A new writers' group (part 2)
Apr. 26th, 2009 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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?
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.
-
- 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?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-26 07:23 pm (UTC)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.