TW: none.
Though it took two weeks longer than expected, all posts have been unlocked and the site is up and running again! Here are some of the changes we made:
1. You’ll note that I said “we” in the sentence above. That’s because there are now two of us co-running the projects – welcome Alice to the Stories Project team! I’m happy to have her on board and she should be making herself known around here soon; in the meantime, you can read more about her in the “About Us” tab.
2. All posts now have two things: trigger tags at the top of the page and author tags at the bottom of the page. Content notes are included for but not limited to: grief, loss, slurs, violence, murder, death, suicide, misgendering, abuse, and self-harm.
3. The Stories Project has a new email address. For those of you who already have my personal one, you’re welcome to keep it and contact me that way, but the new address, which is going to serve as the main contact for the projects from this point on, is: the.stories.project.lgbt@gmail.com. The Stories Project now also has its own page on Facebook that we can be reached at as well.
4. All of the “about” tabs – About Us, About the Stories Project, About the Week of Action, Contact, and Who We Are Not: a Warning – have all been updated with current information. We rewrote the posts in a way that more accurately reflects what we are trying to do and more provides a clearer, more-straightforward understanding of what these projects are.
5. Some posts were made private due to outdated, conflicting, or no longer relevant information, such as old announcements of contact information changes. Additionally, posts involving my story have been password-protected. I will gladly provide the password to those who are interested in reading those posts; however, I am implementing this both as a safety measure and because I never wanted to be the main focus of the projects. In the future, it may be the case that posts involving my story will not be password-protected, but that is the case for now.
6. The site remains the Week of Action Movement in name and has not been split into two separate sites. Instead, things have been shifted around layout and wording-wise to make it clear the Stories Project is the bigger/main project with that event running on the side.
7. Because we get asked, Alice and I have decided to add a statement in writing in a couple of locations on the site that says yes, we do in fact have the families’ approval to collect stories about their loved ones:
“We would like to note that for each of the individuals we have collected stories about through the project, we have the approval of their family to do so even if they have elected not to share themselves. In the majority of cases, the families are highly involved in the process from the beginning and some have continued to stay in touch with us long after we had a finished story on the site. So in case you are wondering if we have the families’ permission to do this – we do.”
8. A new logo that we created, of the same general rainbow hand print design, is in the works and should be in place shortly.
Thanks for sticking with us as we figured all of this out!
Author: Meg
The Stories Project 