Letter Writing Info

Writing letters for Progressive Portal is an extensive process. It starts with researching the issue and assembling the arguments, along with contact information for the letter recipients. Then, the writer constructs a lengthy letter with all the arguments. Next, the writer specifies alternate words, phrases, and sentences throughout the letter. (The computer will later assemble these at random into suggested letter texts, so the text presented to every user is unique.) Finally, the writer specifies a series of different sentence sets; the computer randomly selects one set each time and assembles a letter from it.

The amount of work is much greater than if we were providing just one version of a letter -- we estimate an average eight hours to construct one letter -- but we feel it's worth it. Even when letters are sent without any rewriting on the user's part, each letter is unique, so the recipient does not have the tendency to ignore them as with a flood of identical texts.

Full instructions will be provided to volunteers.