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

[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.