers do, doesn't count here, interestingly enough; the first person with that infinity sign doesn't show up until the second page. However, there are over a thousand usernames with five-bar mojo in the beta.

Groups

Groups are collections of one or more people who want to collaborate on a topic or idea and publish diaries about this topic under the auspices of a group. As a group can gain readers and followers just as a single diarist can, this helps build an audience for all the group's publications, regardless of the individual author. Groups can also republish diaries written by others that are related to their topic.

The Group menu page lists all the groups that have been created in four ways, twenty groups per page. The default is Most Recent, the groups most recently created. Others include Most Followed (the groups that have the most followers), "Most Active This Month" (presumably most active in the past 30 days, but it's unclear what "activity" involves), and "Most Prolific", which is in order of the total diaries published (or republished) by that group on Daily Kos.

If you are a Trusted User, you can create a group, which can be found on this same menu page in a link to the right of the "Groups" header: Create New Group. Once the group is created, you can invite other Daily Kos users, whether they are Trusted Users or not, to join in writing for the group's blog or managing the group, and suggesting diaries for republication to the group's blog.

If you're interested in how groups work, please see the What are Groups? section of this document for more information.

Diaries

Diaries are blog posts created by a single user or by a user in collaboration with a group. The Diaries page gives information about published diaries, from what was recently published, to diaries which have been noted by the community in some way.

The default and basic list everyone knows from the current Daily Kos is the Recent Diaries list. This is like the Recent Diaries section on the front page, with a little extra information, and the ability to mouse over a diary title and preview its first line or two. There is no "blog-like view" for Diaries at the moment, though it is being considered for eventual addition: it is available on the current Daily Kos right-column Menu section, under "Diaries".

What's new are twelve lists of diaries. They come in three categories:

Within those three categories, you have four time intervals with which to examine which diaries got the most Recommends, Comments, or Hotlist inclusions:

Tags

This page offers Most Popular Tags in the Today (the default display for the page), This Week, This Month, and All Time periods, and also a Most Followed Tags selection.

Below your selected list (one of the above five), there's a list of the Daily Kos "Browse Tags" (the same list as appears at the bottom of all Daily Kos web pages), all of which can be followed by clicking on the hearts, and a section to "Find Tags by Type" (such as "Election", "Media", "Diary Series", etc.). I imagine both browse tags list and tag types list will expand somewhat as time goes on, and we find the need for more tags to highlight and more categories of tags.

Individual Tags

If you select a tag, either from the Tags page or from a Hot Tags list or from a tag at the end of a diary, you will go to that tag's page. (Every tag has a page, with a URL of dailykos.com/news/tagname.) A tag page has a lot of information on it. This includes:

  1. Most Recent: the most recent diaries that used this tag. This is the default, and is displayed from most to least recent.
  2. Current Rec'd: the most recently recommended diaries for this tag, in reverse chronological order. The list may, like the "Recently Rec'd" list on the front page, require at least one Trusted User recommendation before a diary can appear here.
  3. All Time Rec'd: the most highly recommended diaries for this tag, listed in descending order starting with the diary that has the most recs.
  4. Best of Tag: This would appear to be an editor-selected list of diaries with this tag, but how a diary is selected has not yet been revealed.
  5. Prolific Authors: This lists the people who have written diaries using this tag, from the person who has written the most diaries using it, in order down to the person who has written the fewest (but at least one diary). This gives author information such as the date of the last diary written with this tag, the total number of diaries written with this tag, and the number of the author's followers and the author's mojo.
  6. Recommended Authors: This may be who's gotten the most total diary recommends in the diaries they've written with this tag, but that's just a guess. It uses the same columns as Prolific Authors.

Other DK4 FAQs

The list of questions will be added to (and answered) as time allows:

Under DK4, there is no limit to the number of diaries the site will let you publish in a single day. It's up to you to determine what your audience is looking for, and how much content they will welcome.

Mojo will now have many more factors than are used on the current Daily Kos site, including those for site engagement, writing diaries, and being a part of the community. See kos's Mojo and DK4 article for full details.

Many people need to Recommend it. The exact number varies, and the more recent a rec is, the more it counts: recs "decay" in value over time, and they initially decay more quickly than later. There are 12 slots on the front-page Recommended list, and diaries are polled every few minutes to get their latest "score". The top 12 scores are shown on the front page, and you can click on "Next" to see those next in line. Only recommends made in the first 24 hours the diary is posted will count toward the diary's score.

All recently published diaries are eligible for this list, but only those that have received at least one Recommend from a Trusted User — a user who is at Mojo Level 3 or above — will be listed. The diaries are listed in strict chronological order, most recently published first, 50 at a time. Click on Next to see the next 50, and so on.

In the top menu under the site banner (the one that starts with "Home" on the left edge), there's a Diaries entry. Click on that. The Diaries page appears, with a list of the most recent 100 diaries given. Point your mouse at a diary title to cause the first sentence or two appear.

What are Groups?

Groups are collections of Daily Kos users who have come together to speak as a collective voice. Groups can be organized around a specific topic, or simply be people who like to collaborate. Groups can include diaries that are written by the group, individually and working together, and also diaries that group members have found on Daily Kos and want to highlight.

How is a Group Started?

One or more people get the idea for a group and decide to start it. The person who actually sets up the group must be a Trusted User, and is called the "founder".

The main Groups page available from the front page menu and a user's own My Groups page both display a Create New Group link to Trusted Users only. It doesn't matter from which page you start: click on the "Create New Group" link. You will be taken to the "Create a New Group" page.

Creating a Group

There are three fields you need to fill out to create a group:

Once these are filled out to your satisfaction — the Group Name and Description can be edited later, if desired — click the Save New Group box. Assuming that your Group Username is not already used by another group or user account, your group will be created, and you'll be ready to start work on it.

Finding Groups

There are two ways to participate in groups: reading them, and writing for them. Before that, of course, you have to find the group: go to the Groups page, and look through the lists, or use Group search (currently under development) to help you find likely groups. You can also look for certain tags to see who's writing about those things, and see if any are being published as part of groups.

Once you find a group name, click on it. This will take you to their home page, which includes their blog. You can read the blog then and there, but you can also do more.

Note: You can see who the members are in a group by clicking on the Members menu item on their home page.

Reading Group Diaries

If you want to add a group to your Stream, so the group's new diaries always show up there, look at the top of the right column on the group's home page, where there's a box that says See More By [groupname]. Underneath the group's name is an orange heart with the word "Follow" next to it. Click on the heart or word, and the heart will be checked. That's it; you're following the group. To stop following the group, click on the checked heart (or word), and it will uncheck itself. Voila.

Writing for Groups

If you wish to write for the group, you can always ask to join. Send the group a message by clicking on Send New Message in their home page's "See More By" box. This takes you to a page with a message box that has the name of the group already filled in. Type your message, then click on Send to send it.

They may say yes, or they may say no. Groups are new, and likely people will be feeling their way as they start. If they say yes, you may find out by getting a message from a member of the group containing an invitation to join the group. Be sure to click on the "accept" link in the message; that's what completes the invitation process.

DK4 Page Descriptions

For want of a better category, here's material on what some of the new pages look like. They may be similar to the old pages or not, but in case a line by line description helps, here it is.

DK4 Diary Pages

Under DK4, when you click on a diary title in one of the lists in the right column of the page, or in your stream, or on the Diaries page, the diary will display. Here are the elements of those pages.

Terms and Definitions

This section will have some new terms, as well as existing terms already in the regular Daily Kos FAQ, but that changes in DK4 have required updates (or massive changes) to these definitions.

Trusted User

Trusted Users are members of Daily Kos who participate in the site to a significant degree, and have gained a certain level of "mojo" for that participation. The types of participation eligible for mojo have increased under DK4, though the exact formula is secret, and is tweaked from time to time.

Members need to have had an account on Daily Kos for a certain minimum period (traditionally three months), and contributing to the community through some or all of the following actions:

Mojo in some of the above categories diminishes after your level of activity diminishes. There is also mojo given for longevity (how long your account has been around), and it increases modestly as the years pass.

There are a number of ways to tell whether you're a Trusted User:

Trusted Users are allowed to Hide comments, Edit Tags, and Create Groups. In addition, a Recommend from a Trusted User makes a diary eligible for the front page's "Recently Rec'd" list.

Retrieved from "http://localhost../../../d/k/4/DK4_FAQ_5eba.html"

This page was last modified 17:42, 1 September 2011 by dKosopedia user HeyMikey. Based on work by Al Rodbell and dKosopedia user(s) Sardonyx. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.


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