I missed most of the weekend hubbub about profanity in diaries and the true meaning of profanity. What I have seen has gotten me thinking about the difference between how we see ourselves as a community and how we want this site to be seen by outsiders. In the short time that I have been a user here, Daily Kos has become a major force in the liberal blogospere. Not only are Kos and other FrontPagers quoted in the mainstream press, but more and more politicians are now posting here.
In light of the site's higher profile, I would like to suggest a change in the front page for visitors: vastly expanding the recommended diaries list (15-20) and eliminating the recent diaries list (or reducing to 5). I am not advocating any change in the front page as seen by users once they log in.
This change would provide the dKos community with more opportunity to recommend diaries that we consider among our best and most worthy of being seen by the whole world. It would also reduce or eliminate the opportunity for diaries that Kossacks consider redundant, trollish or poorly written to be seen by outsiders.
This change would not eliminate the possibility of freepers or journalists taking a random post here out of context, after all anyone can register for an account. It also wouldn't eliminate the possibility that a politician could be embarrassed by having a diary next to one titled, "Fuckety Fuck Fuck Fuck" on the recommended list. But it would provide visitors to the site a first impression of a wider variety of what we value most highly. And just because we'd bother to wash our hands and scrub our faces to meet the company, it wouldn't mean that we'd stop talking about Armando's other cheeks on the flipside (or that Armando's ass wouldn't occasionally make it to the recommended list).