Call for ideas & help : a collective blog-zine-thing about disability & brain weasel repellent &tc

[untonuggan]

I have been brainstorming with partner and some other dw folks about a potentially very cool and exciting project. Also it is one that I cannot do alone (even if I had the spoons I did in high school, which was a LOT of spoons). So I'm going to talk about the idea and then see if anyone else is interested, and what they might want to do possibly.

~Idea~

A blog-zine-website type thing a la The Toast or Autostraddle, but aimed at disability-type issues or interests. Potential posts or sections or topics could include (but are by no means limited to):

• a section of things to look at when you have brain weasels
• "how to do X when your body/brain does Y" (kind of like bitesizedcleaning tips, but not limited to cleaning)
• cross-promoting people who have their own writing sites (fiction or non) or tarot readings
• "why austerity is terribad" and other political topics related to disability
• disability and history
• science!
• recipes for when your body thinks food is the enemy
• fandom reviews and recommendations that deal with disability
• terminology and ableist language
• Artwork/comics
• Poetry!
• Podcasts of written works and other accessible features (like being accessible to screen readers)
• Other things I may not have thought of yet!

Also, some kind of online store to support the site and possibly a collective fund that could be used for (a) monthly charity donations; (b) "oh crap my car died" type hat passes; (c) upkeep; (d) possibly a paid position at some point if someone is doing a lot of upkeep or web-dev or editing or whatever. TBD in the course of "how is this run?"

Kinds of things to maybe have in the store (Zazzle? Cafepress?):

• Coping cards for people with chronic illnesses (as opposed to "get well" cards)
• T-shirts or buttons or whatever (maybe ones that warn readers not to touch you today because your body hurts, or perhaps say things like "not your inspirational crip")
• A print zine of things on the site
• Funny shit to look at when you feel like crap
• Other possibilities!

Plus probably some sort of advertising but hopefully not terribad advertising.

~Kinds of tasks I can think of atm (but we can totally bitesize it and share srsly folks)~

• Organizing system/emotional labor of "how does this work, how do we make decisions, how do we handle conflict, etc"
• Legal side of "how do we do banking, setting up non-profit or whatever kind of corporation status, etc"
• Web development (accessibility important)
• Web maintenance (moderation, posting, etc)
• Content creation!
• Content decision making (when to post certain things, how often to post, etc)
• Are there things we decide *not* to post? How do we handle conflict about that?
• Networking (social media promotion, finding new creators, outreach to other sites, etc)
• The store - content creation for that, legal side, banking! homg

OK now that *I* am kind of overwhelmed...I still think this is allllll kinds of awesome and can start slow and steady and build, bc I know that is how I operate these days.
~In the comments or via PM~

• Your preferred username (dw, tumblr, whatevs) and pronouns
• What you might be interested in helping with, if anything. Any mad skillz?
• Some sort of ranking of how realistic helping is right now or in the future? ("I am finishing my degree right now, but later..." or "This sounds amazing and also I have a couple of spoons I could use for this while I lay on my recovery sofa" or "I would totally read this but I can't commit to anything new right now" or "I have ideas but I can't help implement them right now")
• name ideas?

Note: not helpful right now, anything along the lines of, "This is cool but totally unrealistic." My brain weasels can rain on the parade on their own without contributions so it would help if you did not feed them.

If there is a lot of interest I would be up for starting a dreamwidth comm about this, but would need a name.

Signal boosting appreciated

Comments

[the_rck]

I would be interested in such a website! I might even manage to write stuff for it.

So many ideas (syntaxofthings/xe/xem probably would use Witchling in Flight pseud for this)

[syntaxofthings]

* Part of the section of "cute things for bad days": I'd like to see easy internet text-based or clicky games for when you have low spoons and have to rest
* I am very pro-paying-people-for-their-work, so I'd encourage that once it's running - even just $25 for an article contribution. Also, I'd be willing to pass ideas around of how to raise those funds. (i.e. Kickstarter for start-up costs?)
* Articles about working around capitalism (there was a great quote in my local newspaper yesterday about someone who started a business around here because he kept getting fired for taking care of his chronic illnesses, so now his business gives lots of sick time)
* Once this gets started, I have leads of people who are great writers and understand living with chronic illness to tap into to see if they're interested in writing

I'mma probably add more ideas later.

Things I have skills for:
* Accounting and legal research
** Figuring out how to structure such a web site and organization
* Writing articles once it's going

[anke]

* Anke, she

* I could probably provide funny/cute art for looking at when one feels down. I also did a 4 panel comic on brainweasels I could offer.

* I've been planning to put together a "short reading for when I feel down" list, which might fall in a similar category as funny/cute art, only, well, recommendations rather than my own work.

* If someone else helps out with ideas, I could illustrate/design cope cards. (Not a continuous stream, but every once in a while.)

Bottom line: contributing content every couple of months or so.

(I'm sorry, but I don't think I can help with the web development side even though I have some skills there. First thing that came to my mind for a theme was "tutorial starting at the basics how to make a website accessible" and I have several projects I'm neglecting already and yeah.)

[worlds_of_smoke]

* Rachel, she/her

* I don't know that I could actually help. :/ I'm not sure I have any needed skills, but I'm definitely interested in trying. I can do fannish writing (I mostly read fantasy and YA), general writing, or forum moderation. I can also do betaing articles or being a sounding board for people. I'm good at cheerleading!

* Ideas: There definitely needs to be a "benefits advice" column. Obviously, there's a lot of difference in benefits, but I've found it difficult to find answers to plain language questions about things like going back to school or work while on benefits and getting married on benefits. At the very least, we need a list of contacts for companies/NPOs that do benefits analysis.

Also, policy discussion! We obviously can't cover the entire world, but maybe we can keep track of some of the more important policy stuff. And we should be discussing lesser-known policies. There's stuff that people don't actually know about, like the penalty that disabled people in American get hit with if they get married.

[kaberett]

(this is a placeholder comment in a desperate attempt to get me to come back to this tomorrow when I will hopefully have more executive function)

[anke]

Tangent: I would like to request that anything that is specific to one country say so and name the country near the beginning of the article.

[worlds_of_smoke]

Yes! This is super important. And tag it with the country name (both abbreviated and long-form if it's the USA or UK), if we use a tag system.

[the_rck]

It occurs to me-- When I do my personal website, I use SeaMonkey which is both a webbrowser and a WYSIWYG webpage composer. It's also free. I have no idea if it could do the things you'll want (I have almost never used graphics, for example), but I think it's worth looking into as an alternative to hand coding.

We would need to test how SeaMonkey pages look in different browsers, of course, and find out whether or not they work with, for example, screen readers.

[syntaxofthings]

Yes.

Re: So many ideas

[syntaxofthings]

Also, I can definitely help with web development and maintenance after a theme is set up. You probably don't want me designing things. *sigh*

Another thing I think important to keep in mind: we can put a timeline on this of something like 6 months to get ideas together and a group of people interested in implementing it and organized.

Also, I can make spreadsheets for you of people who express interest. >_>

Fellow commenters: would be great to hear interest in reading such a site.

[indywind]

Neat idea. I hope enough people with enough spoons/skills/resources can get together the energy it needs to take off.

I am swamped just now (doing 1.75 people's worth of work at the day job and coping with seasonal mood/energy stuff and new physical issues) but if you make a comm I will follow, and offer what I can to help when I have more bandwidth.

Part of my day job is formative and copy editing, and I haven't made anyone cry yet. Editing text-based content submissions for publication may be something I can do. I'm also pretty good (or at least, It seems to stress me out less than many other people report it does them?) at prioritizing and setting clear limits, like "of these 6 awesome submissions, we will use these 3 now, keep these 2 for sometime soon, and this other one will save for a special occasion where it can really shine. And this other thing is great but doesn't fit our guideline X; it can be changed like so to sort-of fit, maybe at the cost of some of its awesomeness, or the creator can do something else with it: here are some suggestions."

One suggestion for generating funding to pay people for their contributions, once content submissions begin to be accepted from people not on the startup team: have a (tiny! like $.25 - $1 per content unit: item, page, 1k words, whatevs) submission fee. Maybe only for kinds of content where many more submissions are received than can be used, and not for the kinds of content that are under-represented.

Oh almost forgot (Indywind. I prefer no 3rd-person pronouns where it can be managed gracefully)

[delight]

Hi! I was referred by forests_of_fire and this entire idea excites me so much. My preferred username is this one. :)

Here's some stuff I can do:
* Front-end web design/CSS etc. (The Tropospherical Purple theme on DW is my work, and still the one I show off to people the most when it comes to color stuff because I'm still really proud of it, but I can show you other more complex things I've done) especially using Wordpress, which is my CMS of choice

* Maintenance of the above

* Blog-style "living with multiple comorbidities"/"here is how I did X thing" writing if you're interested in that kind of material

* Disabled People in Academia stuff (I'm currently in the process of applying to graduate programs)

* Copy editing

Here's a thing my partner can do:

* ADHD-friendly recipes. He is a professional food person who has a very, very severe case.

I'm terrible at names, so you don't really want my help on that. :) I also won't be much use until my graduation in December, but after that my time that isn't dedicated to job hunting is totally available. I can also possibly assist with some level of marketing.

ETA: Uh, I forgot my actual name is Rue (that's my legal name as well) and I use she/her pronouns!

[delight]

I think some US/UK/Canada things would even need to be specified further down to specific state/county/provincial issues! But yeah, that is a really really important thing re: benefits. I know I've tried to advise people on "this was my PERSONAL experience with SSDI and education financial aid, which applies only to these 5 counties in the state of New York in the United States ..."

Re: So many ideas

[delight]

You and I may be great collaborators if untonuggan doesn't mind bringing a third party in on some front-end things; I'm pretty good at designing to spec, but really bad at coming up with things out of nowhere. So someone else proposing structures and placement of things and I can put together a good responsive Wordpress design, at the very least ...

Jesse the K, she/her/hers, see icon for confounding conditions

[jesse_the_k]

Sounds fascinating! I'm intrigued, I'm excited, I want to talk more! (I moderate access_fandom, and will signal boost there.)

Your opening list is impressive!

There are free responsive, customizable CSS templates here.
http://html5up.net

People have tried pieces of this, and I could summarize history of where, what they did, what was good and what was hard.

In the morning, brain weasels disapproved: (skip) I'm an assistive technology and barrier removal geek. I had the good fortune to present at a conference on XML-like languages in 1989 to the geeks who later made HTML happen. I stressed the importance of assuming the variety of possible output in print, audio, braille, flashing lasers on the moon. They listened. ••• I'm also a process geek, have taught workshops on cooperative decision making, stumbled through DW comm creation, lit the fire under WisCon's recent access improvements. I've been part of collectives for the past 35 years, so I have some useful experience (and probably some hard-coded old-fart ideas). I'm willing to learn new stuff, but am baffled by how we could discuss this in the Tumblr interface. Slack? ••• I like writing. I've written 7 software manuals, innumerable tech articles, and many many blog posts. I get super-anxious when I'm working alone, but doing things with other people is great, and that's why this is particularly exciting. ••• I'm a savage editor (great for turning 3 graph PRs into 40 words). I'm an outstanding proofreader (who can't proof her own work, so don't judge by my horribly spelled posts). ••• I'm particularly clever with headlines, naming, and metaphors. ••• I write all my DW posts in a text editor, so I'm conversant with basic HTML. I use large print on my computers, so can provide feedback on that element of access issues. ••• I have excellent skills in the emotional labor of managing people outside the "zine"s circle. When needed, I can be decisive. I can tell annoying people to get lost. I can write groveling letters to soothe when that's useful. Summary: Not a job interview, inappropriate. ••• I am particularly skilled at getting excited about things, and then plunging into deep depression and doing nothing.

Re: So many ideas

[syntaxofthings]

Sweet. While I have no doubt I can pick up web development stuff over the next couple months (which is regarding my own web presence; have just started playing with developing with FoundationPress for Wordpress to make it look how I want), I am probably not the best bet for working on that stuff right now, and it is my eternal sadness that graphic and design stuff continues to elude me. :( Maybe after I've mastered the coding aspects and CSS, GIMP won't scare me quite as much anymore? Still: I have other more useful skills at this time.

[syntaxofthings]

I feel like for a zine though you'd want to use a content management system (like Wordpress) rather than a WYSIWYG composer. Because you'd want it to be easy to create new pages within categories and such and have everything auto-update. There's a lot more work to do before the site is launched, but afterward it's a lot easier.

[ironed_orchid]

I love this idea of a "benefits advice" column. Ideally, I'd like to see different people from different countries/states answering to match the letter writer's needs.

[ironed_orchid]

Gretchen, she/her or they/their.

I'm not sure how I could contribute, maybe could do some recipes, put together linkspams of stuff posted elsewhere (I would want to share this with others), and cute pictures, also proofreading and comment moderation (depending on my free time and spoons).

BUT I wanted to comment to say I love this idea.

One thing I have noticed about successful new sites like this is that often key contributors wrote for other established sites/zines before launching something, e.g. Mallory Ortberg and Nicole Cliffe were both writing for The Hairpin before launching The Toast. So maybe it would be worth approach people with their own blogs (and strong following) to submit articles. Alternatively, if there are writers who are interested in this being their main venue/soapbox/etc., they could submit articles to bigger, more established places (or even post somewhere like Medium) before this project gets launched.

Also, I wonder if "Bitesized" might work as a name, with some tagline explaining how it relates to disability.

[alexseanchai]

* alexseanchai, they/them
* I would love to contribute content.
* I have epic lots going on right now, so I can't commit beyond "maybe I could do an article or poem or something once a month or so and possibly throw a few dollars in the pot for expenses at intervals".

For names, "Hephaistos's Forge"? Hephaistos being the most prominent physically disabled Greek god. (But if someone has a better idea, ignore me.)

[alexseanchai]

Ooo I like your name idea better than mine.

[ironed_orchid]

Since I'm already involved in bitesizedreading which is a spin off from bitesizedcleaning, it was an easy leap to make. I also like the idea of using a name that jumpuphigh came up with, as a way of commemorating her.

[alexseanchai]

Yes.

[cxcvi]

UK Specifically: Scotland has some very different laws than England. Wales is mostly similar.

[vass]

- vass, they.

- would definitely love to read this, and might write for it

- suggest you talk to the people who did Feminists With Disabilities/FWD back in the day about what worked and didn't work for them and whether any of them would like to come aboard (I know what you're suggesting isn't identical, but it sounds like there's some overlap and that they'd have valuable experience)

- maybe look at other disability zines like Ragged Edge or Ouch or Starecase for ideas/a sense of what's already being done/potential contributors