I’m looking for a team to help me continue to keep Civilities relevant and moving forward. It’s been exhausting for a year-plus doing this all myself, and I need some assistance so I can concentrate more on the software parts. I’m especially looking for people who aren’t bloggers, that is, with have no prejudice about what online personal publishing should be. Here’s what the work here involves:

1. Surf and react – There’s a lot out there; here’s the blogroll of feeds that I track. If there’s something relevant to something I’ve written, I’ll post very briefly and point out something like on network models or the gatekeepers or constructive media– and that’s what I need help on. One of the key facets of constructive media, after all, is to build solid arguments in a normative piece, and then make brief arguments elsewhere to support it.
2. Research – I’ve been doing a couple of modes of research, both of which are probably good enough for a general-interest publication, though not solid enough for academic publishing. (In several pieces I’ve tracked memes to see how they spread– a collection of these are currently summarzed the Truth Exposure page. Secondly, I’ve done a some comparative studies, often with quantitative charts. These days I’m researching some reader-ombudsmen projects.
3. Evaluate new tools – Some technology is exceedingly useful, and I’d like to know about it. I was a dummy for dismissing del.icio.us upon first learning about it, but I eventually came through with a hearty endorsement. Too many blogs echo press releases which are just silly confections of marketing and brands (e.g., “Yahoo to introduce tagging on podcasts”) and I need some better mediators.
4. Write – I like writing and experimenting with different forms. There’s a lot of different forms of writing that Civilities readers are used to. I’d like some long-form writers.
5. Edit – I do a lot of re-writing; there are many pieces that needed a lot of work. Most piece I end up rushing to publish without fully-proofreading, and there’s probably an error every 100 words (which looks pretty bad in the thousand-word plus entries).
6. Code – I’m a programmer after all. The main reason I’ll be relaxing my writing is to get back, after over a year’s break, to standardizing the Civ code as Drupal modules.

That’s all. Email me at the address below. Additionally, I’ll be putting time into building out some civ sites for some community groups I’m involved with. And I’m buying a condo. Stay tuned.

Update, October 30th: I bought the condo and moved in months ago. I updated this piece to correct a typo and some confusing sentences. I am still looking for team members to join. I hope the new graphical design is inviting.