Contributor's Zone: How To

Posts to the homepage can only be added by the QuakerQuaker team, a group hand-picked by Martin. But each category page is now wide-open.

Posts you highlight should be explicitly Quaker and explain how Quakerism fits into the issue at hand. I don't want posts that go "I am a Quaker therefore of course I'm a pacifist therefore let me tell you want I think of President Bush" but rather "I am a Quaker and this is how I understand why it leads me to pacifism." There's probably no single testimony or cultural value that transcends the worldwide community of Friends. If we're going to communicate we need to be mindful of this and take the time to always draw out the connections between our faith and practice -- what we believe and how that influences our lives and values.

So you want to contribute? First, go to http://del.icio.us and open up one of their free accounts. You'll want to set up a button somewhere on your browser, so that you can click on it when you find a page you like. You can also have it be its own browser button if you go to http://del.icio.us/help/buttons.

When you run across a post that you think others should see, you should bookmark it in Del.icio.us. Rewrite the title so it's interesting and cut-and-paste a thoughtful quote out of the blog's body to put in the description field. Give the bookmark a tag that reads "quaker.category" (substituting the real category name of course!). For example, tagging a post "quaker.liberal" will send it up to the Liberal Quakers page.

Don't try to dominate any one category and don't use it as a bully pulpit. If you have strong opinions about the post (and I hope you do!), start a blog of your own and post your commentary there.

Please feel free to bookmark your own posts in these categories. This is actually a good way of letting people know what you're writing.

A note that shouldn't have to be written about using feeds

If you use any of the quaker-dot-topic feeds in your own website then please be a good internet citizen and give a link back to QuakerQuaker. I shouldn't have to say this but apparently I do--Yesh!

The system is built in a spirit of openness and trust and very consciously uses services that are publicly accessible. I've always known that the feeds could be republished without attribution (stolen feeds is a growing problem for all blogs) but I've been relying on the spirit of let's-build-this-together that's been at the heart of the Quaker blogosphere and which should be at the heart of the Quaker movement. It is so not cool to pull the feeds and pawn it off as your own work.

We do invite you to help build the Quaker blogging community by publicizing the quaker-dot-topic standard. Some of our pages have javascript code that lets you add the feed to your blog's sidebar. Do-it-yourself'ers are welcome to pull the RSS feeds directly as long as you share the love with something like "This feed courtesy the QuakerQuaker community" with a link to QuakerQuaker. Thanks.