A new writers' group (part 2)

[zeborah]

(For reference: part 1 was the vision statement thing.)

One thing that I want to bear in mind through all this is that a new group will need a critical mass of members to start with, and will need to keep attracting new members once the initial "Whee, new group!" buzz wears off, and also will need to keep attracting new members once for replacement purposes since people will drift away due to Real Life. This doesn't mean it's the only thing to bear in mind; but it is relatively important.

What I don't know about, don't mind about, and would generally welcome input on:

* Genre. There'd be more potential members if we open it to all genres; otoh limiting it to speculative fiction might focus discussion more productively.

* Publicness. A private community would be more of a safe space; but a public community would facilitate getting continuous new membership because it'll show up in web searches and people can try before they buy.

* Moderation. Should it operate on a "You're moderated until you've proved yourself" basis or a "You're unmoderated until you start being a jerk" basis? Should it be on a "Nothing gets posted until a moderater says so" or an "Everything gets posted straight away but may be removed if a moderator says so" basis? (Some technologies allow some of these but not others.)

* Technology is possibly the trickiest question.

- Mailing list - easy to set up through Google or Yahoo or custom, allows moderation, easy for users, low bandwidth - but it's private.

- Usenet is great (plus I've got most of a year's subscription still to use...) and a moderated group would be possible but as many ISPs aren't providing Usenet services it's not so easily accessible to many people, especially to newbies, except through Google Groups which is clunky as heck.

- LJ is very popular but I know more than one person who've got reasons not to post to it, and it would be horribly clunky for the kind of discussions that I'd like this group to have.

- A lot of webforum software has RSS feeds, so that could be syndicated to LJ for reading (though people would still have to go to the forum to post). Still doesn't have Usenet-style threading, though if you read by RSS you never miss a comment or have to hunt to catch up.

- Social networking places like Ning are another option. It's got email notification and I think RSS feeds can be set up. I've found it a bit clunky myself but probably on a par with other webfora.

- Another social networking site is Friendfeed (already has a fantasy writers group but it has little activity; cf an active group in... action). We could set up a "room" where members can post links to blog entries, photos, videos, etc, or just shortish messages (about twice as long as Twitter). Others can then 'like' or comment on any of these. Every time something gets a new comment it moves to the top of the page. Good for conversation - but not for long posts/comments; and threading within conversations is non-existent. Also archives are iffy.

- Michelle Anna FDD (sorry, not sure what I was thinking!) has some webforum-type software which I've poked at a bit but not a lot yet -- Michelle Anna, do you want to talk about whether or not that would be suitable and what features it has?

- I know someone who may or may not be able to create webforum software that could be, IIRC, web-accessible, RSS-accessible (thus syndicatable to LJ), and even accessible via Usenet. I think he's not yet able to talk about it in detail though.

* Details of rules.
I'm inclined to talk about this more after we've got the technology sorted out.

* Timeline for deciding/doing stuff
Rush in, or fear to tread?

Comments

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

* Genre. There'd be more potential members if we open it to all genres; otoh limiting it to speculative fiction might focus discussion more productively.

If it's a focused mailing list or newsgroup, I'm in favour of "this is a place for writers of speculative fiction and anyone else who wants to hang out with them", much like rasfc was once. On a web forum, there could of course be different groups/fora for people interested in different things. I for one would sometimes like to talk to mystery writers about plausible ways of killing people (in fiction, don't misunderstand me).

* Publicness. A private community would be more of a safe space; but a public community would facilitate getting continuous new membership because it'll show up in web searches and people can try before they buy.

A public community with some private space? Not that I like web forums, but it's becoming more and more attractive because most web-forum software will allow different levels of privacy for different forums.

* Moderation. Should it operate on a "You're moderated until you've proved yourself" basis or a "You're unmoderated until you start being a jerk" basis? Should it be on a "Nothing gets posted until a moderater says so" or an "Everything gets posted straight away but may be removed if a moderator says so" basis? (Some technologies allow some of these but not others.)

"If you're unregistered, you're moderated period; if you're registered, your first X (smallish value of X, say 3) posts are moderated, after that you're unmoderated until and unless you prove to be a jerk". I don't know how to gracefully keep out those who are already jerks-- whoever suggested to barfy that he might help wit setting up the group should, well, not have done so.

- Mailing list - easy to set up through Google or Yahoo or custom, allows moderation, easy for users, low bandwidth - but it's private.

And prone to accusations of arbitrariness, especially if it's moderated. And if unmoderated, attracts spam. (If I didn't moderate my choir mailing list, the noise would be so loud you couldn't even see the signal)

- Usenet is great (plus I've got most of a year's subscription still to use...) and a moderated group would be possible but as many ISPs aren't providing Usenet services it's not so easily accessible to many people, especially to newbies, except through Google Groups which is clunky as heck.

And anything on Usenet would just attract the same trolls and jerks again. Even with moderation we wouldn't be able to keep them out completely, especially the ones who can be civil and have something to say but are intolerable nevertheless (I'm not naming names but everybody knows at least one). Also, the fact that a group is moderated may keep some people from posting chatter because it's not weighty enough. I think misc.writing.moderated died for lack of social lubricant.

- LJ is very popular but I know more than one person who've got reasons not to post to it, and it would be horribly clunky for the kind of discussions that I'd like this group to have.

More than one? Wow! Now I can stop feeling that I'm the spoilsport. But yes, even with notifications it's horribly clunky because there's no decent way to mark things read, and especially with a lively discussion keeping up becomes harder and harder.

- A lot of webforum software has RSS feeds, so that could be syndicated to LJ for reading (though people would still have to go to the forum to post). Still doesn't have Usenet-style threading, though if you read by RSS you never miss a comment or have to hunt to catch up.

Also, some webforum software has mark-as-read functionality. I still don't have much liking for it, but it does seem to be one of the best options.

Investigating Ning and Friendfeed now. What you say about Friendfeed seems to make it completely unsuitable for a real discussion, and if something is only social we might as well stick with Twitter with the bunch of people who are already there.

(to be continued)

[brooksmoses]

The thing about accusations of arbitrariness is that they're not nearly as harmful how the moderators act on them.

One of the better moderators I know has rules like "if it looks like politics, I delete it because those conversations always go sour even if they start out with the best of intentions". And every so often he will delete a whole thread and say, "That was getting nasty in places and I didn't have time to sort out the good from the bad. Sorry." And he's commercially interested in the subject and one of the rules is, "Don't mention anyone who could plausibly be my competitor," which has somewhat arbitrary limits on it. Every so often someone gets ticked about him being arbitrary, and he politely gives them the "my board, my webspace, my dime, my rules" speech, and if they argue he bans them. And it all works pretty well really; some stuff falls through the cracks in both directions, but it's civil and a lot of people are happy with it.

Actually, I think one of the big reasons that it works well is that he moderates topics, not people. A lot of the regulars have had a post deleted here and there when topics wander off into the weeds and tempers flare. It's not personal, and the moderator is clear about that, and it doesn't extend beyond the post in question unless someone is really clearly an argumentative troublemaker and has been told to stop doing that several times.

Thus, here, I think we need a joining policy to handle gating the newbies (by which I mainly mean making keeping out the drive-by nuisances and keeping banned troublemakers from posting under a different name -- anything that takes a 'apply and we'll approve you via email' is probably good enough for most of that), and what we need moderators for is saying, "This topic is no longer being productive. You all will stop talking about it now; further posts on it will be deleted (or people banned)." Or, really, for saying, "This topic is in danger of wandering off into the weeds. Don't make me stop this forum and come back there!" and heading things off before they get that bad.

(A good mailing-list software would allow applying moderation queueing based on subject line or in-reply-to headers, which would allow closure of threads sufficient to handle people who hadn't read the "This topic is closed" post yet, without normally applying moderation to people. I'm not sure if the programming to do that exists yet, though.)

[zeborah]

There are topics that need to be headed off entirely -- otoh there are also topics that, if they can be discussed respectfully, would be really fruitful -- the kinds of topics that lilairen and I haven't dared raise on rasfc recently -- so moderating would be more delicate but some sort of moderation would be just as necessary.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I suggested to barfy that he should (or could) get involved in making suggestions for the forward develpment of rasfc - if that's what you're thinking of. (To be homest no-one can stop him putting in his two pennorth anyway, but no one has to take any notice of wha he says.) As far as I'm aware no one on rasfc has discussed this potentrial new group and I rather thought that Zeborah's intention was to cut all links with rasfc and start afresh. I assumed any approaches to rasfc posters to join the new group would be done privately, by email, not as a blanket invitation to the group.

[zeborah]

My thought had been, *after* this group and all its rules are set up and decided on, to get someone who still posts to rasfc to post about it there. That way lurkers who don't dare participate in rasfc can see it as well.

But if people would rather not risk it I'm happy with private emails too.

[kiya]

The webforum I read operates as follows:

- broad topic categories with sub-boards for more specific topics
- some of these are newbie forums, some general discussion, some specific discussion, some social, some closed from public search
- a sub-board for very specific topics and projects, some of which discussions are open and some of which are closed from public search

- no anonymous posting
- newbie posters are limited to a fraction of the forums (specifically, the newbie forums)
- people must apply to be granted full status and thus access to the general and closed forums; there are publically posted procedures for doing so

- moderation is done publically, in accordance with the publically posted rules, so that The Evil Cabal Is Oppressing Me responses are discouraged (this does not always work)
- posts cannot be modified; the 'edit my post' software is disabled five minutes after posting
- the board software has been modified to provide trackback links on all posts by default (people can delete them, and get scolded by staff if they do) to provide threading capability
- spam posts are deleted by staff and replaced by alarming recipes for spam-containing foodstuffs

I think that's the basics.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

(continued from previous-- it was 300 characters too long)

- Michelle has some webforum-type software which I've poked at a bit but not a lot yet -- Michelle, do you want to talk about whether or not that would be suitable and what features it has?

That's annafdd. (I was surprised that Michelle also had webforum-type software and she never talked about it!)

Rush in, or fear to tread?

I'm all for rushing in.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Sorry for not speaking up at the time - I have had a few really tough weeks. Yes, I am setting up a website and would welcome cooperation. Shall we talk?

[zeborah]

I was hoping to do the nntp(ie Usenet) / mailing list / webforum combo thing, since it sounds like that's technically possible, and it'd be so cool for people to be able to access it via their preferred method.

I've been meaning to catch up with Brooks about it since it sounded like he might be able to help; I also know someone else who's creating his own software that'd do the same kind of thing (currently in alpha-testing of the nntp side of things; it's a not-tomorrow-and-no-promises kind of thing but remains cool).

But yes, we should talk anyway. Email me?

[brooksmoses]

Here are my thoughts:

Genre: I suspect that a group that's not focused on speculative fiction will not be interesting to me. I am as interested in the speculation as in the writing-as-craft.

Public: I'm not certain. There are actually two questions here: whether reading is public, and whether posting is public. I think that having publicly-readable archives is a good thing. The bar to joining and posting should be relatively small if present.

Moderation: One of the failure states of "the moderators must pre-approve everything" is that if the moderators are busy, discussion dies. I don't think we can afford that. I think something along the lines of having some minor requirement for approval to join, the ability to place people on "must approve each message" blocklists, and letting most people post freely but deleting things (or perhaps locking threads) if stuff gets out of hand. I think it is useful to have moderators be able to say, "This topic is over" and have tools to block people who want to dispute that.

Another option on technology: Non-Usenet NNTP. It's possible to set up a news server that's not part of Usenet, put this one newsgroup on it, and allow anyone to connect to it. The advantage of this is that it provides most of the advantages of Usenet, but avoids the problem of each person needing their own news server. On the other hand, there is still the disadvantage that people need special software to access it, and that's a barrier to entry that we may not (or may!) want.

A third option is, if we make a mailing list, gatewaying it through GMANE.org and thereby allowing NNTP access to it. (Essentially, they provide an archive of the posts and a news server set up so that you can read the mailing list as if it's a newsgroup, and replies to the newsgroup get properly gatewayed back to the mailing list.) If we do make a mailing list, I'd highly recommend getting that set up.

These days, I don't think that grouping web fora into a single category is particularly useful. There are many different ones, with very different interfaces, and the feel of the place will be very different depending on what's used.

Some thoughts on particular styles:

This style, fairly common in web fora, is in my opinion right out. Or, more accurately, I guess it is in fact functional, but I find it really quite annoying to use. Especially when people have signatures on their posts. It doesn't allow subthreads.

This one (sadly down at the moment) is outstanding for what it is, but unfortunately it depends on people putting their messages at least partly in the subject lines. It's a huge threaded list of subject lines, which link to the posts. If you go away and come back later, anything that's new since you were last there is tagged "NEW". What shows up on the main page is determined by date, so when the top-level post from a large thread age enough to fall off the page, all the subthreads then get fragmented across the page, but anything new will always be on the front page.

Making Light's comment threads are surprisingly functional, despite not having threading. They do require someone to make the top-level posts, and I'm not entirely sure how workable it is to have lots of those happening. It also has the problem of sorting things by the age of the top-level post, so threads pretty much die when the top-level post gets old. However, these are solvable problems, I think, and it's better than many options.

Groklaw's comment threads are threaded, and functional, but not something I would recommend. They do provide a possible option, though.

LiveJournal is familiar to people here; it's another option. I find it among the passably-good ones; far from ideal, but also something that is functional.

This is a good place to break the comment; I'll continue in another one.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I find Making Light interesting to read at the top level posts, but unless you fit a particular ideological template, the comment threads can get bloody really fast.

[brooksmoses]

In general, one of the big questions about web forums is whether or not to thread conversations. My opinion is that threading means that a person can't reasonably keep track of what they've read without software assistance. If the software assistance is present and functional, threading is notably better. If it's not there, threading is horrid.

The average Newsreader provides outstanding software assistance for keeping track of what's read. It's easy to mark a message read or unread, and the automatic marking generally only happens when it's actually read.

Webfora like the Hobby Heaven board that I linked to above (the second link I gave) do reasonably well -- but only because posts there are trivially short, and there is rarely a meaningful distinction between "glanced at the subject line" and "read it". Thus, it can store a single piece of information in a user cookie -- namely, when they last looked at the index page -- and be reasonably accurate in considering anything older than that to be "read". For fora where one often has to think about the posts and often can't read the whole index page in a sitting, that's not functional.

Webfora where each comment is on its own page can keep track of what's been read (though it means storing the equivalent of every user's .newsrc file on the server), but they tend to be slow to load, and rarely do a good job of handling the "I want to mark this thread read now". They're almost never functional for the "I want to press 'n' about once every two seconds to skim through this thread" style of reading.

Thus, my conclusion is that threading is not really all that great of a thing in deep-conversation-oriented web forums using what I've seen of current technology. And that that's a fundamental problem that's not going to get solved in a really satisfactory way without a lot of Javascript. (In ten years, we'll have things that are basically a full-fledged Javascript application that functions like a proper newsreader with preloading the next post and caching it so things load lightning-fast and you can skim without having everything on the same "page", and that sort of thing. That's not here now.)

On the other hand, lack of threading is also not that great for deep conversation on web fora, because so many possible jumping-off points get closed off if one thinks about them too long, and the conversation is fractured and highly favors those who reply quickly.

Thus, I would conclude that the best option right now is probably a mailing list. With good web archives so new people can browse before joining; these are using pretty standard software and are really quite good enough. Having a GMANE.org gateway for those of us who want to use a newsreader to access it would be outstanding.

FWIW, I've got a server that can be used for this, and am willing to handle setup of this if desired.

[brooksmoses]

Actually, thinking about it more, I think the idea of a mailing list with good web archives has a lot to say for it. One big one is: People can find it with Google. It's easy to link to a message from a web page or LJ post or whatnot, and say, "Look at this nifty thing someone said," and bring other people to it.

And, really, discoverability is what a group like this will live or die on. It's why Usenet is dying, in large part; it's stopped being discoverable by new people.

Because of that, I would very strongly argue against a private web forum or not-publicly-archived mailing list or anything that can't be read until one joins. I don't think it will sustain itself.

[zeborah]

Agreed very much on discoverability.

And, though originally I was very "meh" about mailing lists, you've mentioned a bunch of possibilities that make it probably the most flexible of all the alternatives. If it could also be fed to RSS and thus syndicated to LJ I think it'd suit everyone. :-)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Yahoogroups can be private or public. Not sure about the RSS feed though.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I've got a server that can be used for this, and am willing to handle setup of this if desired.

Of the technological alternatives, so far this one sounds best to me. I *like* the usenet format, it makes reading exceedingly effective, and it's a tried-and-proven format for the kind of long in-depth discussions we are after.

[julesjones]

I found rasfc useful because it was focused on a specific genre, while still discussing material of general application. I dropped out of posting much about my own stuff a couple of years ago because I'd wandered into writing contemporary romance, but I was still *reading* the (ever fewer) threads on the craft of writing. I think retaining that focus on speculative fiction would be useful, so long as "focus" is as pariyal suggests, i.e. "this is a place for writers of speculative fiction and anyone else who wants to hang out with them".

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I'd go with a private mailimg list (I only know yahoogroups but not googlegroups, so choice is yours). I think it should be unmoderated, because moderation is going to suck a lot of energy out of the moderators and they'll burn out eventually. The group owner and administrator have the right to ban posters, so work on a 'three strikes and you're out' basis - with a (public) moderator warning for strikes one and two.

That may mean we get the occasional inappropriate post but a repeatedly inappropriate poster will be gone very quickly.

Yahoo groups come by email and can be threaded by most people's email software, so discussions will look like rasfc ones to most people - following the guidelines of interspersing comments and snipping irrelevant bits of previous posts (and all the other netiquette that we've always tried to encourage.)

You can set up yahoogroups so they don't even show up in the directory of groups if you really want to keep it private - or you can set them up so that people can find the group in the rasfc listings and hop in and apply to join. Moderators have to approve new members so new applicants not known to the moderators should probably be asked to provide a brief paragraph outlining who they are and what their interest is in the writing of SF.

I'd also recommend posters are asked (or required) not use pseudonyms. It's a lot harder to be rude to a person when you know they are real.

The benevolent dictatorship works well only if the benevolant dictator remembers to stick to both parts of that. Benevolent as well as Dictator. Frankly, if I hadn't known the background events that led to the formation of this new group, your first post would have struck me as being totally scary. It read like 'You can come to my party, but only if you wear the dress I want you to wear and eat the cakes I give you and play the games I want you to play.' I think you'll scare off newcomers who don't know anything about the history of rasfc unless you rewrite your vision statement to appear more attractive and inclusive to us mere mortals who fear we might not meet your exacting standards of political correctness. (I fear I might say 'lamebrained' inadvertantly and be ostracised forever.) I also want to feel as though the group is open for healthy debate and disagreement (as long as it's civil).

I think you can clearly set out your policy of making the group a safe space without making it sound as though it's surrounded by barbed wire and a shark infested moat (into which transgressors will be hurled).

You have to think beyond the recent arguments in rasfc if you want this group to attract a wider membership and maybe re-attract some of the posters who have dropped out of rasfc recently, as well as some who never knew usenet existed.

Like brooksmoses I too would be less interested if it was not speculative fiction specific because there are a lot of topics very specific to SF.

I wouldn't want to have to register with a social networking site to access this group. I'm allergic to facebook etc. and a quick look at freindfeed didn't look very user-friendly. Call me old fashiones (and you can) but I'm not comfortable on web forums either.

I think that covers everything you asked and also some things you didn't.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't touch the group Zeborah originally outlined with a barge pole for very much the reasons you've outlined. I want to be somewhere I can discuss ideas frely without fear of being ousted if the views and philosophy I am currently exploring differ slightly from those of the majority. SF for me is about exploration and some of the places I tend to end up are unpleasant.
I'm hardly extreme - I write YA, I am a feminist and my politics are left leaning, but I would be very uncomfortable in the group as it had been mooted. I'm not wild about moderated groups anyway and I find groups where everyone just strokes each other and says how marvellous everyone is both pointless and stifling. IMHO YMMV and you may not want me in this group anyway.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I think you're right and there are ways of making a group safe without suffocating it. It's up to Zeborah to find that middle ground.

You've read my current novel-in-revision, Nicky, as has Zeborah (your reactions were predictably very different, which is excellent and both gave me a way of looking at things through fresh eyes). Anna read the first bit at Milford last year and said (in passing) that it was homophobic. I don't think the book is - though it has a character who is and his journey in this regard is in important component of the book. I'd like to think that there won't be any taboos in the new group as long as issues are explored in an open-minded and non-pejorative way

[hairmonger.livejournal.com]

No pseud? I would not be comfortable with that. I have said things, and probably will again, on usenet (esp. rec.nude before it disappeared under the spam-waves) that I do not want my clients to be able to find without doing a great deal of work.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I had never even considered that you usea pseudonym because at least you show up as a name rather than calling yourself 'barf-bear' or (one particularly annoying troll in another group I used to be on 'zero-sum'. There are probably people who do use a real name as a pseudonym and we'll never know.

If we use a closed yahoogroup, though, the posts are not available to anyone who is not signed on as a member of the group. No public archive, just a members one.

[zeborah]

I'd also recommend posters are asked (or required) not use pseudonyms. It's a lot harder to be rude to a person when you know they are real.

I have personal objections to this. :-) I mean, I *could* - I'm moving my online personas closer and closer anyway - but I don't know if it'd really help.

I think you'll scare off newcomers who don't know anything about the history of rasfc unless you rewrite your vision statement to appear more attractive and inclusive to us mere mortals who fear we might not meet your exacting standards of political correctness. (I fear I might say 'lamebrained' inadvertantly and be ostracised forever.)

Personally when I see the phrase "political correctness" I like to rewrite the sentence with "politeness". To my surprise, this is the first time I've done that and it still makes sense as the writer intended it. I'm certainly not intending any "one strike and you're out". I'm not even sure about "three strikes" - I'd be more tempted to go for "three strikes and you get an X-day stand-down period" or something, unless the strikes were really egregrious (eg blatant trolling). If people make a mistake from ignorance or carelessness, that's not a bannable/whatever offense; what's bannable/whatever is getting rude and argumentative when someone says "Hi, that's hurtful."

This is how I see it, anyway. But the details of these rules are what I want to leave up to the panel of moderators, precisely so it's not just me dictating how the community behaves.

But I put that stuff into the vision because what I'm not willing to compromise on is that this is to be a group where people of various groups who have been very much not made welcome on rasfc (and as a straight white woman I only know the half of it) can feel like this might be... not a "safe space" in the strict sense, but at least somewhere where it's safe to invest a little, tentative energy.

If that requires a bit of barbed wire, so be it.

[kiya]

Most of the easy public-access mailing lists have really weird TOSes; I would be far happier with someone setting up a mailman listserv on a machine or something.

pseudonyms, good and bad

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I'm another big vote against 'no pseudonyms', and I'll delete the entire long rant about me-specific reasons *and* other reasons I've noticed since.

I think there's a way to get what you want and what I want. That is to not ban pseudonyms, but ban fly-by-nights and johnie-come-lately. Make people point to an existing online identity attached to their chosen identity (eg "I'm aquaeri on LJ and post as Aqua on alt.polyamory"). That way they have investment in not "ruining their reputation", we have some (basic) assurance they're not a sockpuppet, they have the online experience to maybe notice other people online are still real human beings, and if necessary, their existing online behaviour can be used to assess whether they have basic online people skills.

(Yes, I am actually a snob about people having basic online people skills because I have spent too much of my online life teaching them, whether under this pseudonym or my legal name. I'd like this community to be a step beyond that, elitist as it no doubt appears.)

As Zeborah has mentioned, use of something that looks like a legal name is no actual guarantee of contents. And I'd love a comm that could admit me, you, Nicky, etc and just about have justification for not admitting DDF until he'd learnt some 'how to treat human beings' skills.

Re: pseudonyms, good and bad

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Fair enough about the pseudonyms. The regular pseudonymical posters to rasfc have never been a problem. You're right it's the fly-by-nights.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I'm on a private newsgroup for published novelists that runs through Google Groups. It is semi-moderated, in that posts don't run through any filter but if The Cabal senses a topic going bad or drifting too far outside our territory, they'll tell you. And start deleting things, if necessary, but that hasn't happened yet.

As you say, that won't attract random strangers who might be interested -- and interesting. Actually, that's part of the design intent, so that writers can discuss things in private like contracts and agents and dealing with the current state of the publishing business . . .

I'd prefer not having to go to yet another place for discussions, as I spend too much time on the internet already.

On the other hand, I tend to read a lot more than I contribute to most forums, so my preferences shouldn't carry much weight compared to more active posters.

I don't know how many of the prospective group know about and read sff.net, but they have both open and closed groups, author-specific groups, and allow both members and random drive-by posting. I have a membership as a perk of SFWA membership, but that basic level doesn't allow me to set up my own group.

[karinfromnosund.livejournal.com]

I'm hacking in a quick answer before I read everyone else's.

* Genre

I'm in favour of an sf group (mostly). In a general writing group, the sf-specific stuff might drown. This doesn't necessarily mean that we don't allow people to talk about mysteries, litfic, whatever, merely that it's more peripheral to the main topic.

* Publicness

I think we want something public. We shouldn't be afraid to show who we are.

* Moderation

I think moderation after the fact would be preferrable: that is, when problem arise, the moderators look into it.

Forbidden topics may work, but we should think hard about which ones.

How do we choose our moderators? Do we use what someone I knew called 'collective non-protest'?

There should be rules. The moderators should be prepared to explain their decisions, and point to the rules they base them on. They should also do their best to make sure that the groups participants in general agree with their interpretation of the rules. Deleted posts, threads, etc, should be archived, so they can be restored if needed. All this should be done in a simple and non-bureaucratic way. (Oh dear, I see that I must hit my inner secretary very hard in some vital part.)

I have an idea of something I'd like to try (assuming it hasn't been proved impossible already), but I think I'm going to put it in a separate comment.

* Timeline

Rush in!

[zeborah]

How do we choose our moderators? Do we use what someone I knew called 'collective non-protest'?

Can you elucidate? I was thinking of-- actually I'll make moderation a new post sometime tonight because there's a related issue I need to raise.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

I participate on a number of yahoogroups lists, they seem to work fairly well and I like the functionality of them coming through e-mail.

I'm not so fond of googlegroups, especially after Google's last publishing industry move.

The yahoogroups interface is doable, and it's possible for the list to be monitored with approval by one or two moderators--I'd encourage the development of two or three so that the burden doesn't fall on one person.

I'd also really like it to be about "speculative fiction and those who like to hang out around it."

Don't know how much I'll be able to contribute, but I'm all for it.

[oldsma.livejournal.com]

I'm in, although I'm mostly writing columns about music these days.

MAO

[oldsma.livejournal.com]

Oy, and then I forgot to address the practical questions.

I'd prefer to participate in discussions of spec fic, because I like the mix of history, science, cooking, and general AKICF geekiness that seems to come along. If I were to get back to fiction, that's what I would be writing.

I have been involved in many kinds of fora and Usenet is still the best for ongoing discussion: if you can get it, if you have a good threading newsreader, and if you have a way of keeping "my dick is bigger" pinheadery at bay. I'd like a private Usenet-protocol forum best, I think.

MAO

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

What brooksmoses says makes a lot of sense to me. If a mailing list with archives on the web is technically easy to do, then it would suit me. Basically I go on the Web to read LJ and Flickr and Twitter and occasionally peek on on Facebook and I really don't want to have to access another web thingy. Being web based would also discriminate against some of the nice people on rasfc who don't have broadband yet who may wish to move to the new group, either as well as or in place of rasfc.

I feel that the group needs to be open to view by everyone in order to attract new people. I also agree with birdsedge and brownnicky that the new group mustn't be born out of a knee-jerk reaction to the bad experiences on rasfc, but must be a group in its own right. I don't want people to think the group is a radical campaigning organisation; we just want to be open, tolerant and supportive of writers of SF.

To my mind, a simple statement, on the lines of a normal college or university code of conduct, should be sufficient safeguard against people being harangued for their political or religious views or for their sexual orientation etc. All we require is that people are courteous to one another. The problem in rasfc was that no one had any power to use against people who caused trouble, either out of maliciousness or cluelessness, and make them shut up. On a moderated forum, problems could be nipped in the bud before tempers became frayed.


A simple Code of Conduct that would probably cover our needs.

When using the forum:

1. Remember that you are conversing with real people so the normal rules of social interaction apply.
2. If an exchange is only of interest to a couple of people, take it to email, don't keep posting to the forum.
3. Ensure that any contributions posted to the forum further the aims of the group and are appropriate to the discussion.

When communicating don’t:

1. Contribute illegal or offensive material. Any material which is considered to be illegal or offensive may be removed from the system.
2. Use the remoteness of the recipients as an excuse to communicate in an anti-social manner. Examples of such anti-social behaviour are:
- harassment or intimidation of another user
- person-to-person aggression within conferences
- deviation from the spirit of a conference
- excessive or inappropriate use of jargon, banter or graffiti.
3. Make contributions containing personal comments about other users and their views in public forums.

Regarding when we should do this, I feel that asap is the best way forward. At the moment everyone's attention is focused on making a new thing work. If nothing happens for ages, people will drift off and find other ways to support their writing.

[zeborah]

<snip campaigning-ness>

I do feel that it's important to state explicitly that we mean to support [various groups]; if we don't, everything I've read and experienced suggests that people *will think* "Oh, so it's another respectful space... for straight white men." <snip more campaigning-ness for space and sanity>

I am open to wording to the vision statement that makes it slightly less intimidating to straight white men, but absolutely not at the expense of being welcoming to those who have been sidelined by not just rasfc, but the sf field and fandom at large.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I like Helen's Code of conduct. You could start it with a brief equal ops policy that says: "This group is open to all regardless of age, colour, geogrsaphical location, creed, gender, orientation or state of health."

I din't think you need to mention minorities because if you do you'll be bound to miss one out and offend someone. Keep it broad and inclusive.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

To me that's the best way forward. I probably wouldn't join a group that was based on zeborahnz's mission statement because I'd assume that my fiction wouldn't be relevant or of interest to anyone in the group.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Nor would mine (but I've been having it out with zeborahnz in IRC, and I may post a comment somewhere once I get my thoughts sorted out).

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

"This group is open to all regardless of age, colour, geogrsaphical location, creed, gender, orientation or state of health."

I think naming minorities is useful. I can easily imagine reading the statement above and not taking it at all seriously, "just another yadda yadda we're nice really statement". Reading Zeborah's original list is more likely to make me pay attention and think "maybe they really mean it, maybe this is indeed a place where I will feel welcomed" (as a person from one of those minorities).

And as for leaving out someone, my feeling is someone from a non-named minority coming along wouldn't go "they don't want me", they'd be more likely to go "hey, what about me?" -- and then the statement can be amended to include them.

(At the same time, I also think Zeborah's later rewriting of the statement in a new post is better. But I'm catching up with this comment thread which I hadn't read in full...)

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I'm not a straight white man, but I wouldn't feel at all welcome in the group you outlined. Maybe that's OK I don't know, it depends on how exclusive you intend to be.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Also, there needs to be something that makes it clear that if you happen to be a straight white man (or a straight white woman, come to think of it) you're not going to be a second-class citizen.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I once spent a very unhappy week at a summer school for a course on women's studies where the default assumption was that you were a radical lesbian feminist separatist and anything other than that was a Traitor to the Cause. As a married woman with a son, I felt very alienated. I don't want to give potential members the feeling that the proposed group would be similarly biased if they joined. (If the group is going to be similarly biased, then I don't want to join.)

Also, as birdsedge says, I'm wary of listing the people we support because it's either going to get stupidly long, or we'll miss someone out who will therefore assume they're not welcome.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Genre

I don't think a general writing group would work half as well as a speculative fiction one, because there are just too many things one would have to negotiate about or explain otherwise - I mean, it's perfectly fine for anyone else to join, but the speculative element should not be under discussion.
Also, I am interested in an intermediate-level discussion - there are plenty of beginner's groups, but not so many places catering for more advanced writers.

Publicness

Semi-public, I think. Open to anyone who wants to join and - ugh - conform, but word of mouth rather than widely advertised.

Moderation

I've seen 'you're on moderation until you've proven yourself as a sensible contributor' work quite well. For most people, that's a single post; for some it could be longer.

Technology

Whatever we end up using needs to support long texts and sensible quoting; because that's the kind of discussion we've had, and the kind of discussion I want to see more of. I've tried playing with Anna's forum, but it seems to crash Safari 2 :-(

Rules

Guidelines?

Timeline

Keep the forward momentum, I think. Keep people informed, keep talking about it. In the meantime, keep talking on 9and60ways (sorry, Irina) to stop everybody scattering into the four winds.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Point by Point:

* Genre.
I have no preference. Perhaps open to all, then have separate genre discussions to go with general writing discussions. On AOL, I frequented the Mystery Writers boards because they had good general writing discussions. The SF/F boards tended to focus more on the tenets of SF and F.

* Publicness.
Public

* Moderation.
Tough call. I prefer no moderation, or moderation when someone becomes a jerk.

* Technology is possibly the trickiest question.

- Mailing list -
I do not like these. I've tried them and stopped posting after a few months. I don't like a lot of email.

- Usenet is great (plus I've got most of a year's subscription still to use...) and a moderated group would be possible but as many ISPs aren't providing Usenet services it's not so easily accessible to many people, especially to newbies, except through Google Groups which is clunky as heck.

I access Usenet via Google Groups and don't find it clunky at all, but then, it's similar to other things and I'm used to it. Usenet would be fine for me.

- LJ is very popular but I know more than one person who've got reasons not to post to it, and it would be horribly clunky for the kind of discussions that I'd like this group to have.

LJ would also be fine for me since I'm already here.

- A lot of webforum software has RSS feeds, so that could be syndicated to LJ for reading (though people would still have to go to the forum to post). Still doesn't have Usenet-style threading, though if you read by RSS you never miss a comment or have to hunt to catch up.

For me, it depends on the interface, but most are very similar to each other now, so it's not likely a problem. Yes, I could subscribe, but I subscribe to over 400 feeds (blogs, news, flickr discussions, sports, etc), so wouldn't go that route. I would visit the site regularly to see if there's anything new, same as I do my LJ Friends page and rasfc. So, this would be okay for me, too.

- Social networking places like Ning are another option. It's got email notification and I think RSS feeds can be set up. I've found it a bit clunky myself but probably on a par with other webfora.

I'm on Ning, in 2 or 3 groups and after posting an introductory post, haven't been back to them. I find the interface very annoying. I'd give it a try if that's what's chosen, but it's not on my preferred list.

- Another social networking site is Friendfeed (already has a fantasy writers group but it has little activity; cf an active group in... action). We could set up a "room" where members can post links to blog entries, photos, videos, etc, or just shortish messages (about twice as long as Twitter). Others can then 'like' or comment on any of these. Every time something gets a new comment it moves to the top of the page. Good for conversation - but not for long posts/comments; and threading within conversations is non-existent. Also archives are iffy.

I haven't used it, but would be willing to give it a try.

- Michelle Anna FDD (sorry, not sure what I was thinking!) has some webforum-type software which I've poked at a bit but not a lot yet -- Michelle Anna, do you want to talk about whether or not that would be suitable and what features it has?

I've also been trying this, but am not comfortable with it yet. Not sure if it will ever get comfy, but it seems usable.

- I know someone who may or may not be able to create webforum software that could be, IIRC, web-accessible, RSS-accessible (thus syndicatable to LJ), and even accessible via Usenet. I think he's not yet able to talk about it in detail though.

That sounds like the best of all worlds! :)

* Details of rules.
I'm inclined to talk about this more after we've got the technology sorted out.

Makes sense.

* Timeline for deciding/doing stuff
Rush in, or fear to tread?

How about slowly start working on it? :)

[selidor]

*polite wave*

You may wish to have a look at OnlineGroups.Net, who are free and specialise in this kind of situation.
Their groups are highly configurable, and can be used via email *and or* web. This is a nice summary and some more technical details.