Contributor Guide
Hi, thanks for contributing to this project, and helping me (@alexlitel) collate accounts for the 116th Congress. Due to the nature of the project with member lists derived from external data source, using a Wiki is the most practical way of collating that data for the time being.
The project's dataset encompasses campaign and office accounts for members, committees, caucuses, and party organizations (this category is vaguest: think DCCC/NRCC, floor monitors, cloakrooms, SenateGOP/SenateDems) in House or Senate or both if relevant. Things affiliated with a party are labeled with a D/R/I/etc and nonpartisan things are noted with N/A. If you want a really rough illustration of the accounts tracked in something slightly more readable than minified JSON, I created a Wiki page with a data dump here.
Anyway, there are sections for all these groups. It's unlikely that there are any new Twitter accounts for anything other than new members, but I added sections for the other types of accounts just in case.
The project tracks both campaign and office accounts, and the type of account is an important distinction because it's illegal to use a campaign account for office stuff and vice versa. Campaign accounts include accounts that the candidates personally handle (e.g. @tedcruz) and general staff accounts (e.g. @teamtedcruz).
Office and campaign account distinctions are often noted in the bio. But if unclear: office accounts will discuss official duties and possibly link to a .gov url, while campaign accounts have things like campaign/donation/GOTY messaging. For member-elects, office accounts will have been created likely after the election and have something like rep in the handle or rep/sen-elect in the name; other accounts are probably campaign accounts.
To add an member/account combo to the list, use the Markdown template below and add to the list. If there is dummy data, you can safely replace that dummy data.
### Foo Person (D-NY)
* @fooaccount (12131, campaign)
In the above code 12131 is a placeholder for the Twitter id string, which allows for tracking accounts in the event that there is a screen name change. If possible, please include this because it's something the project requires for tracking accounts. You can find an account's id string by visiting the account's page on Twitter's regular desktop site (e.g. twitter.com/twitter) using your browser's dev console and entering document.querySelector('.ProfileNav').getAttribute('data-user-id') in your browser dev console. If you can't do this, that's fine, just omit the ID number. I can always extract it later.
If you still would like to contribute, send me an send an email or DM on Twitter (@alexlitel) with data in the format above or something analogous.
If you are editing directly in the Wiki, please add your name, Github handle or however you'd like to be credited (+ a personal link if relevant) to the contributor section. Or if sending data via Twitter DM or email, let me know how you want to be credited (+ a personal link if relevant). Outside of Github Everyone who contributes will be credited in the README of the main repo when this data is folded into the main dataset.
Obvious caveat: Offensive contributor names will not receive credit and be edited out. Ditto for links.