R&BLers, or any Group is nothing without compelling content for readers, followers, and any Kossack with any status to read and react to. Response and interaction in the comment thread of a diary by readers are what make a Group, and more basically, a diary successful. It’s hard to escape, then, that the most important persons to a blog and to its groups, are Contributors.
Becoming a Contributor is the step you take after you decide you want to do more than read, comment, rec, and rate. You’re ready to take on an additional role: write content that reflects your thoughts, concerns, and personal interests for an audience who you feel wants to know what you think, or may share your concerns, and might even possess common interests with you.
It’s very easy to go from Group Follower to Contributor. You simply send me or another Admin an email asking to join (become a Member) of R&BLers. As soon as you accept the invitation one of us will send in response to your query, you automatically become a Contributor and are ready to author diaries and queue them up for publication for all to see. Welcome aboard!
Before going on to the more detailed specifics of what it means to be a Contributor to R&BLers, Let me introduce everyone to our newest Admin., aravir who joins me, cfk, and plf515 as one of the “publishers” around here. We three old Admins took note of aravir’s hard work, stellar ideas, and solid contributions and saw that since aravir was doing the work of an Admin, we should reward or doom aravir with the title that reflected those efforts. So, now we have a stronger and more dedicated team running the R&BLers “publishing house.”
That makes a perfect segue to get back to the subject of Contributor. Because my original vision for this Group was that it would be a publishing house devoted to topics literary, and that it would focus on creating, featuring, and developing series as its primary content in a Weekly Magazine format. With such a mission, the need for ever more Contributors who will bring fresh ideas and a broader range of interests along with the new points of view is the lynchpin on which all depends.
A Contributor is a person who writes a casual diary, say one titled "Let Me Tell You about my Paperback Habit,” on a one-off basis. [Anybody want to write that diary? I want to read it!] When the newly composed diary is ready for publication within the Daily Kos New Diary template, the Contributor selects the PUBLICATION MANAGEMENT tab at the bottom of the draft document. When the pop-up menu appears, the Contributor then selects button three – “Queue to Group.” Naturally, in this case, the Group selected is “Readers and Book Lovers.”
Once that is done, the diary automatically appears in the Group’s queue and is ready to be scheduled by one of the Admins for publication. But that can not go forward until the Contributor completes the publication process by messaging any Admin (or all of them!), notifying them that the diary is in the queue, and suggesting a time/day for publication when the Contributor is available to tend comments and keep the thread going. Admins then do their best to accommodate the publication wishes of the author, keeping in mind the slots when series appear and the requirement to keep a time buffer around diaries to insure good “stage time” for all diarists. Admins are responsible for avoiding content conflict.
Another way that a Contributor provides content to R&BLers is by writing an installment for a series, for instance, My Reading Life (maryb2004, Editor) or DK Political Book Club (Freshly Squeezed Cynic, Editor). A Contributor takes a slightly different approach to the publishing process when creating content for a series rather than writing a casual diary. This time the process begins by getting in touch with the series Editor and pitching your idea for a diary installment. Another way is by signing-up to do the next diary if the series Editor solicits volunteer writers in one of his/her diary comment threads.
Once the Contributor and series Editor agree that the intended content is a go, the publishing process of getting the diary into the queue is the same as for a casual diary. The only other new wrinkle is that once the diary is queued to the Group, the notification message the Contributor writes is directed to the series Editor only – not an Admin. Only series Editors are allowed to schedule content for their series. Admins are not to schedule them unless requested to by the series Editor when circumstances make it impossible for the Editor to meet that obligation.
That’s it. Oh, one last thing! Even if you are a Member of R&BLers, and just got your status changed to Contributor, don’t forget to become a Follower of the Group by clicking the HEART symbol next to the Group Name. Unless you do, you won’t receive all of R&BLers’ content in your stream – and you may miss seeing your diary when it’s published to R&BLers HP. Perish the thought!
Very shortly, Part B of the R&BLers Newsletter will be posted. Don’t miss it – there’s a poll for you to participate in that will decide what the new R&BLers header logo will be! [Thank you, Kysen!]