One should also consider that many newcomers will arrive directly in a diary, from a link at some other site. Getting those to not feel confused and lost in the structure is important.

Something that I found confusing was the name "diaries". I still fail to see the point of that name, unless one wants to have only diaries in the traditional sense, that is people writing about something that has happened to them recently.

I think "articles" is a word that better describes what we have here. "Article" to me includes the more personal stuff (which I love, do not get me wrong) while also being a much better description for stuff about energy, economics, politics, ideas and such.

Another thing that bounced me of DailyKos a number of times was that I did not get how to read more by the same author. I think I even at some point guessed right and clicked the name, but when I came to "user pages for YY:" I figured it was the wrong place. And then I got annoyed and went somewhere else. Maybe it could just say "YY:" instead of "user pages for YY:". Better yet, maybe there could be an automatic link at the bottom of diaries that goes to that users diaries, and the link would be called "More articles by same author".

And what is "Stories" by the way? It shows up in the user pages...

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