Greetings, MF'ers! If you're not a MF'er, this diary is probably not for you. Just what is a MF'er? (You need to ask? Maybe this diary IS for you after all).
M·F'er, n (em' effer)
1. An inidividual who participates in TexDem's Mojo Friday diaries on Daily Kos
Now that we have that out of the way (and, perhaps, you've looked at an actual Mojo Friday diary), how does one succeed in a Mojo Friday diary? As I suggested in the title, succeeding at Mojo Friday is easy! And fun! To find out how, sink with me below the fold....
Mo·jo Fri·day Suc·cess, n (mo jo' fri·da suh·k-ses)
1. Contributing to the accomplishemnt of the Mojo Friday goals
2. Having fun in Mojo Friday diaries
3. Achieving a high participation rate as determined by the Mojo Friday Postgame Show
(CAUTION: High participation can lead to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
Not only that, but you can get really cool Mojo Friday gear. Impress your friends and co-workers with these stylish items you can't get anywhere else. Best of all, all proceeds benefit Ninepatch's endeavors -- this is a great way to really support our troops, better than any dumb ol' magnet any day! Head on over here to CafePress.com and buy, buy, buy!!!!
Here are some of my best tips and tricks for succeeding at Mojo Friday. Before we get started, though, let's take a look at TexDem's latest Mojo Friday Goals:
- At least 200 different commenters and 1000 comments by 1:30 PM EST and 1500 by 5:00 PM EST Friday Night that it's posted.
- 100 recommends for each comment, at least.
- Stay on Recommend List at least five hours (this requires some strategic planning by you guys, refer to guideline #3)
- And always, fun fun fun.
- Have at least 75% average participation rate as seen here in the Mojo Friday Postgame Show by goffnews.
- Have at least 30 kossacks over 90% participation (see here for some tips).
- Overload the servers with recommends, not to mention dominate Top Comments Mojo list. (we do tend to mess with the site with all of our recommends at one time)(also, to dominate the Top Comments Top Mojo we need at least 50 comments with over 100 recommends, see guideline B)
- That's enough for now. (Have a suggestion? Post it).
I organized the tips and tricks below into five categories; the first two apply to everyone, and the last three are for those crazy MF'ers whose high achievement for the week is to appear at the top of the participation list. (Guilty, as charged...heh)
Having Fun, Participating and Getting Mojo
- Always be prepared to have fun. If you can't have fun, what's the point?
- Get there on time. Mojo Friday goes up at 10:30 ET Friday, and the comments rack up quickly. We try not to post pictures until after 300 comments so the page still refreshed quickly for a while.
- If you can, use a broadband connection...these diaries get huge, fast, and dialup quickly becomes useless. If you're stuck with dialup, see #2.
- RAM is your Mojo Friday friend. When it starts getting up over 600, 700, 1000 comments or more, it gets to be sloooooow going; it's even slower if you don't have much RAM. 512MB will get you through, 1GB is snappier, and 2GB+ just ROCKS!
- Comments posted early get more mojo, but, all comments get lots of mojo. (DUH! Why do you think it's called Mojo Friday? Oh, for those of you curious about the genesis of Mojo Friday, check out the very first Mojo Friday)
- Mojo Friday is a candidate-free zone. Take your pimping and bashing elsewhere, please! (Exception: comments that ridicule Mike Gravel are acceptable...now GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU LITTLE WHIPPERSNAPPER!!!)
- Try to refrain from making comments about "all this mojo-tossing is cheating," "gaming the system," etc. You will be ridiculed (see "GET OFF MY LAWN!", above) and we'll give you mojo anyway.
Giving Mojo
- If you open a Mojo Friday diary, you are obligated to recommend every comment. THIS MEANS YOU!!! Someday, inevitably, we will no doubt have a troll try to come and play...it hasn't happened yet, but I pity the troll that sets foot in Mojo Friday since (at least) 95% of all MF'ers have TU Status. It will be quite an avalanche of donuts, I'm sure.
- Focus on participating and posting comments. All work and no play makes Gus a gloomy guy, so have fun! Interact! Mojo Friday is a great community. Myself, I like to play around for the first couple of hours, then get on to the serious mojo-giving later. I leave auto-refresh on while I do this.
- Use Firefox as your browser. Not only does Internet Explorer just suck, Firefox actually works better with Mojo Friday. Be sure to "allow" dailykos.com if you also have the NoScript extension. (You do have NoScript, right? Well, go get it right now, I'll wait. Tap...tap...tap...no, Senator Craig, go away!!!)
- When it's that time to go and mojo everyone, first turn off auto-refresh (it's a checkbox between the diary contents and the comment section). This keeps the comment section (and the recommend buttons in particular) from jumping all over the place. Some folks also suggest turning the indentation off; I personally do not -- your mileage may vary.
- Always work from the bottom. This is particularly important for deeply indented comments; when you hit the rec button, it will shift the diary contents below it down -- if you'd been going from top to bottom, you'd have to wait for the rec to complete before doing anything else.
Getting near the top of the Participation List
- Check your sanity at the door. You really must be crazy to try this (and I do it every week...what's that say about me, heh).
- Bearing in mind the giving mojo tips above, the best time to refresh the page is just after the top of the hour, because...
- Search is your friend. After I refresh at the top of the hour, I use search to find the comments made in the previous hour and jump through them sequentially. In this example, we'll say it's 1:00 pm. Once again, start from the bottom. Search (up) on "2007 at 12" and repeatedly hit Alt-P, this will show the rec button for comments at the top edge of the screen, saving you the effort of having to scan the entire window to find the rec button (easier to focus).
- Repeat step 3 at the top of each hour. At 3:50 ET, refresh once more and do the comments for the 3:00 hour so you can get though them by 4:00 (yes, you have to cycle through more than once, but you're OCD, remember?).
- At 4:00 ET, refresh and repeat step 3, but this time search upward for "2008 at 03:5" to get all the comments in the past 10 minutes.
- After completing step 5, turn auto-refresh back on so that new comments will appear automatically.
- Repeat step 3, searching on "2008 at 04" until 4:15-4:30 or so, when goffnews puts out the Mojo Friday Postgame Show diary. You'll want to have the front page open in a different tab/window so you can see when the postgame is up.
Now, for you seriously deranged individuals out there (you know who you are!), I give you:
Getting to 100%: Finding Those Pesky Comments That You Missed
You can perform these steps any time; I do it once or twice, usually just after 3:00 and again just after 4:00 ET. These instructions assume you are using Firefox; this is for simplicity's sake, and because Internet Explorer just sucks.
- Refresh the page. Once it's done, right-click (or, for you lefties, left-click) on the page body in a blank spot; select "View Page Source"
- The HTML source of the diary will open in a new window (hereafter referred to as "the source"). When there's many hundreds of comments this takes a long time, so be paitent, young grasshopper!
- Hit Ctrl-End to get to the end of the source. When the last line includes "powered by Scoop" (in HTML format) you'll know it's finished loading.
- Hit Ctrl-Home to get back to the top of the source (you'll be searching DOWN this time).
- Search for the following:
value="4" /
- (BTW, there's a space between the " and the /) That little piece of HTML represents an unchecked Recommend button.
- If that string value is found, You'll see:
input type="radio" id="rc77" name="r77" value="4" /
- The number after "rc" is the comment number -- this will vary. On the line above it will be the timestamp of the comment you missed.
- Copy that timestamp (e.g. 10:42:36). Go over to the diary (not the source), paste the timestamp into the search box (Ctrl-F opens the search box, but you had it open already, right?).
- Once you've pasted the timestamp in the diary's search box, it will jump directly to an unrecommended comment. Don't just stand there, mojo it!!!
- Repeat steps 5-10 until the string value="4" / is not found (or you've gotten back to the first one you missed).
- To be doubly sure you haven't missed any, refresh the diary page, view source, search for value="4" /. The search box will turn red if you've recommended every comment.
There are a few of us that are completely over-the-top and go for the gusto half the weekend. After all, goffnews updates the stats two more times, ususally Friday around 9:30pm ET and again Saturday night (once again, around 9:30ET but can be as late as mid-morning on Sunday, heh). For the truly dedicated among you, I present:
Staying at the top of the Participation List All Weekend
- Use all the tips above to the extent that they help. At some point, though, some won't work anymore. For example, after 10:00 pm ET on Friday it does no good to search for "2008 at 10" since that will find comments from the 10:00 AM timeframe.
- On Saturday (or Sunday, if goffnews is slacking again) you can search on the day (e.g., "Sat Feb 16") to search though that day's comments.
That's all I've got folks. Next time, I'll go through the excruciating details of successful caterpillaring. Until then...