The Pause that Refreshes?
Well, this is all quite overwhelming, isn’t it? What a response so far - contributions from all over the world flooding in at a vast rate, almost 100 edits an hour! But this inevitably leads to some problems - keeping up with what is happening on the wikinovel is a challenge too far and, looking at the discussions, it seems that some of you are frustrated with this aspect of the experiment.
We’ve also had periodic bouts of vandalism which are valiantly being tackled by you and also by the students at De Montfort who are circling the wagons and attempting to repel all attacks as fast as they come in.
Jon too is struggling as by the time he has read the novel and written his report, something completely different has appeared on the screen.
So we’ve had the idea of creating a ‘reading window’ where we lock down the wiki for a few hours each day. (I’m thinking 12-4pm GMT) This will enable us to do some housekeeping (restore links, remove pornography (!) and Chinese (!!)), Jon to have a read of a static novel and perhaps you, the community, can also use this time to read the work so far, check in on the discussions and have a think about where the story might be heading. Above all, it will also give us the chance to catch our breath - another five and a half weeks of this might send us over the edge!
So, what do you think? Unless we get any fundamental objections we can have this in place tomorrow.
Jeremy
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February 5th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
My objection to time is that I tend to come online to add, organise, etc sometime between lunchtime and 2pm GMT - and there maybe other lunchtime writers coming in; or do you mean just locking the “main novel” allowing alternative novels to continue in the background (as, at the moment, the one I am collaborating on seems to have suffered less from the whims of the main novel - although, in part this is due to the smaller number of people contributing (I think maybe upto 5 or 6 of us))
M.
February 5th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Shoot. Do we have to remove ALL the Chinese?
February 5th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I think that’s a good plan myself - it is going bananas at the moment!
c
February 5th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Since certain people log in to make their changes at a certain time during the day that is the same time every day, would it not be a better idea for this off time to rotate to a different 4 hour period on different days, thus not denying anyone the chance to participate?
February 5th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Also, does this lock the whole wiki or just the novel section (as most of my work is on the “alternative novel 1″ which seems to miss most of the vandalism and is moving slowly, but (I feel) slowly becoming a more cohesive story. But then, effort is going into “behind the scenes” to try and push it into a direction; and people coming on to it want to contribute to the story started rather than start their own thing afresh)
M.
(I would suggest a 2pm-6pm GMT outage if we were to lock down as that clears the lunch authors (in England); as the Uni. is based in the Uk I know we’re limited to a GMT 9am - 5pm timeframe really)
February 5th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Troped : I think that Chinese or any other language can stay provided it’s justified within the context of the story. Also, it helps if people know what it says as not all of us are fluent in more than a couple of languages (And when they’re English, Australian English and American English I’m not sure that really counts
) Seriously though; I think if there is a reason that can be justified then there is no reason why things cannot be included - except for the whims of the other authors.
M
February 5th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Just seconding M’s 2pm-6pm idea.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I agree with the idea of a lock down as there is just so much to digest! I keep coming back to see what progress has been made, but don’t recognise the novel from one visit to another, which means I have difficulty reading beyond the first few chapters. I think rotating the time of any lock down is a good idea - as long as the discussion section is left open all the time. There is then no reason why lunchtime writers need to feel excluded, as this is time they could be discussing how to move forward, reviewing and considering editing as a group - a vital chore in writing any novel.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:36 am
A lock down is a good idea - necessary. But if the time rotates too much it might be confusing for everyone. What about different lockdown times on alternate days - e.g. 10am-2pm one day, 2pm-6pm the next day (or whatever combination of times suit best).
My only slight worry about a lock down is this - if the vandals can’t access the main novel at these times, do you think they’ll go looking deeper to wreak their havoc - e.g. discussion pages, or the more hidden alternative novels (assuming they’re left open)?
February 6th, 2007 at 11:50 am
[…] So, have you been to visit A Million Penguins, Penguin’s “collaborative, wiki-based creative writing exercise” yet? I highly recommend it, although they hardly need my linkages, because they’re getting up to 10 hits per second and 100 edits per hour, apparently. Which makes writing anything about their content (of which I’ve read a fair bit over the course of today) pretty pointless. […]
February 6th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
the “lockdown” like everything else happening here is part of an experiment, so lets see what happens.
maybe tomorrows lock down can be middle of the night uk time, get some volunteers to do a late night shift of editing while its happening…..
February 7th, 2007 at 8:27 am
i think that the lock-down’s a good idea. I support the idea of a rotating lock-down because don’t forget, this page is being accessed by people around the world, in different timezones. (i’m in singapore, and i’m not sure where my time stands in relation to GMT) A rotating lock-down would be most fair as (in theory) everyone would be “inconvenienced” equally. plus. the lock-down would give us all more time to digest where the novel’s going! i’ve decided to limit my current role to adding in details and editing writing style while keeping the main idea there as i’m a little lost…
February 28th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
[…] So what DOES happen when you allow the world to write one novel? I think that this post sums it up pretty well… […]