A reading guide

Neither. Every page in SlipRoom is free and open, there is no paywall, and readers are not asked to register. Your browser will not be handed any cookies while you read.

The room itself speaks English, but each writer publishes in the language they think in, and a good number of them write in Vietnamese. The typefaces were chosen so that every Vietnamese diacritic appears as it should.

Within a writer’s blog, posts sit in drawers (categories) the writer has named. Across the whole room, subject headings (tags) bring together pieces on the same theme; follow any heading listed at the foot of a post to reach its topic page.

Take the address /their-handle/feed.xml, which each blog links to, and add it to whichever feed reader you use. Should you prefer everything at once, the feed for the entire room is at /feed.xml.

At the end of each post you will find a short form. Give a name, write your note and send it. We do not ask for an email address, and there is nothing to sign in to.

That is expected. A moderator reads each guest note before it goes up, and this is not always quick. Any note still unapproved when 30 days have passed is removed from our records.

Since readers have no accounts, a note cannot be edited once sent. To have it taken down, write to us choosing “Flagging a post or margin note”, giving the address of the post and the name you signed with.

Shelves are offered by invitation rather than by open enrolment. You are welcome to introduce yourself, though: send a few lines from the correspondence page under “Asking for a shelf”.

It lives at /your-handle/ and carries your portrait, a short biography, a link to your own website if you want one, and an opening note in your own words. Below come your drawers and every post you have filed, complete with covers, tags, an RSS feed and, on the longer pieces, a table of contents.

Not at all; they remain yours. You simply allow SlipRoom to host and display them and to distribute them, by RSS for instance. Whenever you wish, you may ask us to take down a single post or your entire blog.

Certainly. Links in posts are ordinary links, and your profile may carry one to your own website as well. We only ask that links lead where they say they do; the reading room rules set out what is not permitted.

Please write to us under “Flagging a post or margin note” with the address of the page. If the trouble concerns your own copyrighted work, the topic “A question of copyright” is the better choice.

Remarkably little: the name and text of any margin note you leave, and any letter you send through the correspondence form, which we discard once 90 days have gone by. The full account is in the privacy notice.