DailyKos History

From dKosopedia

The internet blog Daily Kos was created by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga on May 26, 2002. Its focus is on political analysis, helping the electoral fortunes of the Democratic Party, and activism for left-of-center causes.

1 Basic Outline
2 Purpose of this page
3 Some articles
4 Partial Timeline
5 Other Resources

Basic Outline

A brief outline of the history of the Daily Kos blog and website can be found on the DailyKos page.

Purpose of this page

This page has been created to link to articles about the history of Daily Kos.

Eventually, many of these articles will reside here on the dKosopedia. Some will be based on diaries that were originally written for the Daily Kos website (the current Scoop-based incarnation). Some will link directly to diaries or comments there, or on the earlier archived Movable Type site.

Some articles

A brief history: A story by kos on how he came to build Daily Kos, published August 5, 2004.
Top Comments: Markos Unleashed Edition: A diary by sardonyx listing all the posts in the first two weeks of Daily Kos, all by Markos, starting May 26, 2002.
Top Comments: Pre-scoop Edition: A diary by taylormattd giving some highlights from the Movable Type days of Daily Kos.
Top Comments: The Road to Scoop Edition: A diary by sardonyx on the events leading up to the introduction of Daily Kos on Scoop, and linking to posts and comments from the first evening of the Scoop site's existence.
Top Comments: Scooping Daily Kos Edition: A diary by sardonyx on the first days of Daily Kos under Scoop, and the retirement of the Movable Type site.
Top Comments: First Comments Edition: A diary by taylormattd reproducing the first comments made by Daily Kos denizens who later became well known, either here or at other blogs.
Daily Kos Front Pagers: lists all the known Daily Kos front-pagers/guest bloggers/Contributing Editors from their introduction over seven months after the creation of Daily Kos, on January 3, 2003, through the present, with links to their first post as official front pagers. Also listed are guest writers (who didn't have to actually help run the site). Based on two diaries by sardonyx: Top Comments: First Front-Page Posts, The Early Days covered Daily Kos from its start in 2002 through late 2005, and Top Comments: First Posts Edition, went from the introduction of the Class of 2006 through the introduction of the Class of 2008 in early December 2007.
A Brief History of DailyKos: The Great Leveling: A diary by dmsilev that examines the "growth and development of the user-diary community" of Daily Kos since the Scoop era began on October 13, 2003.
Top Comments: Six Years of Daily Kos: A diary by sardonyx published on the sixth anniversary of the founding of Daily Kos with various facts and figures about the blog, most highlighting the first year of publication.
Wanted: A Social History of Daily Kos by pontificator and a follow-on diary by social democrat, dKos Social History, cont'd: story time: these are primarily useful for the comments, in which various interesting nuggets of early history are dispensed. The links provided include one to an interesting diary by DHinMI, Unpopular Opinions At Daily Kos, published, as the other two were, in early December 2004 just as he and Meteor Blades were retiring as front pagers, and a new crew was taking over.
The Daily Kos History tag will display over thirty articles on Daily Kos history.

Partial Timeline

May 26, 2002: Daily Kos first post, Day 1, 12:57pm
January 3, 2003: first guest bloggers announced: Billmon and Steve Soto. Billmon makes first guest post.
January 4, 2003: Steve Soto makes first guest post.
February 18, 2003: one million pages served
February 21, 2003: 1000th post and 30,000th comment
April 3, 2003: Steve Gilliard makes first guest post
April 11, 2003: RonK, Seattle makes first guest post
June 26, 2003: Post announcing Scoop as next Daily Kos platform
September 19 and 20, 2003: Meteor Blades and DHinMI respectively make first guest posts
October 13, 2003: Scoop version of Daily Kos opened for user tryout. The next day, DNS changeover begun to move dailykos.com from Movable Type site to Scoop site
October 15, 2003: Movable Type version of Daily Kos inactivated; old site only available as read-only archive
October 24, 2003: Melanie makes first guest post; her final guest post is on November 8.
December 10, 2003: First Cheers and Jeers diary by Bill in Portland Maine
January 15 and 16, 2004: Trapper John and Tom Schaller make first guest posts respectively
January 27, 2004: limit of two diaries per user per day instituted
February 7, 2004: new users must now wait 24 hours before commenting and one week before writing a diary.
April 2, 2004: DemFromCT and theoria make first guest posts
June 4, 2004: ability to edit diaries introduced
August 10, 2004: ability to recommend diaries introduced; Recommended Diaries list debuts
December 3, 2004: DavidNYC, kid oakland, and Hunter make first guest posts
December 4, 2004: Armando and a gilas girl make first guest posts
March 31, 2005: Plutonium Page makes first guest post
April 5, 2005: Cheers and Jeers moves to front page
June 24, 2005: Daily Kos 3.0 released: new site look
September 28, 2005: limit of one diary per user per calendar day made permanent
October 10, 2005: Diary tagging by users introduced
November 4, 2005: Adam B makes first post as featured writer
December 15, 2005: georgia10, SusanG, and mcjoan make first guest posts
December 16, 2005: DarkSyde makes first guest post
March 13, 2006: New comments software: editing enhancements and new ratings
December 1, 2006: BarbinMD, Kagro X, Devilstower, and MissLaura make first guest posts
March 9, 2007: Daily Kos formally becomes a group blog: Markos as Founder/Publisher, plus 15 Contributing Editors and 2 Featured Writers
late November 2007: SusanG made Executive Editor of Daily Kos shortly before new contributing editors named in December (source: SusanG); announcement not made by Markos until February 7, 2008 and placed over a month later than that: "This happened maybe a month ago, but I never got around to announcing it..."
December 3, 4, and 5, 2007: brownsox, Scout Finch, and smintheus, respectively, make first guest posts; now 18 Contributing Editors
June 23, 2008: Sitemeter records the one billionth Daily Kos page view between 2:15:20am EDT and 2:15:35am EDT.
October 16, 2008: Jed L makes first guest post
December 6, 2008: LithiumCola makes first guest post
February 7–13, 2009: Several Contributing Editors—including Kagro X (Feb. 7); MissLaura, BarbinMD, brownsox, and Trapper John (Feb. 9); and DHinMI (Feb. 11)—change their usernames to include their real names first (e.g., David Waldman aka Kagro X). Jed L (Feb. 13) changes his username to his real name, Jed Lewison. BarbinMD reverts to her original username on March 23, 2009.
March 19–31, 2009: Some Contributing Editors—including Arjun Jaikumar (originally brownsox), Laura Clawson (originally MissLaura), and David Waldman (originally Kagro X) on March 19; Jake McIntyre (originally Trapper John) on March 24; and Dana Houle (originally DHinMI) on March 31—change their usernames to only be their real names.
early spring 2009: BarbinMD named Associate Editor (no formal announcement made). LithiumCola changes from Contributing Editor to Featured Writer (ditto).
May 11, 2009: Arjun Jaikumar goes on leave from the front page to join the DSCC.
May 14, 2009: Steve Singiser makes first guest post.
June 1, 2009: Meteor Blades becomes Director of Community; Markos announces the appointment on May 31.
June 28, 2009: LithiumCola makes final front-page post.
July 6, 2009: georgia10's final front-page post before going on leave (formally announced September 27) to work on a senatorial campaign in Illinois.
July 7, 2009: Dana Houle goes on leave from the front page to manage congressional, then gubernatorial campaign in Minnesota.
August 26, 2009: Dana Houle makes his final front-page posts.
January 7, 2010: Angry Mouse, Dante Atkins (formerly hekebolos) and exmearden named Featured writers; all three make initial posts on January 10.
March 11, 2010: Plutonium Page changes her username to be her real name, Page van der Linden.
May 14, 2010: mcjoan, SusanG, and BarbinMD change their usernames to be their real names. Joan McCarter now listed in Masthead as Senior Policy Editor. Angry Mouse now listed as a Contributing Editor.
May 18, 2010: Angry Mouse (now known as Kaili Joy Gray aka Angry Mouse) officially announced as Contributing Editor, Laurence Lewis (formerly Turkana) and brooklynbadboy named Featured Writers. Devilstower changes his username to Mark Sumner aka Devilstower. Both Laurence and brooklynbadboy write their first front-page posts the following day.
June 6, 2010: Page van der Linden makes her final front-page post.
August 16, 2010: Chris Bowers joins Daily Kos as manager of the newly launched email list and occasional front-pager; Mark Sumner (formerly aka Devilstower) and Kaili Joy Gray (formerly aka Angry Mouse) now only use their real names as usernames.
December 15, 2010: Open beta for version 4 of Daily Kos (DK4) goes live at 6:00 p.m. eastern time.
January 5, 2011: Arjun Jaikumar resumes posting to the front page.
January 9, 2011: georgia10 resumes posting to the front page, and at some point in the next few days changes her username to be Georgia Logothetis aka georgia10.
February 12, 2011: Daily Kos version 3 is shut down at noon eastern time (9am Pacific). The open beta closes approximately 13 hours later.
February 13, 2011: Daily Kos version 4 is launched, with first users logging in at 4:30am eastern time.
February 16, 2011: DavidNYC changes his username to David Nir; becomes site's Political Director and brings Swing State Project content to Daily Kos. Around this time, Jed Lewison listed on masthead as second Senior Policy Editor.

Other Resources

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This page was last modified 22:57, 22 February 2011 by dKosopedia user Sardonyx. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.