Groups at Daily Kos: An overview
Daily Kos Groups serve two key functions: they help organize content for readers and they support site members who create such content.
A group has a unique name, and it consists of at least one site member, who as its creator also has the role of group administrator, called an Admin.
The basic purpose of a group is to serve as a “publishing organization,” because admins and editors can publish site content under its group name and thus create its own blog on the site. Daily Kos groups help organize public content for the benefit of site readers and site members whether they belong to a group or not.
The group infrastructure also supports private communication, including collaborative writing and editing, for group members.
Public Group Pages and Features
In public, groups have group profile pages and group blog pages. The profile page displays key information about the group, including its description, its members, links to content created and/or published by the group, and buttons to click to follow a group or to send a message to its admins and editors.
The URL of every group profile page follows this format: https://www.dailykos.com/groups/{group%20username}. Examples:
- https://www.dailykos.com/groups/main = the profile page for the Daily Kos Front Page
- https://www.dailykos.com/groups/elections = the profile page for the Daily Kos Elections team
- https://www.dailykos.com/groups/Readers%20and%20Book%20Lovers = the profile page for the most followed Community group, Readers and Book Lovers
Group blog pages display the stories published by the group--original content--or stories republished ("reblogged") to the group in a familiar layout: stories in the middle of the page, with a right sidebar populated with thumbnails for posts within Trending List, Community Spotlight, and Recent Stories. Examples, using the same three groups:
- https://www.dailykos.com/blog/main
- https://www.dailykos.com/blog/elections
- https://www.dailykos.com/blog/readers%20and%20book%20lovers
Once on a group's blog page, you may notice the paired icons at the top of the list. The blog view icon is orange, because it is the version you see. Click on the list view icon, and the page displayed will show stories only, in a list.
Examples of the URL syntax for story list pages:
- https://www.dailykos.com/history/blog/main = list view of all Front Page stories
- https://www.dailykos.com/history/blog/elections = list view of all Daily Kos Elections stories
- https://www.dailykos.com/history/blog/readers%20and%20book%20lovers = list view of all Readers and Book Lovers stories
Private features of groups visible only to administrators, editors, and contributors
Groups consist of at least one Admin, who is the group's creator. Editor(s), Contributor(s), and additional Admin(s) are optional, at the group creator's discretion. Each group role has specific permissions relative to the group. See the linked resource, "Groups: Member roles" for more detailed explanations.
Groups operate in some ways like individual user blogs, but there is no single login for a group. Instead, group members may share access behind the scenes to posts in draft mode, and members who are admins or editors may communicate collectively with each other through private group messages (group Kosmail).
The resources linked below explain the key features of creating, joining, and running a group, along with how to post (and repost) stories to a group. An additional resource on that list summarizes the key differences in group administration deployed in August of 2020.