Tentative steps

So, the first part of the Open Words community is now open. I've just created a phpBB forum which can be found over at congelical.com/forum. Feel free to register there and start discussing whatever you want (including the main Open Words site and ideas for the forum). The forum is intended as a place for discussion of whatever goes on on the site, as well as discussion on writing in general. It also gives users a chance to get to know each other slightly better outside of just what they do on the main site. Currently I need to work on how to link the main site and the forum together (such as how to link users' accounts on each).

Any feedback can either be left here as usual or on the forums.

Proposal, presentation and research

Last week I did a presentation on my proposal for this project. There will be a video of the presentation available soon. For now, you'll have to make do with looking at my slides (which aren't exactly that helpful as I didn't exactly fill them with info) and my project proposal form.

I also completed a research project, where I looked at moderation systems used in various online communities. This serves as back-up research for the system I hope to implement as part of this project.

Notes from the red book - part 1

This will be a series of posts reproducing the notes I've made of various ideas I've had for the project that I've written down in my little red notebook. I'll also add additional notes in blue in order to clarify certain points.

Initial Ideas

Writing pages - like Wiki, but not. A website where people can post their writing. It would encourage community and collaborative working, but pieces would only be editable by the writer(s). Some elements of a wiki would be used (e.g. being able to see revisions to a piece)

- Highlight sections + add comments Allowing you to highlight a specific section of a piece and to add a comment to that section.
- Character/place/etc. links Allowing links within a piece of writing to pages that give further details about certain things relating to the "wider world" of the piece.
- Discussion pages? Discussion on comment threads? A question of whether to include some sort of forum where members can discuss various topics. Also, whether to allow comments (on a piece) to be discussed further.
- E-books - various editions Publish certain pieces as e-books (either novels or collections of shorter pieces). Allow these to be revised.
- Scraps section Like on DeviantArt. A place for unfinished/unused pieces that writers wish to post anyway.
- Creative Commons licensing Again, like on DeviantArt or Soundclick. Allow writers to define how their work is used/distributed/etc.
- Donations - pay what you want for digital copies Either charge a certain amount for the e-books or use a Radiohead-style payment model. Or offer them for free and allow users to donate to any writer they so wish...
- Later move on to publishing copies In paper book form. To be covered later in "future plans".
- E-book revisions are free If charging for e-books, allow people who have already purchased an e-book to download a new revision of it for free.