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We Test-Drive the Diamond Car (Guidelines)

greenjudy writes:

I’ve taken a preliminary look at WordPress and I still don’t have the foggiest idea what’s going on. Naturally, I decided that meant it was time to write a page and see what happens.

I’m not sure this is the right format for guidelines or even why I’m so obsessed with creating them (control issues, anyone?). Instead of actually doing guidelines, I’m going to lay this down as a placeholder and append a rant or something.

1) Collaborative storytelling is SRS BZNS. I’m not ready to turn this into a free-for-all or even a round-robin. The people who are reading, writing, and generally participating right now have achieved a shared sensibility; it naturally varies at the edges, but where we converge, we seem to find good commonalities. As Kiya mentioned, this ability to play in an ensemble is not a given even where talent and invention exist. There’s ways to address this, and I’m not sure what I think of any of them yet.

2) If this project gains enough depth to be drawn on by others, that’s dandy. If people want to tell stories within the world, it’s our responsibility to make sure the world really is there, with unmistakable world markings, like the stripes of a tiger.

3) forgot #3

4) Who is “us?” Who ought to have the authority to edit the world, so to speak?

I’ve been in a community (the alt.cyberpunk of yore) that solved #4 in a fairly intimidating way: Contribute something the group values. Usually what the group valued was intelligence, good reading skills, inventiveness, and something much, much harder to categorize, something like an instinctive grasp of the prevailing sensibility and how to become part of it. ExMPL: I lacked science and tech chops, had rudimentary sociology chops, but wrote pretty well, which was something the community valued. Basically, you got to edit the world because the people already in the world thought your edits were cool.

(Dude, it was totally like joining a gang.)

This approach is not kindly and inclusive, like BJD_30minfic. It’s kinda law-of-the-jungly, which might not be appropriate here.

7 thoughts on “We Test-Drive the Diamond Car (Guidelines)”

  1. “..might not be inappropriate here”, perhaps?
    *g!*
    Also, my black cat wanting pets reminds me that, besides lots of pets and affection to calm it down, the Bagheera that Pen’s been trying to help may need the same antivenom that WRen is going to need from Dance.
    What this is going to do to Dance himself, I’ve not clue.
    I hven’t even figured out exactly where to post new chunks or archival chunks over here.
    ‘m hoping stella omega can help me on it!
    Also, I love getting email reminds when people post comments, over on lj, and I wonder if there’s a way of doing same here.
    I’m really struggling with the pale makrings, but I assume Stella will be able to tweak that.
    Thank you Stella for all the hard work!!

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