So, I would say we’ve been following more of a method than a set of rules. That’s not to say anything goes, but we discuss what bios we plan to do and move forward.
We have an editors group. It’s primarily Gentlemanrob and myself. We do bios, but I also do profiles of many other things too, so you aren’t limited to bios, we have a weapons section, landmarks and monuments, and I’d like to branch out into books, documents, publications, speeches and music at some point, but we aren’t there yet.
So our method, at this time, is to build up a profile from birth to death, listing every fact figure and interesting tid-bit we can find on that person. This can include media like signatures, photos, documents, newspaper clippings, obituaries, and more.
Then the idea has been to go back, and write a biography to go with the profile.
I have preferred to have an opening paragraph above the profile.
Then below the profile, tell the story of that person or thing in chapters, using new posts as needed. Bios may span many multiple posts if needed. I can reorder the posts if they get out of order, or if you need more posts than you expected.
Quotes, interesting facts, lists, & photos can and should all play a part. Sidebar style stories are also possible!
Anyone can go ahead and submit a biography, I would again prefer to know who you plan to submit in advance, we already have our own list and don’t want to do double the work for no reason.
You can also volunteer to update one of the existing bios to fix it, add to it, or improve it in some way! It is possible to edit other members posts, and you can make notes about who added what content to a post, making a single post a team effort. Rob and I collaborate frequently to get profiles posted.
Just ask if you would like access, I think Rob is comfortable with my editing, but we may need to try that out to see how we feel about it. Some stuff might be off limits, other stuff could be fair game.
I think the Abraham Lincoln post is a fair representation of the direction we would like to see the bios go, although, again, it doesn’t have a full written out bio, and that might make you a good fit for our team.
This is the Biography of Abraham Lincoln.
civilwartalk.com
Do you want to write biographies, or create profiles? Or you can do both if you like!