Guidelines for hosting the Carnival of Space

Below are the guidelines for hosting the Carnival of Space.

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

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

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 submissions were received.
4) Hosts will have carnival up in a timely manner. Submissions are due Wednesday evenings at 6:00 PM PST. The goal should be to have the carnival up within 12 to 18 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 responsibility of being the host. The host will ask other bloggers to mention the carnival.
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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With the Carnival of Homeschooling there were some long discussions about what was appropriate for a submission. It took awhile to come up with the guidelines for hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling. We kicked around some specific guidelines. There are some obvious things which eject a submission, for example:

1) The submission isn't about space
2) The submission has already appeared in a carnival of space
3) The submission is vulgar or racist
4) The submission is OK, but from an inappropriate site, like a porn site, white supremacist, terrorist, and so on.
5) The submission promotes an illegal activity

We went around and around on trying to spell out exactly what would be acceptable, and what wouldn’t be acceptable for the Carnival of Space. It started feeling like the tax code, too complicated. We are all volunteers, working together.

I came 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.


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