Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Writer’s Circle?
Category: Suggestion BoxPlease Register or Login to check out Writer’s Circle? Back to Voting
Old Comments
Ok, I set up a Writers’ Circle section in the forum. You’re the moderator, and anyone who wants to join can click the [usergroups] link at the top of the forums (just below “Back to the Workshop”). I think the software allows them to send you a request to join the group.
I also added a category specific to the Writers’ Circle: WC Iconoclast. I’ve recognized that submitting work here can be a little intimidating because of the whole panopticon thing, so that category is specific for the WC.
Hopefully your idea will take off and grow to the point where folks see that mmore circles should be created here, and so we will grow. I set it up so that each WC will have someone in a lead role. If you’d rather not be in this leadership position, let me know and I’ll undo it.
The hardest part for me is promotions. Any ideas you have on promoting the Writers’ Circle would help. Feel free to write an introduction in the forum too. I called it Iconoclast’s Dot, but we can change that since it’s kind of corny. As the moderator, you have special powers, so check it out and see what you can do. Let me know if you have any trouble.
Dave, I have to hand it to you… that was quick and crafty. Did you know I only open my mouth these days to change feet?
Of course I’ll happily do it. I can’t very well complain that I’m not getting what I need out of the site if you give me the tools, now can I?
And that goes for anyone else who’s interested:
Dave has kindly given us extra resources to use, all we need to do is use them. I’ve started to shape out the idea, now all we need to start is you. Early birds get the additional bonus of helping decide the details of how it should work.
I’ve thrown you a pretty heavy ball… Good Catch!
There are so many things I want to say. I hope at least one of them comes across as sensible:
Everyone these days can create their own information for others to consume. This makes it hard to get attention, which is the essential problem. The conventional solution to this problem is for someone with a lot of publicity capital to direct everyone’s attention to the output of particular individuals. That’s a big problem for me because media and government sleep with each other way too much. I have a proposed solution to this problem, and that is to use a mechanism that combines the judgments of all participants to discover and promote the best material those participants can produce.
Unfortunately, I have a bootstrapping problem: My solution won’t work until it becomes widespread, but to make it widespread, it needs people’s attention. So until either I or someone else promotes my solution in the conventional way (or it grows to critical mass organically, as it is doing slowly), we have to wait.
Your suggestion was excellent because it provides another possible method of conventional promotion that I can try. I don’t know what works, and so I’m not comfortable putting a lot of effort or money into anything - well, anything besides the technical mechanism that Litmocracy provides. I think there are people who do know what works, but either they haven’t found and understood my solution yet, or they don’t think it’s very useful. I imagine it’s mostly the former.