Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Guidelines for hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling

There have been a few questions about hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling. Below are the current guidelines:

I've posted my goals and expectations for general participants for the Carnival of Homeschooling:

http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2006/01/participating-in-carnival-of.html

In addition to the expectations for participants, here are my additional expectations for hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling:

1) Expect hosts will read:http://www.10000birds.com/hostwiththemost.htm

2) Hosts will put out a wide call for submissions. The greater the variety of posts, the more our readers will learn, and the more chance they will find something interesting.

3) Hosts will respond promptly to submissions. With all the problems of spam and filters, it is common courtesy to reassure our participants their submission were received.

4) Hosts will have carnival up in a timely manner. Submissions are due Monday evenings at 6:00 PM PST. The goal should be to have it within 12 hours? This means the host will get much of the work done during the previous week as submissions come in.

5) The host will work to promote the participants. Hosts should minimize self promotion.

6) Promotion of that week's carnival is part of the responsbility of being the host. The host will ask other bloggers to mention the carnival. The other hosts will help.

7) At the end of each carnival the host will point to the host for the next carnival, and how to enter submissions.

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There have been a few questions about what submissions are approriate for the Carnival of Homeschooling and under what situations can a host reject a submission. I've really struggled with creating a concise set of guidelines.

There some obvious things which eject a submission, for example:
1) The submission isn't about homeschooling
2) The submission has already appeared in a carnival of homeschooling
3) The submission is vulgar or racist
4) The submission is OK, but from an inappropriate site, like a porn site, white supremiscist, terrorist, and so on.
5) The submission promotes an illegal activity

But there are other areas where the host may be reluctant to include a post. I tried to craft some rules and guidelines on what seemed reasonable. It started feeling like the tax code, too complicated. We are all volunteers, working together.

After several hours of thought and talking with my wife I have come to the conclusion that for that week, I'm just going to trust the host's judgment. If there is a post the host doesn't feel is appropriate, I do ask the host let the submitter know, and forward the post to me. The submitter is welcome to resubmit that post for the following week.

2 comments:

ChristineMM said...

Dear Henry, I appreciate your thoughts to this.

There is one area which could be a problem for you as the Carnival 'owner' or 'organizer'. What of boycotts such as the current boycott of HomeSchoolBlogger and boycott participants who refuse to link on their blog to HSB blogs?

If a blogger openly has stated on their blog or in other Internet forums that they are participating in a boycott of HSB it could be an issue for them if they host the CoH.

In other words if you make a stand that the CoH does NOT boycott HSB then there should be a rule that the CoH Host will abide by that and WILL allow CoH entries/links to HSB blogger submissions.

It is my understanding at this time that the CoH is not participating in a boycott of HSB but that fact is not stated in the guideline list that you published last night.

It is not always easy to lead or magage a project, is it? It is hard to be a leader sometimes!

Thanks for listening to my input on this.

Henry Cate said...

One of the guidelines for hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling is that the host will accept reasonable (about homeschooling) submissions from any reasonable (ie not porn) blog.

If a blogger chooses to be part of the boycott and not accept submissions from a blog at HSB, then they will not be allowed to host the carnival.