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You explained why you DON'T rec stories; now please tell me why you DO [1]

['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-07-15

We’re already working on some adjustments that should make it much easier to recommend a post when you’re on a phone. (Stay tuned: we will have more announcements about this whole process to share soon.) We will also give more thought to how to make the story Recommended star, and its significance, more obvious to a new user.

But let me clarify the story/tip jar distinction right away. Here’s a handy table for reference.

Story vs. Tip Jar Recommendations Story rec tip jar rec Option to apply Never closes Closes after 24 hours option to remove One-time removal Closes after 24 hours option to reapply Not possible Unlimited, within 24 hours site-wide recommendation impact Can boost story to Trending List

Can help keep story on Trending List

Can boost story to Daily Kos Recommended email list NA user recommendation impact Adds story to the recommender’s personal Recommends list

Adds to the story author’s mojo Adds to the story author’s mojo

While we’re on the topic of Tip Jars, I’ll review another useful purpose for having a tip jar: the ability it provides users to flag a story for inappropriate, bannable content. Our Community Moderation system empowers Trusted Users with the ability to throw flags on Tip Jars if the story is egregiously bad—spam, fake news, right-wing trollery etc. That feature helps keep the site relatively spam-free. Knock on wood, the relatively rare spam breakthroughs now merely offer us the chance to post some Rock Crusher images to tell the (bojoed) user what we really think about their contribution.

Apparently people have had to deal with spam for a long time. (Search the Image Library for Tag: rockcrusher to find more great images.)

A hidden Tip Jar also shows that the community has deemed the associated story to be in violation of the site’s Rules of the Road, thereby alerting later readers to read it with skepticism at best.

Your comments on elfling’s post also demonstrated that people’s recommendation habits vary greatly. Some site members recommend stories often, saying for example, “I view it as being part of the community,” while others habitually refrain. Some users recommend certain stories on sight because they esteem the author’s reputation and body of work so highly. Some simply forget to recommend stories they appreciate--especially those reading on phones, because they would need to scroll back up to click the Recommend star.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some users also made a point to explain what they DON’T like to recommend. Typically, these are stories that are merely an embedded tweet or a simple link to another source, along with stories that seem like click-bait. Somehow, those headlines with BREAKING don’t usually live up to their claims. I must confess, though, that my fifth-most recommended story to date has only six words: one in the title, three in the image caption, and two in the story body. (Hey, I wrote it from the 2016 DNC. We were all more optimistic then. I still stand by my analysis FWIW.)

Thankfully, people also shared a LOT of different perspectives on what makes a story worth recommending. Some of the most frequently mentioned, admittedly an arbitrary sample:

In the hope of eliciting more feedback about what the community finds most worthy of recommending, we have another poll. I don’t know about you, but I get a big kick out of reading what you most enjoy about the content that we post here, and I’m looking forward to reading your detailed explanations in the comments.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/15/2110322/-You-explained-why-you-DON-T-rec-stories-now-please-tell-me-why-you-DO

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