By homogenius and indiemcemopants.
Today marks the beginning of GaylyKos, a volunteer-driven, bottom-up LGBT community at DailyKos similar to KosAbility and GUS. We are posting this diary to launch this new project and invite participation from the broadest and most diverse spectrum of participants.
Indie and HomoGee are two of the founders of KosAbility. After the tremendous success of KA, we thought it would be great to try something similar on LGBT issues. Unfortunately, the most visible effort here to date, WGLB/GLBT & Friends, has had some upheaval and is trying to reorganize. Our effort isn’t intended to replace that or pre-empt any effort that goes forward; neither is it meant to replace any of the excellent individual diaries already being written on LGBT topics. It’s meant as a gathering place for LGBT Kossacks and allies attracting the broadest diversity we can. Everyone is welcome and it’s open to participation from bottom to top. Come with us after the jump and we’ll share some ideas....
What is GaylyKos?
Actually, we don’t know that yet because there’s only two of us committed so far. When we participated in the start-up of KosAbility earlier this year, it was an organic process that was driven by consensus among the people who volunteered to help get it going. So we are issuing this invitation in hopes of attracting more fantastic people who want to see a similar series on LGBT issues. But we’re not trying to replicate or replace anything that’s being done at DailyKos. We simply want to offer a place where individual writers on LGBT subjects can gather and reach "critical mass" (there’s strength in numbers). The only things outside the scope of GaylyKos are internal squabbling among different LGBT communities, blame games with other historically disadvantaged groups, refighting old battles, or hardcore Queer Theory debates--all of those can be dealt with elsewhere.
We’ve drafted a model mission statement/masthead for a possible weekly diary series based on the boilerplate we use at KosAbility:
GaylyKos is a community diary series for LGBT Kossacks posted (whenever) by volunteer diarists. This is an inclusive gathering place for all LGBT people, our friends, family, and allies. GaylyKos is not in competition or conflict with any other LGBT series at Daily Kos--in fact, we support other LGBT series and individual diaries. Our focus is on individual diarists writing about their specific experiences and we especially encourage first-timers and people from diverse backgrounds to sign up.
As a community diary series, the comments are a major part of the process. The author's diary is a jumping off point for discussion, including humor, pictures, and varying viewpoints. GaylyKos is not intended to be a tightly managed series--it exists to allow people to speak from their own experiences on a wide range of issues affecting LGBT people and communities.
Participation is open to all and the only "management" per se is the people who do the work to keep it running. There is no group "editorial voice" as every diary includes the byline of its author.
Our only rule is to be kind, respectful, and inclusive; trolls will be criticized on their hair, make-up, fashion, and grammar and subjected to recipes.
We propose a few simple conventions for diaries based on what has worked at KosAbility:
- Begin each diary title with "GaylyKos:".
- Add the boilerplate mission statement above the jump.
- Include the author’s byline at the top of the diary, after the title.
- The weekly coordinator (or pinch hitter) inserts an early comment to identify him or herself and post the current schedule.
Remember—all of this is up for consideration. Nothing is chiseled in stone, except that this should be open to all and reflective of the diversity of DailyKos and LGBT communities.
Who is GaylyKos?
It’s really everyone who participates, whether it’s by recommending diaries and comments, adding comments, or writing diaries. The only "management" is the people who commit to doing the work of organizing and coordinating. But an essential attribute MUST be diversity. Right now it’s just a couple of white male gay gimps (hey, at least we have age diversity!). Our hope is to have more women, people of color, transfolk, and contributors from every other part of the LGBT spectrum and our allies. In short, it's for everyone--LGBTQIQ-M-O-U-S-E, and every other letter in the alphabet, plus friends, family, and other allies.
GK is especially open to writers who are LGBT allies whether it's because they feel inspired by our work at DKos, or those who have gay friends or family members. Their stories are important and they do so, so much to promote the idea that more people out there are tolerant, inclusive, and supportive than many LGBT folks might think. Since the suicides and the bullying stuff that has been going on. people need to know that they have tons of straight allies out there, too.
At KosAbility we have a small core group consisting of kellyrn2 and indie who coordinate and moderate the two weekly series (Sunday and Wednesday) and a couple of other "founders" like myself who mostly watch them do all the work (LOL), but also give feedback and encouragement and participate regularly in the comments. We have some repeat diarists and faithful regular commenters who have made it a great success. One of the hallmarks of our organizing effort was that we worked by consensus and developed some enduring friendships (not to mention a mutual-admiration society). We hope to achieve something similar with GaylyKos.
What’s next?
That’s going to depend a lot on who comes forward and what people feel the focus should be. But we already have a few ideas to submit for consideration:
- A weekly series on a regular day and time TBD featuring volunteer writers who sign up. Our inspiration and mentor, Nurse Kelley, has said that part of KosAbility’s success was that we encourage writers (many of them first-timers) to tell their own stories and speak from their own experiences. In addition, we allow them to post from their own accounts if they prefer, simply adding "KosAbility" to the beginning of the diary’s title (and tags) and including the mission-statement boilerplate above the jump. We provide support and encouragement, but only review the content in advance if requested. A series like this requires a coordinator/moderator to keep the schedule; remind the writers; and participate in the comments to offer encouragement, avoid too much digression, and fend off the occasional trolls (which are ABSOLUTELY not tolerated). Our experience has been that regardless of the length of the diary or how polished the writing, every diary with KosAbility in the title attracts people who populat it with great discussion, valuable insights and information, and tremendous encouragement.
- At KosAbility we encourage Kossacks who post their own disability-related diaries to add KosAbility to their tags. We feel this has been a great addition to the body of work. We also occasionally have "KosAbility Special Edition" diaries that are not on the weekly schedule. We recommend this as a practice for GaylyKos, as well.
- Another idea would be to have a regular weekly LGBT news digest. This would probably need a coordinator with several volunteer writers, similar to Rescue Rangers. This would not replace topical news diaries in the weekly GK series or ad hoc LGBT news diaries for more in-depth coverage. Clearly there have been a lot of great writers on DailyKos writing very effectively (and sometimes exhaustively) on LGBT subjects and we want to encourage and augment that, not replace it.
- If people thought it productive, there could be a mailing list to alert GaylyKos participants of news of interest. This might include upcoming diaries (including unscheduled ones) and action items on LGBT issues. We’re not sure how much work this would take or how much interest there is.
- Whatever else people think is important and are willing to support!
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These are our ideas—now it’s your turn! Let’s open the comments and find out where we’re going. The two of us know what we’re going to do—we’re going to keep writing diaries on LGBT issues using the GaylyKos name in the title. What does everyone else want to do?
UPDATED:
In the comments someone suggested that we do a diary about Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" Project on YouTube. HomoGee suggested that we might include one of these videos at the end of every GaylyKos diary. There's a new video just posted from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton so let's make that the first one.
UPDATED x2:
Here's a recap--we're going to keep chatting, but we have an idea of what to do next.
- GaylyKos will return next Tuesday at 5pm EDT with an update of what we're doing.
- In the meantime, indie and homogee will email people who have expressed interest in both the diary series and the news digest.
- We'll have some suggestions for good days and times for a regular diary series after checking on other regular community series. As soon as we nail that down, we'll post a schedule for sign-ups. We probably won't start the regular series until the following week after election day (and after homogee's move).
Thanks to everyone who participated. We'll stay active in the comments and add any new volunteers to the list. This has been exciting. Thanks for everything!
Congratulations, everyone--we have a new DailyKos community!!!