First, I want to say that I already love here. I said this elsewhere, but it's a great change of pace to actually write what you are thinking without having to worry about what pure Democratic party partisans will think about it. I would much prefer to discuss matters of good and bad policy without giving people a pass because they have a D next to their names on the ballot.

With that said, I think it would be beneficial to have a suggestion area or thread in order to help make important things on the site more visible for any future additions/redesigns/upgrades. I figured I would at least start one here; I'm admit that many of my suggestions are things that other place did well. I feel like one of the great things about this community is that it filled with people from all walks of life who probably have great ideas and I would like to make those ideas more visible.

1. Make the number of likes more visible. I don't know if I'm missing it, but it seems like the only way to see the number of likes is to go into an essay and scroll to the bottom. Similarly, I think an area noting topics that are either well liked (and potentially ones for a lot of discussion as well since you get good discussions in essays that aren't well liked).

2. I would make specific tags available for consistency. This is important because I would also make it possible to search by tags. For example, one diarist I really like from over there is Dan Bacher, who writes a lot of great stuff on California's environment. So #California and #Environment would be two tags that most of his diaries would have. The tags would be something like, the current President candidates, the two main parties, Senate/House/Governor, the 50 states and a broad range of policy topics. I would still make it so that you can input extra tags, but at least if I want to read everything on a certain subset of topics I can do it more easily.

3. Make the Community Content more visible on the Front Page. I realize there is a lot of overlap now, but things that are only in "Community Content" will be visited less if only because it's an extra page away.

4. Groups! I especially like knowing who is local.

5. I don't know if it's just my computer, but the Recent Comments section is hard to read. It's very narrow, so it pushes a lot of information downward. I think just by widening the margin, it would consolidate a lot of the information in a way that is easier to read.

Please feel free to add more or point features that I might make missed that already cover my suggestions!
Hopefully this is an acceptable diary!