notes from the organizer

Many thanks to everyone who linked to Qahwa Sada yesterday and helped get the ball rolling:  Winds of Change (Armed Liberal);  Juan Cole;  Lawyers, Guns and Money; Chanad Bahraini; the Lounsbury of Aqoul; What is the War?; upyernoz;  praktike at American Footprints; Matt Yglesies; Aziz at City of Brass;  Martin Kramer; ZenPundit; Baheyya;  Fustat; Elijah Zarwan; Issandr el-Amrani at the Arabist;  and apologies to anyone I missed (let me know - I'll update!).  We had a great launch, a lot of hits, and much positive feedback.  The key to success, I think, will be producing a steady stream of quality posts, and that will depend on the enthusiasm of my colleagues and willingness to donate their time to the enterprise.  I expect that there will be some dry patches but I can tell you that we've already got some high quality stuff in the pipeline for next week. 

In response to comments posted to the manifesto yesterday, let me make three quick notes - aspirational only, at this point. 

First, Qahwa Sada aims to be a forum open to high quality work from all perspectives - no methodological or ideological litmus tests.  I want high quality, original, and insightful contributions, full stop.  I fully expect to post many contributions with which I don't agree - so I suppose it's worth adding a disclaimer of some kind that each author's posts represent her or his own views and not my own, and that each author takes full responsibility for her or his arguments and evidence.  Which is as it should be, right?   

Second, commenting rules.  For the most part, I've been blessed at Abu Aardvark with respectful, high value-added commenters.   For now I'll just hope that this continues.  If it doesn't, I'll draft some version of the Obsidian Wings commenting rules as suggested in the comments - which should be obvious ones:  no personal or ad hominem attacks, stay on topic, play nice, contribute.   

Third, my main job as organizer is to identify and recruit contributors and topics.  So if you have ideas about either, or would like to contribute, do feel free to post them in a comment thread or email me. 

Thanks, everyone!

Comments

[Aziz]

Hello Mark, FYI I also linked from City of Brass. Well done. I wish this project all the success - you are filling a genuine vaccuum here. I hope the QS brand becomes ascendant quickly so that outfits like MEMRI lose their influence.

[saurabh]

Hey aardvark - a byline at the top of each post might be a good idea, especially for a blog with multiple authors?

[aardvark]

Good idea. I had just kind of assumed that it would be obvious that anything without a byline was from me, but that probably is not a safe assumption. If I could figure out how to make those cute little icons that they use on livejournal...

[eerie]

I think there's a MovableType plugin that does byline icons. MT and Typepad are compatible on certain levels, so you might be able to use it (or find an equivalent).

[Al-Zarwani]

Wonderful idea, Prof. Lynch. Congratulations from Cairo.

[Twosret]

I posted an entry and linked to you, congratulations!