This diary is an introduction to the Community Manifesto Initiative and provides answers to questions and some guidelines on how to make the most from this new group.
The Community manifesto Initiative has two complementary aims that we shall discuss separately.
1) A collection of policy-oriented diaries
This first aim is purely internal to Daily Kos.
What diaries can I find in this group?
Our main interest are diaries that discuss policy matters, educate us about them, explain or promote them, propose new ones, etc... whatever the issue may be. Very good policy diaries are very few and far between. However, most of the diaries published every day here do not contain anything it terms of policies. We select the few that do and republish them in this blog. Any simple diary that helps to elucidate some policy matter can be republished into this group.
How can I join this group?
To join this group, simply send the group a private message (follow this link) and tell us you'd like to join. In reply, we will send you an official invitation and upon accepting it, you will automatically become a member.
How can I contribute to this group?
After you have officially joined the group (see above), you will be able to submit any diary (your owns or those of any other KDos diarists) to the group.
As you browse as usual the diaries, whenever you come across a good diary that would be a good fit for this group, you can "Republish" the diary into this group. See at the bottom of every diary (below the diary itself, between the tags and the comments) the three actions that you can take: "Recommend", "Hotlist" and "Republish". Click on this last action and a pop-up menu will appear. Select: "Publish to: Community Manifesto Initiative". Also, it would be helpful if you could add a note about which policy areas are being covered in the diary (especially if it's not obvious from the title of the diary). The diary will then be placed in the blog's queue and will soon be re-published in the blog itself.
2) The Minguo Community Manifesto Initiative
The Community Manifesto itself is an initiative by the Minguo.info project.
Where can I learn more about the project?
If you have never heard about it, you may read the two following articles publish by the online newspaper Democracy Chronicles:
- Minguo: a Unique Online Democracy Experiment. This short article is an introduction to the whole Minguo project.
- A Reform to End Political Deadlock?, an interview by Democracy Chronicles of the Minguo project founder (me) where we discuss Election reform and the new web site.
How can I be part of the democracy experiment?
Participating in the experiment only requires 20~30 minutes of your time only once a month. It's fun and it's for a good cause! Simply register at minguo.info and, after you have logged in, start voting in the policy-based community polls.
The connection between those 2 aims is that some of the best policy-based diaries here at DailyKos are used as food for thoughts or background information for the Minguo Community Manifesto.