Masterpost (Rules & FAQ)
Welcome to the WritingWithColor Askbox Masterpost!
(It’s a tutorial, guidelines, FAQ, and Terms and Conditions all in one!)
Table of Contents:
- The Ask Tutorial (Guidelines and Tips for a good ask)
- Topic & Content Rules
- How to Write an Ask We’ll Answer!
- FAQs and Area-Specific Guides
- General FAQ for Newcomers
- FAQs by Topic
- Specific Recommended Reading
- Etiquette for the Blog and Asks
- A Disclaimer to our International Readers
- The WWC Code of Conduct
- Moving Forward
Where we started
In the summer of 2014, bookworm Colette Aburime founded WritingWithColor, WWC for short, to help writers add diverse representation for People of Color (POC) to their creative works, with a focus on Western fiction. At the time, the majority white-run advice blogs were unequipped for POC-focused Q&A. Some even banned questions about writing POC outright.
Having a passion for reading, especially books that actually had a variety of BIPOC main characters, she felt compelled to bridge the gap in the writing advice world. And thus, WritingWithColor was born.
Since then, WritingWithColor has gained over 100,000 followers! We are committed as ever to help writers create more respectful, diverse, and inclusive works. With a changing and ever growing team of diverse moderators, we serve a broader demographic to promote thoughtful representation of marginalized groups that are not one’s own.
Where we are now
Generous donations from our readers have allowed us to purchase the domain writingwithcolor.org! With this, we can expand beyond Tumblr and make our resources independent and available for years to come. By revamping the old FAQ ahead of the website opening, we hope to touch base again with our long-time followers, welcome some new faces, and try our best to start everyone on the same page.
In the meantime, we know that you are eager to ask our moderators your questions. We’re sure you have noticed that the blog goes through cycles of inactivity and askbox closures. The most common reason for this is the backlog of questions. The second most common reason is moderator burn-out.
Asking these questions and fielding user feedback is taxing. All moderators are working or studying full-time in some capacity, and many of us also have households, partners and dependents. Establishing guidelines will help us more consistently provide you with the feedback with which you have generously entrusted us over the years.
Important Notice:
In order to submit an ask going forward, you will be required to attest that you have read through the required portions of this Masterpost, which doubles as the WWC Terms & Conditions.
DO NOT share the askbox link, as we need all askers to read the Terms and Conditions before asking a question. Sharing the askbox form link directly will likely result in questions being deleted as we can tell when people haven’t read the required material. Instead, redirect other askers to this post.
We’ve taken the feedback and critiques from many of you over the years about the time it takes to hear from us as well as issues over limitations in our responses. However, please do not use WWC for emergency questions, as answering asks is a time-consuming process.