How to help

The state of the project, in numbers

• 177 works from the four-volume Conway Edition, fully transcribed and cross-linked.
• 110 newspaper interviews split into individual chapters with prev/next navigation.
• 21 biographical entries on the timeline, mapped geographically with Leaflet.
• 13 figures profiled in Connections, with the family tree extended to four generations.
• 20 quotes in the rotating quote feature and on the quotes page.
• 11 themes in Topics auto-classifying the corpus.
• 55 entries in the glossary, surfaced as inline tooltips throughout the works.
• 3 essays on the blog, the section most in need of contributors.
• 0 entries in the gallery and videos pages, the scaffolding is built; the content needs to be added.

Where help is most needed

1. Blog essays

The blog has only three essays. I publish well-researched writing on Paine's ideas and their contemporary relevance, his rhetorical craft, his relationships with figures of the Gilded Age, the broader history of American freethought, or the long arc of his reception.

What I look for: clear prose, citations to primary sources where possible, intellectual honesty about uncertainty, and a voice that respects the reader. 800–2,500 words is typical. Unsigned polemic, SEO filler, and AI-generated content without disclosure will be declined.

2. Photographs and documents for the gallery

The gallery page is empty. Public-domain photographs of Paine, his family, his contemporaries, his lecture venues, and contemporary clippings are all welcome. Each entry needs an image file, an alt-text description, and a credit line (e.g. "Library of Congress, Brady-Handy Collection"). Files go in src/assets/img/gallery/ and entries in src/_data/gallery.js.

3. Videos, documentaries, lectures, dramatic readings

The videos page is empty. I embed YouTube videos in privacy-enhanced (no-cookie) mode and click-to-load, so nothing contacts YouTube until the viewer presses play. I need pointers to documentaries, biographical talks, dramatic readings, and historical lectures about Paine. The data file src/_data/videos.js takes a YouTube ID, title, optional speaker, duration, and description.

4. Audio recordings

LibriVox and similar public-domain audiobook projects have produced recordings of several Paine works. The infrastructure for click-to-load audio players on individual work pages is built; the data file src/_data/audio.js just needs verified URLs (keyed by work slug). Even a few entries on the major lectures (The Gods, Why I Am an Agnostic, the tributes) would be high-impact.

5. Corrections and addenda

Typos in transcribed works, wrong dates on the timeline, misattributed quotations, broken links — all noted and acted on. Substantial corrections get a visible record in the per-work history (/works/<slug>/history/) and in the public Git log; see editorial standards. Genealogical research correcting or expanding the family tree (especially around Ebon Clark Paine's descendants and Maude's married life) is particularly welcome.

6. Glossary expansion

The glossary currently has 55 entries. Suggestions for additional 19th-century terms, figures, or ideas Paine used that a modern reader might not recognize are welcome. Each entry needs a short tooltip definition (under ~220 characters) and an optional longer paragraph.

7. Topic tagging refinements

Works are auto-tagged into topics by keyword match against the title and excerpt. The classifications are imperfect. If you read a work and the topics seem wrong or thin, that's an easy fix; the keyword lists live in src/_data/topics.js.

How to send something

Use the single contact form with a topic dropdown that routes your message to the right place in my inbox. There's no separate form per kind of contribution — one form, you pick what it's about, I sort.

For larger material (transcripts, essay drafts, scans), the form's message box is fine for a brief description; I'll reply and arrange a way to receive the file.

For researchers

Graduate students and digital-humanities researchers can use the corpus as a primary source. Three machine-harvestable surfaces are exposed:

• Per-work downloads — every work page has a Download this work disclosure offering the body in plain text, structured JSON (with the stable conway:vol-N:slug identifier), and BibTeX. The full manifest is at /api/downloads.json.
• OAI-PMH endpoint — static XML responders for Identify, ListMetadataFormats, ListIdentifiers, ListRecords, and per-work GetRecord. Dublin Core (oai_dc) metadata only. Static rendering means parameter handling (?from=, ?until=, resumptionToken) is not supported — harvesters should pull the full ListRecords once.
• Per-work revision history — every work has a sibling /works/<slug>/history/ page rendering the public Git changelog for the transcription, so a citation can name a specific commit. The full manifest is at /api/work-history.json.

If you'd like a bulk export of the corpus or want to discuss research access, write to me through the contact form. The Conway Edition is in the public domain and the editorial layer is CC BY-SA 4.0; no permissions are required for either, but a courtesy note is welcome.

What I don't accept

This isn't a general-interest freethought blog, a political platform, a venue for debating religion, or an aggregator of other sites. Plagiarized, undisclosed-AI, or substantially uncited material will be declined regardless of subject. Submissions advocating positions Paine himself opposed (such as authoritarian government or restriction of conscience) won't run, no matter how rhetorically polished.

Terms for contributors

By submitting editorial material you confirm it's your own work (with any quotations properly attributed) and you grant a non-exclusive license to publish it under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license as the rest of the site's editorial content. You retain copyright and may republish elsewhere. Public-domain primary sources (transcribed works, period photographs, audio) carry no additional license.