It's tempting, you have something you just desperately want people to know, because YOU have just found it. A little nugget of information of great importance.
And there isn't any time to check whether it's already up in another diary, or maybe even on the FP. You've got to get the news out now, you're Pheidippides carrying the news of The Battle of Marathon to Athens, and you're flying.
Or did some news just BREAK? On the teevee, or online newspapers? Just how BROKEN is that piece of news, you might ask, before writing it up in a "diary."
Maybe you just logged on, after a nice weekend up at the cabin, and you come across the absolutely devastating fact that the GOP is trying to suppress votes in (wherever they can) -- and you have got to share this with the community. Which has been discussing that particular instance since Friday.
You could be excused - the Search here isn't always perfect. But while our brains aren't perfect, either, they can be used for a little reflection, such as: what's the point of DailyKos?
That particular minefield is not one I'm going to wade into right now, except for just a couple of "minor" items.
- Notice the Diary Rescue in the Open threads? These are diaries of interest rescued from obscurity too soon imposed by the Push-Down Diaries that came after them.
- In fact, the entire Diary function here is a little miracle, and should be used with great respect for the fact that it is a little miracle.
I've been in progressive circles long enough to know that any exchange of opinion is usually more a mêlée than a discourse, and that's OK, it adds blood and temper to the process. But how much do we really get done if we're all fighting for the pulpit?
And that's what the diaries are - they're a pulpit. And maybe one should ask: is what I have on my mind important enough to share with everyone - because while this is the internet, and you're all alone at home - there's a whole bunch of people watching, and reading. Do they need this particular Push-Down diary right now?
- Because they're all Push-Down Diaries. Every single one of them - whether on the FP or in the Diary column.
I can name a dozen diaries from yesterday that deserved to stay on longer, but which disappeared because of "Rahm's a goat" or "Reid's a chicken" diaries (just to name two sub-species). There was Rimjob's quite nice collection of Presidential Campaign Gaffes through the ages, just to name one. I'm not going to link to it, because it's gone now, for all practical purposes.
Every single diary is a Push-Down Diary - but think about it, is yours so important that it's fair to push the others one step down? If it is, then let it fly. But think about the fact that I can name at least eleven other diaries from yesterday that are gone now, for all practical purposes. They got pushed into oblivion, and they were excellent diaries, well researched with salient and interesting points-of-view, as far as I could tell.
My attention span is such that I do not go digging in the diary archive for things I may have missed - I'm steered by what's on the FP, and trust the Rescue Rangers to keep me abreast of the ones that got pushed out while meriting a second look. And while, for instance, I'm certain that the choice of which puppy Sasha and Malia will get is an important one, it may be worth pondering whether it's of diary magnitude.
Just my one cent's worth, can't afford two these days.
(I have been guilty of PDDs myself. Once even posting something which Kos had on the FP - sigh. And I've also had top Rec's and even once had two Rec'd diaries up at the same time! Now, those deserved to be there, because I had spent time writing and researching -- whereas at other times, I've just pushed down the works of others without really adding much to the discourse.)