Open Words goes live!

There now exists a working prototype of the Open Words site! It can be found over at congelical.com/openwords and anyone is free to sign up and start using it. Also, along with the forum, there's now an Open Words wiki, which has all kinds of useful stuff (or will eventually) like a "getting started" guide.

Obviously, due to the limitations of what can be done with WordPress and the available plugins, the site doesn't have every feature I might have wanted. But this is a way for me to give people an idea of how the site should work so they can tell me what they like or don't like. This is pretty much it for the practical side of Open Words in terms of my project. The deadline is in two weeks, which will be spent doing the write-up and getting feedback from users. However, this isn't the end of practical stuff completely as Open Words is about more than just making something for my major project.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to sign up and use the site!

A hell of a lot of reading

Recently I've been working on the literature review segment of the project. This is basically background reading on various things that relate to what I'm doing. This has ranged from looking at other sites involved with online publishing or collaboration to reading up things like social software and how it works. It's currently a work in progress and can be found in two Google documents. The first contains anything I've taken from articles and papers I've read (and one video I've watched). The second contains my observations of various sites. They're both full of links, so further information can be found. They'll eventually be turned into full pieces of writing, like my piece on moderation systems (which is also part of this review, though was originally done separately). As usual, comments are welcome.

In other news, I've been thinking about site documentation. I've decided it could work well in wiki form. This could also work for things like the writing advice pages. I'm going to look into how this could be set up and think about how access could be controlled (such as only allowing users with a certain level of participation in the site wiki access). Let me know what you think and whether the wiki should be public, semi-public or private.

Notes from the red book - part 4

Help pages A selection of pages intended to help users with various things. Including stuff about the site and creative writing in general.

- Writing advice/exercises Help and tips on creative writing, as well as exercises intended to improve writing skills
- user written - wiki? Help pages could be user written, possibly as a selection of articles or in wiki form
- FAQ for the site
- Manifesto about openness Talking about the benefits of collaboration and openness as well as reasons behind using open source technology, etc
- Recommendations about what to use with the site Programmes that can be used to access the site or in conjunction with it
- - Firefox (no need to write spell check programme) Firefox has a built-in spell-checker, which would remove the need to have one built into the editor
- - Commons licensing Creative Commons licensing and why to use it, etc
- - Recommend open source programmes In general, such as things like Open Office/AbiWord or Linux, etc

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.