I remember sometime during the summer I think, there was a diary showing the huge upsurge in unique visitors to dailykos.com; pretty remarkable in part because the readership of conservative sites was declining.
So why didn't visitors to dailykos.com serve as a predictor of the elections? One thought is that if someone comes to this site and browses the front page, the typical story is more about how crazy the conservatives are and less about what the Democratic Party or dailykos.com writers are for. Kind of in line with the Democrats' lack of a message.
I would suggest doing an analysis of the ratio of "boost Democrats" (or general positive) to "diss Republicans" (or general negative) diaries that make it to the recommended list. If there is an imbalance (there may not be, don't rely on my impressions) then something needs to be done -- assuming that the mission of the site is to elect more and better Democrats AND that a positive message would help do that.
My immediate suggestion on what to do is simply that a "negative" diary should take more recommends to make it to the Recommended list than a "positive" one.
If we want the Democratic Party to have a positive message -- something other than "those Republicans are worse" -- the same holds for us, no?
Honey or vinegar?
