As part of the rethinking of QuakerQuaker, I've started a QuakerQuaker account on Mastodon. Known best as a "Twitter alternative," it's a micro-blogging site that is much more open than Twitter. In November I wrote a post on my personal blog, Quakers on Mastodon,…

I'm not one to make New Years resolutions most of the time but it seems as if modernizing QuakerQuaker should be one for 2023. While it still boasts over 3,700 members, it's built on Ning, a long-outdated and semi-abandoned platform that has any number of frustrating technical limitations. QuakerQuaker isn't used as much as it should be, even by its members.

Reimagining QuakerQuaker and setting up the tools to make it work will cost some money.…

Hi QuakerQuakers,

When the idea for QuakerQuaker started bubbling up back in the summer of 2005, it was seen as a place for Quakers from across the branches of Friends to come together with curious seekers and Quaker-adjacent spiritual folks to talk about what "primitive Christianity" might look like today. The phrase was lifted from William Penn—you might think of it as his elevator pitch, or summary of what the Quaker movement was trying to do. Blogging was in its golden age and a…

Quaker discussions this week:

• Becoming the church we dreamed of. "My fondest wish – that Northwest Yearly Meeting would remain united – did not come true. It was tempting to grieve that rupture indefinitely … and, to be honest, the grief is not going away soon. However, it is a wonderful comfort to realize that nothing so far is blocking my existing friendships and actual collaborations…"
• New discussion started by Kirby Urner: Quakerism and Charter…

Can you believe it: the QuakerQuaker.org domain name was registered twelve years ago next month. Who would have thought that an all-volunteer side project with the quirky tagline would be continuing along? Thank you all for all the support and use over the years. Primitive Christianity Revived, Again, and Still Going?

Site update

It’s been awhile since the last update about the QuakerQuaker website. I’ve come to the conclusion that moving the main QuakerQuaker.org site over…

Everything's not quite ready, but it's time to move QuakerQuaker over to the new server. It will be powered by BuddyPress, a variation on WordPress blogging platform. It's still very much an experiment in progress, but that's fitting in with the history of QuakerQuaker. I've announced some of the changes on a blog post there:

Time to switch…

Hi QuakerQuaker readers,

The biggest changes in half a decade are coming to QuakerQuaker. The Ning.com service that powers the main website is about to increase its monthly charge by 140 percent. When I first picked Ning to host the three-year-old QuakerQuaker project in 2008, it seemed like a smart move. Ning had recently been founded by tech world rock stars with access to stratospheric-level funds. But it never quite got traction…

Every once in awhile I’ll be out and about in Quakerland, when someone will turn to me and ask "So how's QuakerQuaker doing?" I always surprise myself a bit by saying “It’s doing great!”

Really: ten years ago who would have guessed that this would still be the home of such an active online community? Today there are over 3200 registered members. The site gets over 4000 visitors to the site every month. 2400 people have subscribed to the Facebook page and 2600 follow on Twitter, where…

Hi Friends

It's that time of the quarter again: QuakerQuaker's Paypal account has run dry and it's time for a special appeal. A couple of internet bills are coming due over the next few weeks and we need a bit of extra help.

Please consider giving what you can as a one-time gift or (if you can) learn how to sign up for monthly…

A SPECIAL PLEA

This month your trusty editor did have to dip into his personal bank account to cover the QQ expenses. Please consider giving a one-time gift or $10 monthly support if you are able. Other options are listed on…

EDITORS PICKS

Highlights from last week's QuakerQuaker Editor Picks. All accessible from our Tumblr at http://daily.quakerquaker.org

Young adults in leadership…

Have you checked out the QuakerQuaker homepage lately? We've been doing some redesigning lately: it's more spacious, with commentary in the posts and more visuals throughout. The conversations on the site have also been unusually fruitful and there's been a lot of great blog posts and video sharing.

I'd like to share some of the ways we've been sharing more of the Quaker conversation out into the world.

Tumblr: We have had a quiet presence on the…

I'm not sure how many people have noticed some major changes on the QuakerQuaker site over the last month or so.

Editors' Picks: The links to Quaker articles across the internet now come with handsome pictures. Even better, there's add context and commentary for each entry. I'm hoping this makes these more accessible to newcomers and helps engender more dialogue among Friends. I've been watching the great community and conversation on hybrid journalism/blog sites like…

Support still needed

I'm still in awe of the great response for our fundraising appeal in January. Thank you all! I'm using the equipment you all helped purchase every day. But there are still expenses, of course. Some of the generous people who signed up for recurring monthly donations have canceled lastly (they all still like the site, life just happened and they need to hold on to a little of their funds).

But that…

Editors’ Picks This Week

• Anthony Manousos: Reflections on the Quaker Testimonies
  
  One reason many Friends have lost touch with the Inward Light and rely instead on external Testimonies is that we have become too conventionally educated and “heady.” There is nothing wrong with relying on reason or on authority to some extent, according to Brinton, but they are not enough.…

Stories from QuakerQuaker

Another interesting fundraising story from this spring: a lifelong Friend in his twenties wrote asking if he could sponsor the project for more than the typical $10/month plan. He explained that he was going to be living in the area of the world without an active Quaker community, and planned on using online forums like QuakerQuaker as his means of staying in touch with the Quaker world. He wanted to set up a donation schedule that matched what…

The QuakerQuaker community is amazing. Last Thursday I sent an email appeal out after my laptop died. The response has been amazing! In just this week, 62 people have donated a little over $3000. That's amazing, and I feel very humbled. I have replacement equipment and have been able to pay off many of outstanding communication bills. Thank you all so very much!

The overwhelmingly-positive response answers two of the most pressing questions I had posed: Is this a project that readers…

Over the last few months I've been worried about where QuakerQuaker is headed. Donations have covered basic hosting costs but there hasn't been enough left over for a behind-the-scenes infrastructure that's been slowly crumbling.

This afternoon, an essential part of that infrastructure collapsed. My laptop, which is my only computer at home, has died. It's five years old and has been falling apart over the last year so it's no surprise, but it will be hard to keep QuakerQuaker updated…