Talk:Daily Kos/Archive 1

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Contents

BiPM/Scotty Show

Question: Are these sections really necessary? It seems like mini-communities within the site really aren't very encyclopedic, since someone browsing this article won't have any interest in knowing about the minicommunities (and anyone who is likely would already be posting on dKos). I suppose BiPM is significant due to his frontpage Cheers and Jeers posts, but the Scotty Show really seems irrelevant. I've been reading dKos daily for three or four years now, but not as a regular in the community, so my perspective on the community may be a little different than the rest of the contributors to this page. Virogtheconq 22:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Truthfulness/fact checking

Does anyone know DailyKos' record for upholding truthfulness and accuracy in the articles that it blogs? This seems like an important big issue as blogs are not typically held to the same standards as conventional sources of journalism.--153.104.27.107 21:14, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


Financial contributions

The passage about contributions to Democratic candidates, all of whom lost, is a little confusing. Obviously, Daily Kos readers would have made contributions to many candidates, some of whom won. I gather that this refers to contributions made through the DK website. Can someone elaborate on the mechanism -- who identified the candidates, and how contributions were tabulated to count toward the total given in the article? If it seems like too much detail for the article, can we just link to something that explains it and gives the dollar total? JamesMLane 20:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Markos selected a group of candidates whom he singled out for special attention from the community at dKos; those are the candidates being referred to in this article. dKos readers used a variety of different methods to ensure that their contributions could be tracked back to dKos; the simplest of which was to make their contributions for $x.01, rather than for $x (other web sites picked other odd change amounts to allow their donations to be similarly tracked). In addition, there were some donation aggregation web sites which allowed web sites to set up "accounts" to receive donations which would then be forwarded appropriately.
While it is true that all of the dKos candidates lost, it is also true that all of them were expected to lose: Markos was deliberately selecting candidates who were not receiving significant other support; candidates who were expected to win — or even be competitive — were, by and large, already being funded by the DNC, DCCC, and other national and regional organizations. The dKos candidates were the manifestation of his belief that every seat should be contested, even the ones which were not expected to be competitive. As such, he considered the campaign successful in that it forced several Republican incumbents to spend time and money defending "safe" seats that they had never had to defend before: For instance, between Tom DeLay in Texas and Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado, he points out that the dKos seed money tied up well over ten times as much GOP money in return, and kept two of the GOP's most prolific fundraisers back home campaigning in their own districts for several weeks each, rather than roaming the country raising money for other candidates, like they had in past elections. For that matter, at least two of his candidates came exceptionally close to winning what would have been significant upsets, so it's not like the races in question were all pointless blowouts. --Ray Radlein 11:03, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It would be nice if the article could include at least a summary of some of these points, appropriately attributed to Kos with a hyperlink to something on his website in which he says so. Is that possible? JamesMLane 11:09, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I think so. Right about the time I was 5,000 words into my "brief" reply, it occurred to me that I could have saved myself a lot of typing by simply going to dKos and grabbing his post-mortem on the whole thing.
Needless to say, I then went to dKos and spent a few minutes rooting around to find the controversial post that was supposedly deleted, and forgot all about the other reason I might want to go there. :-)
BTW, I noticed your comment in the edit history of the main page, and, FWIW, dKos does allow right-wing (or any other wing) users to register and comment freely. On the other hand, the site does feature a user-moderated ratings system (a la Slashdot, sort of) which can moderate trollish posts into invisibility; so politeness would probably be an especially important requirement for any individuals who were so inclined. --Ray Radlein 11:47, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, this is very true. Also, there've been recommended diaries by Republicans, albeit contentious ones. Mcsweet


Oh yeah, they just LOVE republicans at DailyKos. Kind of like the love they receive right here at Wik!

I noticed that virtually every section, even those dealing in controversy, always end with a paragraph that makes DailyKos look good or vindicates them in some way. This is in stark contrast to virtually every paragraph in the Bill O'Reilly, Pat Robertson etc etc articles where each section ends with an attack on the subject or a quote of theirs to make them sound like a nut.

I guess this is all just a coincidence, huh???

Big Daddy 13:47, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Connection with Dean Campaign

from Zephyr Teachout aka Zonkette, the former online organizer for the Howard Dean campaign.

On Dean’s campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients.

While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime. To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal.

Kos did make a disclosure about being hired as consultants for the Dean campaign in June of 2003, but what is interesting is what the Dean campaign thought it was getting by hiring Kos, compared to what Kos thought.

On his blog, Kos claimed that he was providing "techinical" advice to Dean: "But for the record, I will not discuss my role within the Dean campaign, other than to say it's technical, not message or strategy." However, the Dean campaign flatly contradicted this, by saying that they paid Kos as a political (i.e. a message) consultant. Being a "technical" consultant implies that he acted as a webmaster/designer, not a policy wonk.

Pronunciation

How do you pronounce "Kos"? Is it kohs (like "flows") or kawhs (like "floss")?

"flows" is close, but he seems to say it more like "dose" - confusingly, he used to say in his FAQ that it's pronounced like "rose", but apparently he just has a weird way of saying "rose", because i've seen him say the name on TV and radio a number of times, and it basically sounds like "dose". I should put this in the article, huh Mcsweet
If one considers that the name 'Kos' is what Marcos' squadmates called him in the service, it would be clearer that the pronounciation is indeed more like 'dose', the second syllable in his name. The 's' is not drawn out, as it would be in 'flows'. Stymnus

The Daily Kos Logo

The article should be updated to reflect the new version of the Daily Kos logo. It changed about a week ago from what is pictured in the article.

Rather than obsess over the logo, I think a little content-check is in order. The dust-up over the mercenaries was HUGE...even amongs democrats. As it stands, this section is missing the essence of the outrage that was expressed against Kos.

I'd like to see the article include this piece:

"The campaign manager for Democratic Congressman Martin Frost wrote a scathing rebuke on Frost's behalf "As a former Army Reserves member, spouse of an Army General on active duty and an American, Martin finds these words extremely irresponsible and highly offensive. ...There is no place for these disgusting remarks in this nation's discussion on foreign policy" [1]."

Big Daddy 13:50, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Street Prophets

I added information about a new community within dKos, AFAIK, the first such sub-community, and it was deleted as "linkspam". I find this incomprehensible - you could argue that it wasn't important enough (yet) to be in the article, but "linkspam"? Weird. Guettarda 23:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I could find nothing on that website that indicated it was an official DailyKos affiliate. It's a site that hasn't been up for a month yet, so how it is important enough to be in an encyclopedia? If I'm wrong in thinking it's not official, apologies, but it looked to me to be some guy's commentary on DailyKos rather than by (or sanctioned by), and so I removed it.
It's Wikipedia. Things get edited out sometimes, and sometimes they get put back in when the edit is proved to be wrong. Calm down. Beginning 18:26, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

It's significant because it is an expansion of the largest politican web community into a new area. As for "nothing on the website", how about the "about" button?

Who's behind the site? Markos Moulitsas provides the technical and administrative muscle; pastordan is solely responsible for site content.

And, btw - calling someone a spammer is a pretty serious allegation. Guettarda 18:39, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

No offense, but you're an admin and haven't seen anyone use the term "link spam" on Wikipedia before?
You're right, I didn't see it before. Your issue should be with their website not being accessible for users with visual impairment, not me being unable to "see" it.  ;)
It's over. The info's back in there now. Life moves on. Beginning 19:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Allegations of Non-Patriotism

Can someone provide some citations for this section - as it stands it seems overly vague and fluffy. Guettarda 20:11, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Do those links help any? I think they give a fair overview of the patriotism/non-patriotism debate.

  • The Dean Barnett/National Review post, while a decent source, does not document accusations of "lack of patriotism" - he is critical of leftwing bloggers, but does the citation does not support the statement made
  • The LGF post and the Iowahawk post aren't really appropriate sources either - there is no way to say whether this is representative of how dKos is viewed by rightwingers. To support a statement like this you need some sort of analysis of the data - a quote from someone who has studied the phenomenon.
  • The Armando posting again cannot be taken as a representative view of Kossacks - it's one person's view (albeit, arguably the most prominent member after Markos himself).

To make generalisations we need a source. The data is out there for someone to study the perception of patriotism by rightwingers, but we can't look around and say it is so. Generalisations need to be based on representative samples - but we can't do that study ourselves (as that would be original research). A statement like that needs a source who has actually done the research and published it somewhere. We can't just look at a couple sites and say "x is the case". Guettarda 21:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Wording in Fallujah controversy

Unless the four people killed in Fallujah had been found guilty of some crime, the word "executed" is inappropriate. Andjam 12:59, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

What about the overused phrase "gangland style execution"? I'd say "execution" is commonly used for intentional, merciless killing. I'm not say that it's the perfect word here, but I don't think it's inappropriate either. Guettarda 13:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
It may be used a lot, but it does not neccessarily make it appropriate. Andjam 14:13, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Someone has reverted security contractor to mercenary. Unless that wikipedian, or Moulitsas or the people who killed the four people wish to prove that they were mercenaries rather than security contractors, the four people should be called security contractors or alleged mercenaries. Andjam 14:13, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

"Security contractor" is newspeak. They are ex-soldiers, hired to fight. The plain English word is mercenary. Guettarda 14:56, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Would a bouncer at your local nightclub be called a mercenary in your dictionary? Some of them are ex-soldiers, and they are hired to fight. Andjam 15:09, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't know where you live, but around here, as far as I know, bouncers don't carry automatic weapons, do not regularly engage in gunbattles...and are not hired to use lethal force. I'm sorry if the word "fight" was ambiguous to you. If you don't realise that the war in Iraq is a little different to the situation outside your local bar, maybe you should refrain from editing topics you know so little about. Guettarda 15:53, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
WP:NPA. Andjam 11:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

More to the point, "security contractor" is an in-group, non-neutral phrase. It's no more appropriate in an encyclopaedia than 1337. What English word or phrase, accessible to an ordinary person who is not a newsjunkie, better describes the people who were killed? We are writing an international encyclopaedia here, not an in-group chat. Guettarda 16:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I felt that it'd be more neutral than "mercenary". But you're right, it's a bit of a neologism. Maybe if I come up with something better, I'll mention it here. Would you have any objections if I changed "executed" to "killed"? I'm not saying that the use of "executed" is evil incarnate, I merely think "killed" would be better. Andjam 11:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

What about calling them Blackwater USA employees in the non-quotation bit? Andjam 13:13, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

If anyone still wants to have "mercenary" outside of quotations, can they discuss it here please? Andjam 12:09, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Lay off the POV-pushing. We write in English, not political talking points and newspeak. Guettarda 15:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The word "mercenary" does not imply people who are themeselves contracted to protect other contractors who are hired to build things or perform some service in a dangerous area. Whom are they "waging war" against? If they are attacked or threatened they fight back in self defense. I seriously doubt those four Blackwater men were interested in engaging anything other than a paycheck and a safe return home. Kos himself said it all: They were mercenaries; so fuck them. By the way, I'd like to compare the military records of those four men with Kos's oft-mentioned military service. Did Kos ever fight in combat? He never clarifies that unless asked to. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.181.218.19 (talk • contribs) November 8, 2005.

So are you saying that, in order to be a mercenary someone has to fight for the love of it and not for the pay? As I said before, we use English, not newspeak. (And as to the last part of it, Markos mentions many times that he does not have combat experience; like the entire paragraph, the final sentace seems to bear little relationship with reality. Guettarda 06:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

How’s about “security guard”. TDC 19:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Security guards with a carte blache to kill? Security guards who are paid several times as much as soldiers? You must live in a fun neighbourhood. Guettarda 20:05, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, the Blackwater page does not describes them as "mercenaries", first of all. The pay is irrelevant as well. Military personel have a legal obligation to do what they are told, Blackwater folk don’t, and accordingly have to be paid much more to do so. As far as I know, the "mercenaries" in Iraq, are not participating in military operations, only security work, i.e. they don’t look for fights, only protect themselves and their clients when forced to do so. TDC 20:11, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I see your point regarding mercenaries - I hadn't thought about the distinction between combat and non-combat...though that distinction is pretty much academic in Iraq. Anyway, based on the definition at mercenary based on the "Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions", they do not meet the definition of mercenary. On the other hand, they are not security guards either. "Security contractor" is misleading as well, in my opinion - it's newspeak. The Wikipedia article is at private military contractor - would that be an acceptable (linked) term? In addition to being the term in use, it's also far clearer English, IMO. Thoughts? Guettarda 20:38, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

That seems like a more appropriate term. TDC 20:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Politicians at Daily Kos

Should we mention a list of politicians at Daily Kos? Yesterday, John Kerry signed up and posted a diary while in the past, various Democrats such as Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold have appeared. --Blue387 19:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

From what I can tell, many post, most of them are not frontpaged - it would be difficult to compile a full list. But it certainly makes sense to mention some of them, and the fact that dKos is influential enough to attract them, etc. Guettarda 20:06, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I added some of the more prominent ones to the list like Louise Slaughter, John Conyers, and Jon Corzine. And while they haven't posted, I've found usernames registered for Hillary Clinton, Jeff Bingaman, Patrick Leahy, Byron Dorgan, and Patty Murray. I'm not sure if these are legit, but typically kos wont allow registration of a username of a politician until after he checks it out. FleetAdmiralJ 20:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps if a third column was added, there might be more room? The Daily Kos article is not that long anyway, so I would say err on the side of inclusion of as many people as possible.

Paul Hackett

The fundraising role for Paul Hackett (running for congress in Ohio 2nd) should be brought up since it was a ground breaking on line event among liberals all over USA and also gained attention among international bloggers.

New section

I believe the following section needs to be sourced. The first line especially is non-neutral. Guettarda 02:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Censorship

While the site claims to support free speech and that Democrats support free speech this is far from the truth. The site frequently bans people from posting, even people who are popular with other kossites, if they are part of the good old boy's front page club. One such instance occurred when one member davybaby, one of the good old boy's, compared all women to Ann Coulter. When another member tri confronted him about this, they were banned from the site. Additionally, those who try to point out just how similar the Democrats and Republicans are, are also frequently banned.

I dont think this is really, supported. In a diary kos posted in April 2005 [2] the site had 50,533 registered users, but only 623 users had been banned over the course of , I think, 17 months (so, 36 or 37 a month on average, or a tad more than one a day), which is 1.2% of users. Also, another claim of censorship is the troll rating of comments. Again, out of 2.5 million comments at the time, only 5,607 were hidden (about 0.2%). Also, I seem to recall kos saying that the vast majority of those were the system autobanning people through getting too much negative mojo by getting too many 0 (now troll) ratings FleetAdmiralJ 04:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Much as I dislike Daily Kos, I don't think that preventing people from saying things you don't want them to say on your privately owned property (in this case, a blog,) is really the same thing as censorship. He owns the blog, so he can make whatever rules he wants. - Curseman


Yearly Kos

Anyone feel this should be mentioned?

Yeah, I think it should be mentioned. --Blue387 15:33, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV dispute "Losing candidates"

These comments are inflammatory. I’m not saying they should be completely eliminated, but definitely stated in a more neutral, less partisan manner. The source cited for this, Redstate, is a political adversary to DailyKos, and definitely should not be used or taken as a neutral source of this information. A news organization perhaps? And, I don’t feel that should be listed under controversies section, as it is not controversial.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Red pepper (talk • contribs) 21:56, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Furthermore, when you consider that most of the candidates in question were not mainstream candidates, that doesn't say much about the arguments. Kos selected candidates that weren't receiving the love at the level of Obama or Salazar. Mongiardo in fact only became relevant when Jim Bunning started having his issue (by the way, on a second issue, where did the debate from before on the other inflammatory section go?) Jlove1982 01:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Also, I just realized this same information is above in the entry. It's under "Campaign Fundraising". So repreating it twice doesn't work and is just designed to represent a specific POV. Jlove1982 05:16, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
      • Oops, I completely missed that too. Good call. Red pepper 09:25, 9 June 2006 (UTC)