On January 3, 2003, three months (and a few days) after Steve Soto first commented on Daily Kos, Markos made an announcement:

Introducing the first dKos guest contributors

Greetings everyone. Work and the Political State Report have been keeping me busy. So busy, in fact, that I have lined up two guest contributors to pick up my slack over the next two weeks.

Long time readers will recognize the guest contributors immediately: Billmon and Steve Soto, both of them comment board favorites. The two of them will essentially take over this site starting tomorrow (and may start posting as soon as today). I'll still post occassionally, but in effect this will be their site for the two-week period.

Try to be nice.

Update: Posts written by either Billmon of Steve will be signed by their respective authors. If you see a post with no signature, it's still me.

Posted January 03, 2003 09:28 AM

Yes, it should have been "Billmon or Steve" in the update, but typos happen. So do jumps. One right about...now!

It was the last day in September, 2002, and Yahoo News was reporting that embattled New Jersey Senator Robert Toricelli would announce his decision that afternoon on whether he'd withdraw his candidacy for re-election a mere 36 days from then on November 5th. This was big news, and Steve Soto made his first appearance right after a commenter named Zak suggested Bill Bradley as a replacement :

Zak stole my thunder. Why not Bradley? It's not like he's going to run for President again, right? And he would be a cinch compared against Forrester. With Clinton out of the White House and McCain/Feingold addressing some of the unpleasantness he found in politics, he may be induced to come back for a term or two. He's still young, and can be a player once again.

Posted by Steve Soto at September 30, 2002 01:07 PM

As it turned out, we ended up with a different former Democratic senator, Frank Lautenberg—the following comment was Markos reporting that Bradley had "emphatically refused to be considered". But we also ended up with Steve Soto: a win/win situation. Steve's many 2002 comments are all linked to over the jump.

On January 3, 2003, nearly two months after billmon first commented on Daily Kos, Markos made an announcement:

Introducing the first dKos guest contributors

Greetings everyone. Work and the Political State Report have been keeping me busy. So busy, in fact, that I have lined up two guest contributors to pick up my slack over the next two weeks.

Long time readers will recognize the guest contributors immediately: Billmon and Steve Soto, both of them comment board favorites. The two of them will essentially take over this site starting tomorrow (and may start posting as soon as today). I'll still post occassionally, but in effect this will be their site for the two-week period.

Try to be nice.

Update: Posts written by either Billmon of Steve will be signed by their respective authors. If you see a post with no signature, it's still me.

Posted January 03, 2003 09:28 AM

Yes, it should have been "Billmon or Steve" in the update, but typos happen. So do jumps. One right about...now!

We have so many insightful and powerful diaries written here at Daily Kos.  Our diaries inform, inflame, impassion, and even entertain.  We Kossacks have strong voices and an even stronger will to be the change we wish to see in this country.

One of the richest, and perhaps most under-appreciated, areas of thought come in the form of comments attached to these diaries.

Here at Top Comments we strive to recognize and promote the talent of this community by highlighting outstanding comments found throughout the day by the diarist, and through nominations at made at TopComments at gmail dot com by your fellow Kossacks.

These nominations are subjective, and certainly not complete (as no one can read the complete site on a daily basis!). But we hope they will serve to shine a light where deserved, and to give the reader a good starting point in finding conversation on the site.

Please come in and make yourself at home!  Join us beneath the fold...

It was Election Day 2002, in a mid-afternoon Daily Kos front-page post Early numbers, that billmon made his first appearance:

We know (or at least can reasonably assume) three things:

1. The Republicans are bad mouthing the exit polls, according to Rich Lowry.

2. The networks, which saw the GOP gaining in the final days, are bad mouthing the exit polls, according to Josh Marshall.

3. Said exit polls APPEAR to be showing surprising Dem strength.

So either the exit polls really are screwed up (always a possibility) or this election isn't going according to the Media Whores' script, and the Dems are in for a good, maybe a very good night.

Like the journalistic hacks say: It remains to be seen.

Posted by billmon at November 5, 2002 02:21 PM

As it turned out, the exit polls really were screwed up. But Billmon wasn't, as evidenced by his many 2002 comments, all of which are linked to over the jump.

This is the second part of a Top Comments diary on the Daily Kos writings of Steve Gilliard, one of the original group of guest posters on this blog, who died last June. Part 1 was published on Wednesday, and featured Steve's comments in the three weeks before he debuted on the front page. That time period, March 12, 2003 through April 2, 2003, started one week before the invasion of Iraq, five years ago this week.

Steve's absence is still keenly felt. So far this year he's been mentioned in four DKos front-page stories, including one this past Tuesday by kos, fourteen user diaries, and over eighty comments, excluding those prompted by Wednesday's diary. His name has been used to tag a post on Daily Kos 77 times—make that 78.

Steve Gilliard's first guest blog post was almost five years ago, on April 3, 2003. I won't be able to post on the five-year anniversary of that date, so with that day under two weeks away, I ask you to join me on the flip with a vast array of links to his work here on Daily Kos.

Yesterday, when posting Reviews on the front page, kos wrote:

Steve Gilliard:

Sniff. I miss him.

Steve Gilliard was the third guest poster kos asked to blog for him when travelling and unable to post, and that first guest blog post was almost five years ago, on April 3, 2003. I won't be able to post on the five-year anniversary of that date, so with that date less than two weeks away, and such a recent reminder of his excellent work, I'm going to ask you to join me on the flip with a vast array of links to his work here on Daily Kos.

I've just now gotten a deep whiff of one of the sweetest smells I know: tazetta narcissus "Falconet", which is in the first full flush of bloom in my kitchen: three small yellow flowers per stalk with orange cups that show a green center if you look very closely, but if you don't are a lovely picture of orange and yellow. Daffodil or narcissus, it's the same flower.

There is still plenty of snow outside, and outside color is a couple of weeks away at least, if not likely to wait until April. Inside, however, I've had a riot of color to chase away the winter blues since late December: iridescent orange-reds from Amaryllis and paperwhites, both of which can be planted in soil or on water (I prefer soil) and sprout with minimal fuss or bother. But there are other bulbs that require a period of cool temperatures, and those are now making the end of winter a more colorful, sweetly scented time.

When I was a kid, my parents had classical music playing from the family stereo. So we heard all the usual composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin: plenty of music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, plus some 20th century works.

I liked the earlier music: for me, it was the harmony. Bach was fun, especially when he tossed in a fugue or complicated counterpoint. The later Romantics and 20th century music, not so much: the harmonies were getting a bit weird for my ear. Heck, I liked the Beatles, too: I preferred singing the harmony line rather than the melody line, and sometimes added my own harmony line.

What I didn't know then, and didn't discover until college, is that there was a heck of a lot of music written before 1685, the year that Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti was born. (That's Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti; I didn't know about earlier or later Bachs, or Domenico's arguably more famous father, Alessandro.) And that music is even better, though most people don't even know it exists.

This is a continuation of plf515's series of diaries listing the people who post at least 1000 comments in a month. I've found all the users I could—47—with at least 1000 comments for February. If you think I've omitted anyone who should be on this list—Daily Kos is a big place, and it's too easy to miss even frequent posters—please let me know in comments below. Last month, I missed several, a couple of whom were brought to my attention at the time.

For those who want to check your own results, just substitute your own username for mine in the URL to check your February comments.

The actual data can be found over the jump.

John McCain is Mister Straight Talk is one of the most pervasive and pernicious ones. That he'll say what he means and hang on to positions, no matter how unpopular, because he'll always play it straight, which is what a noble and upright person who cares more about truth than being popular. Mr. George-Bush-hugging, campaign-finance-reform-pushing (only until it hurts his candidacy), his self-confessed ignorance of economic matters only he's not ignorant any more because he's just read Adam Smith (and implies that he understood everything!), and we shouldn't need to stay in Iraq long once we "win," although it could be a hundred years. I suppose if the shortest distance between two opposite points is a straight line, he's talking straight from one position to its antithesis. Look at his voting record: there's the straight facts. A little media spotlight on the nitty-gritty would be nice...but it'll never happen. That requires bucking the narrative. That takes true journalism. That requires...a miracle. In short: not bloody likely.

This is a continuation of plf515's series of diaries listing the people who post at least 1000 comments in a month. This was called "The Big Commenters" last time, but there are so many who write so much that I'm going with "prolific" this year. I've found all the users I could—65—with at least 1000 comments for January. If you think I've omitted anyone who should be on this list—Daily Kos is a big place, and it's too easy to miss even frequent posters—please let me know in comments below.

For those who want to check your own results, just substitute your own username for mine in the URL to check your January comments and, if you're curious about last year, your 2007 comments. You can find the table over the jump.

On May 26, 2002 at 12:57 PM, the first post at new website, Daily Kos, was published, entitled Day 1:

I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies. I believe government has an obligation to create an even playing field for all of this country's citizens and immigrants alike. I am not a socialist. I do not seek enforced equality. However, there has to be equality of opportunity, and the private sector, left to its own devices, will never achieve this goal.

Thus was born Daily Kos, written by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, aka kos or sometimes Kos. There had been a two-week blogspot run the month before, later referred to as

0.1 beta. April 2002: My blogspot site. It survived all of two weeks.

Tonight, though, we're not concerned with the beta, but the start of the real 1.0 version of Daily Kos on Movable Type: all Markos, all the time. A blog, as I wrote last month, that would crash gates and make national politics jump. More on those first posts over our own jump.

On October 13, 2003, Markos announced that the new Scoop-based Daily Kos web site was ready to be checked out; those existing Daily Kos users on the Movable Type site should come over, sign up for an account, give it a spin, kick the tires, and see what breaks do some beta testing.

The journey to this day was long, as chronicled last week in Top Comments: The Road to Scoop Edition. So was the first day: Markos worked late into the night before being told it was way past the family bedtime. But the internet never sleeps, so as the Moulitsas family was grabbing Zs, Daily Kos readers were grabbing accounts. And posting comments. Of which more anon, over the flip.

Once upon a time, Daily Kos was an ordinary Movable Type blog: stories written by Markos (with front-page help), and comments attached to each story, popping up when clicked on. Comments were signed, or not, depending on the whim of the person posting. Trolls sullied the comments with a fair amount of impunity. The more popular Daily Kos got, the more the web site creaked, and the more cracks appeared.

All this changed on October 13, 2003, when the new Scoop-based site was opened for business. Suddenly, everyone could write their own blog entries, called diaries, and comments were no longer popped up in a separate window, but were attached to each post. And suddenly, you had to sign up for an account, you had to stick with a screen name, and this was your name going forward. It was a brave new world.

The debates are front and center tonight: Republicans first, so grandpas Fred and John can get their beauty sleep, and Democrats second, because they're already beautiful and not at all decrepit. Here on Daily Kos we're ready: there are front page open threads, liveblogs, new diaries popping up about the day's events—the latest polls, New Hampshire canvassing, the failures of the media (because they rarely fail to fail, and rarely fail more definitively than when running a debate), etc.

Various candidates are up, down, sideways, with or without various sorts of momentum, right, wrong, right yet oh so wrong, and, dammit, refusing to talk about This!

Various Kossacks are up, down, sideways, harping on This or That or both or neither, passionate, learned, didactic, urgent, unfortunate, informative, silly, inspired, and everything in between.

If you're watching or listening to the debates, you're probably talking back: yelling at the idiotic talking point, groaning at the moronic press questions, cheering a telling remark, urging on the candidate who's saying exactly what you would say on your chief issue, or wishing desperately to hear more than bits from stump speeches.

But you're also here...and about to make the jump. Or jump the flip. Watch your step—it's a doozy.

Each month, plf515 does a diary on all Daily Kos users he can find that have made at least 1000 comments in the previous month. Right now, he's working on the full-year results for 2007, so he's let me play in his sandbox for the month of December.

For those who want to check your own results, just substitute your own username for mine in the URL to check your December comments and your 2007 comments. You can find the table over the jump. If you think I've omitted anyone who made more than 1000 comments in December, please let me know in comments below.

The last day of the year is ticking away, so it's past time for reflection and questions and time to get down to brass tacks: what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? It's one of those hugely philosophical questions that takes years of typing to write and reams of paper to print out.

Given the time remaining, it's far better to ask simple, concrete questions with short, easily determined answers, like one that seems to be hovering in the Top Comments aether: "Another sardonyx diary? Haven't we had enough of them already? How many is this, anyway?"

The plain answer: 42.

What? Oh. Um... oh look! It's the Winged Victory of Samothrace time to make the jump!  *whew*