Other Resources

Part 1

Scientific American’s Whale Song Project (citizen science)
Good Projects - This special content page got its start as an ask from Good to its Pinterest-savvy followers to pin pictures of local do-gooders.
Charlottesville Tomorrow used Google Moderator (click on “view questions”) to collect questions from the public that they asked of local electoral candidates.
DavisWiki
WNYC - During a remarkable snow storm in 2011, this NPR affiliate asked listeners to text in over several days whether their street had been cleared. They made maps that auto-updated as listeners texted in.

Part 2

Advocates / activists
Residents
One-offs
Example: A college degree brought Lindsay McHolme to Grand Rapids, Mich., and immediately following, she headed for Nicaragua to be an English teacher. When she returned to Grand Rapids several years later, she was passionate about literacy and integrated seamlessly into the creative Hispanic circle. She shared what she saw with the rest of the city.

Example: Michael Tuffelmire’s is a lifelong Grand Rapidian who grew up in Heartside. After he returned from the military, he found the neighborhood even more run down. He co-wrote a piece on development in Heartside, but finding it not enough, he went “undercover,” living on the streets for several days to understand hat perspective.

Example: Tyler Nickerson is passionate about urban development in Grand Rapids. He began a blog called House by House and also crossposted it to The Rapidian and

Example: Jon Clay and Nick Manes teamed up to write about Sarah Palin’s visit to Grand Rapids (photography + text), Josh Tyron and I (stop motion video + text) joined forces to capture one of GR’s most anticipated art events each year.

Facebook Open Graph - Integrate this for less anonymous posting. It counts comments to your article as Facebook likes. Con: Not everyone is on FB, and it comments aren’t counted by your platform’s comment tally.
Disqus
ReadrBoard - ReadrBoard is a service that makes it one-click simple for readers to react to any article, or even to any place in an article -- to any passage or media asset that speaks to them. The service is free and provides publishers with an analytics dashboard for content engagement. To see how it works, take a look at this Racialicious article.
PolicyMic - Focused on politicizing Millennials, PolicyMic encourages its contributors to invite “panelists” for their pieces. If panelists leave comments, those comments are elevated, and readers can interact with these featured personalities.

Part 3

Citizen Media Law Project - Great reference tool whenever you have a question about the rights of citizen media makers.
Bound by law - What do you get when you toss together three law professors from around the country, one with a penchant for drawing? A: This comic that morphs Fair Use into an entertaining and understandable issue. Be sure to direct your citizen contributors to this resource.
Creative Commons search - ‘nuff said.

Part 4

Part of the Oakland Local team and a seasoned pro with contributors, Amy Gahran put together a helpful tool set to work with contributors. With these tools, you’ll have a handy cheat sheet of content types, an exercise to determine your content strategy and a plug-and-play calculator to determine how much time each piece will take, from ideation to publication and distribution.
Every once in a while, you can’t avoid explaining tech terms. Here are some expert translators to the rescue! Simply direct the curious to Skillcrush ’s tech term archive
More examples of crowdsourcing templates