Congressional Committees Project: Guidelines
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Category: Congressional Committees Project
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Incorporation?
We had somewhat of a debate in an earlier diary about whether we should try to act as an organized group, and have formal letterhead and matching domain names for our email. While that could possibly do some work as making us seem legitimate, it would have two negative effects.
- First, it would set us up for expectations that we might not be able to meet. We've tried to keep this project as decentralized as possible, to maintain its status as an open-source collaborative project, which is where its potential comes from. Forcing standardization too quickly could stymie this development.
- Second, that would set us up as easier targets for sabotage. A saboteur could easily sign up for a committeewatch email, and then intentionally act in whatever way they'd like our project to be portrayed.
To avoid this, we'd like everyone to correspond with their representatives as concerned watchers, but not as representatives of our group. Avoiding a reputation at first will permit us to avoid having it dragged through the mud.
Kos and daily Kos
My next concern (after my worries about our reputation being ruined with congress before we even get one) deals with dailykos.com. It was interaction on Markos' website that spawned this project, and I wanted to be sure that we were being good guests on his site as we set up shop on his front lawn. When I voiced my concerns to him regarding this, he responded basically that he'd like us to refer to the project as a "daily kos community project" rather than a "daily kos project" (if we ever refer to it that way) in order to avoid implying his endorsement.
I'd also like to suggest that we are representing the interests of the Congressional Committees Project when we write about it on daily kos (as we will presumably continue to do), and that we should be respectful when we do that, for that reason.--Greenreflex 16:32, 4 December 2006 (PST)
Ethics
General
Finally, I'd like to suggest that everyone keep in mind our obligation to act legally and ethically while watching the work of our legislature and its committees. That should go without saying, but it makes a difference to do so, so I am.
Also, as I wrote elsewhere,Our goal isn't merely to critique... the goal is awareness so that we might act appropriately based on verifiable information that we might have otherwise missed.
Fair Use
Please be mindful of fair use standards and guidelines for quoting copyrighted materials. Don't plagiarize, and always provide links. See Wikipedia on Fair Use for more details.
Tagging
Here is the tagging section of the daily kos FAQ page.
For Diary Tagging purposes the following format is recommended.
All diaries should have the tag: Committee
All diaries should include either House or Sen followed by the first word of the committee name. A full list of House and Senate Committees is above.
Example: Committee, House, Homeland. This would work for the House Standing Committee on Homeland Security and will allow searching by tags to be simplified.
Example: Committee, Sen, Judiciary This is the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Received Tue Nov 14, 2006 at 10:00:59 PM EST appended to my Committee Diary from Dailykos Tag Cleanup Project
(bolding is mine, as I thought that it was important to note)
"Hi SaraBeth, I'm late checking up on diaries posted to get our Committees Project started. Excellent job.
Please note the Tagging rules (which may change when the Tag Cleanup Project gets its act together). For now, Tags are separated by commas (we will be changing this rule to semicolons, I think).
Therefore, the name of the 'Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness, Science, and Technology' becomes separate Tags for each term separated by a comma.
This brings us to the point of devising a temporary strategy for designating Tags for our Committees, until the Tag Cleanup Project gets around to changing the Tag-separation convention from commas to ';'. I took the liberty of altering your committee tag by changing the commas to periods and dropping the spaces between.
This is a temporary fix. 'Sub-Committee' is not a Tag, so I removed it for now. A check of the AllTags page shows only 2 Tags containing the word 'subcommittee' (no '-', caps irrelevant), so I know that this term is a relative newbie, and we'll need to figure out how to come up with the standardized Tagging system for the various subcommittees....
As you read others' Committees (it's plural: Congressional Committees Project) diaries, please pass the word along about Tagging, using the 'period/no space' way of Tagging the Committee names. Eventually the Tag Cleanup Project will standardize.
Oh, and please use the same Tag, to the letter, for all diaries about your subcommittee."
--SaraBeth 04:05, 15 November 2006 (PST)
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