New Diarists is a safe place to practice diary writing skills with a mentor's guiding hand. Experienced diarists are welcome to join and buddy up with new diarists, and new diarists are welcome to ask for help. The group's Publication Manager provides a space where we can collaborate on diaries and help you with everything from content to formatting to promoting your new diary.
How-to and Help diaries will be published to the New Diarists Group. Visit the home page and click on the little ♥ to follow us. More help can be found at the Welcome New Users and Cranky Users Groups...click the ♥ to follow those groups, too.
Brand New to Daily Kos? Check out the Frequently Asked Questions page.
Ready to play? Send a private message aka kosmail to nomandates.
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Welcome to New Diarists! Our goal is to provide a sandbox where you can play around with drafts of diaries and get help with them before publishing.
The best feature of this group is the ability to write a diary and have more experienced kossacks look at it and make suggestions before you publish it to the Great Orange Satan. How is this accomplished?
After you join the group, you will be able to submit your diary to the group queue for collaboration. To join the group, just send us a message requesting an invitation.
When you are ready, write a draft diary, then publish it to the group queue, then message us and ask for assistance. We will put you in touch with a Group Editor, a kossack who is experienced in publishing diaries, who will help you.
Let's take this step by step below the orange gnocchi-doodle:
But First, A Word From Our Sponsor:
So, Let the Collaboration Begin!
How to Write a Diary:
Go to your Welcome Back box and choose Diaries: New.
You'll need two things to save your new draft (and you want to save your draft frequently):
1) A Title
2) Some Text (if you don't know what to say yet just enter xoxoxoxoxo!)
Now hit Save & Preview. Congratulations! You now have a saved diary draft! If you're happy with it, you can add a tag in order to publish it. (Don't add a tag until you are ready to publish, though! This will prevent accidental publishing before you're ready!)
But let's say you want someone else to take a look at it or help you with it.....
How to Submit Your Diary to the New Diarists Group Queue
Now you'll need one more step:
3) Just add one tag that says New Diarists
You'll now see you have three diary options at the top of your diary draft:
Edit Publication Manager Delete
1) Choose Publication Manager
2) Pick the third option, Queue to a Group Blog
3) Choose New Diarists for your group It will look like this:
Now hit Publish in the lower right hand corner of the box. Don't worry-- this will not publish your diary to Daily Kos. It will only publish to the group's queue where anyone with Editor status can collaborate with you on it.
THIS IS IMPORTANT! To prevent your diary from being accidentally published before it's ready, REMOVE THE NEW DIARISTS and ANY OTHER TAGS while it's in the queue, and no slip of the button can accidentally send it into the world! You will only add tags when your diary is ready to publish to the site.
Now you can keep adding to your diary by clicking on it in the queue, choosing Edit, and hitting Save & Preview. Once your diary is in the Publication Manager queue, it can only be published from there, so you are protected from accidentally publishing it to the Daily Kos.
Finding Your Editorial Help
Now you can find a Group Editor to help you format your diary, add links or images, or just focus your subject matter.
There are two ways you can find a Group Editor to assist you:
1) Go to the group page and click on Members. Maybe you already know someone there that you'd like to work with. If so, send them a private message and ask.
2) Send a message to nomandates, the Group Admin, asking for help with your diary. nomandates will then send an email blast to the group of available Group Editors and get back to you. Be patient if this step takes a little time while we match you up.
ONLY ONE PERSON AT A TIME should be editing a diary. Two people working on it at once might cause a rift in the space-time continuum. Make sure you and your Group Editor communicate with each other about when you'll be working on the diary.
When you are ready to publish it to the site, choose the New Diarists group (it is in your Welcome Back box on the right), then click on Queue, and it will look like this:
You can hit Publish Now, or you can schedule it for a later time using the Schedule button. (This is used for regularly occurring diaries like Top Comments that publish at the same time every day). You can add a queue note as I did if you're asking for help.
Make sense? Then go for it and have fun!
Disclaimer:
The New Diarists group reserves the right to refuse to publish any diary under the group's banner that violates the site's rules for writing diaries. This includes diaries that call out other kossacks by name, diaries that promote conspiracy theories, diaries that advocate for third parties, or diaries that violate Fair Use guidelines. Please familiarize yourself with these rules. You are free to publish any diary on any topic under your own name, but if it violates site rules, there will be consequences. Ask a Group Editor if you are not sure that your diary topic is appropriate to this site.
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Please feel free to bring all of your questions, no matter how basic, into the comments. We're here to help you get started!