Blog Content Curation and Original Writing Guidelines

Subject matter:

Michel Bauwens: "I see the blog as a 'record of qualified and evaluated P2P development that serves not just a present function, but a strategic and historical function ..."

The P2P Foundation Blog offers a daily alternative to the deluge of irrelevant and disempowering news produced by mainstream media. We feature stories on movements and people trying to change the world in constructive ways by use of P2P dynamics: commons, collaboration, technology, IP, and more. We recommend that you take some time and read more of the blog and see the type of material we’ve featured, as that will be the best way to determine what "fits".

The P2P Foundation is a pluralistic platform. Although we regularly cover and analyze phenomena such as Bitcoin and Collaborative Consumption, the P2P Foundation is also constructively critical of these, in order to maintain a balanced perspective. Please read this article and this interview and watch this video presentation for more details on our perspective on these topics.

Our priority is to reflect initiatives and incite debate on the global P2P/ Commons/ Sharing/ Free Open-Knowledge movements.

Basic requirements for Blog curators/authors

Familiarity with Wordpress.
High level English proficiency including grammar and writing skills.
Familiarity with the Commons movement and the P2P Foundation’s work on Peer Production, Peer Property and Peer Governance.
Diligent and voracious reader and critical thinker.

Types of material and blog posting guidelines

Original material

We would like to gradually include more material exclusively written for the blog (which can, of course, then be republished anywhere else)

First and foremost, check the category box for “P2P Foundation/Original Content. Formatting the post and its length is up to you.
No more than two original-material posts a week per author, UNLESS it's directly related to the P2P Foundation and its activities.

Curated material

This will be the bulk of the posts.

Make sure that no one has already posted the same article you’re going to feature! Always do a search from the Posts menu on the Dashboard. It’s quick, and saves face.

Always credit the author and source. Normally we use "Extracted from" or “Source:”. Hyperlink to both the original article, and to the author’s webpage or bio. Always cite the author, add the source link.

Lead with an image. This can be extracted from whatever you're reposting. Credit when possible and link back (within the image) to the image author's page. If there’s no image in the source article, try searching for an image of the author. If you can’t find any, don’t bother.

You can load images into our library, but for curated posts we usually just copy and paste from the source and format appropriately (with the current theme, justified-right works best).

Write an Intro (a paragraph or two) saying why you're reposting whatever you've curated; give an opinion. Separate it from the body of the post by inserting a dividing line (you can find the code for this here)

Unless it's really short, don't extract the full post. Curate the juiciest/most P2P-relevant bits and, if readers are interested, make it easy for them to go to the original to read the rest.

Use blockquotes where appropriate. [http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_hr.asp Here’s an example.

Label post in "Categories".

Tag accordingly. We haven’t tagged enough; it takes just 15 seconds and helps us with SEO.

The autopost to SM feature isn’t currently working, so we’re using an interim solution. We hope to get it fixed soon so you can customize your SM texts and extracts.

Please, share with your networks once it’s posted!

Scheduling

3 posts per day; 4 if there’s a 10 day 3-post buffer.

The "4th post" position can also be used for more urgent calls/campaigns, etc. If there’s a need to post something urgent on a day that already features 4 posts, be judicious about shifting one previously scheduled post to a later day (and inform the P2P blog author/curator).

No more than two "Movement/Project/Video/Podcast/Essay of the day" features per day. Many of these are logged in our P2P Blog Planning Resources Wiki page. There is a huge backlog there, and some items could be as much as a year old, so they need to be checked for currency.

Avoid running any specific “of the day”-type featured posts on two consecutive days. Try and leave one day between (ie., if you have available two podcasts to feature as “podcast of the day”, post one on Tuesday and the next on Thursday. Similarly if you serialize, or if you curate from the same source; always leave a day in between.

Source material

We keep a wiki page for future featured posts and we encourage you to read some of this material (and post it yourself), as well as add to it. If you post any of this material, please modify the title to italics.

Additional responsibilities

Curate comments.
Report any glitches to our technical team: platform@p2pfoundation.net
We’re currently making plans to overhaul the blog, incorporating discussion forums and making it easier to find content. We’d love to welcome you as part of the development team.

Final notes

Finally, if you’re familiar with the blog, you’ll see that Michel gets a free pass from these formatting conventions. That’s because a) of his considerable effort in building the Foundation and the blog, and b) he's way too busy, yet continues to contribute more content curation for the blog than anyone else.

Contributors are, however, welcome to proofread/copyedit his posts, and add images etc. When there’s a regular team, this can be divided in weekly commitments. For example, if there’s a regular team of six, you’d have to add images to Michel’s post for seven days…and not have to do it again until 5 weeks later.