A Million Thanks
‘The man was clearly mad! No rules? It would never work! You may as well get penguins to write a novel!‘ - from the wikinovel
So we’ve come to the end of the road and, thanks to all of you the journey has been the reward. This has been an amazing project to work on and that is because of your efforts and contributions.
Jon is going to blog about the editorial content of the wikinovel; my reading of the novel has, I’m afraid, been rather sporadic, since I’ve spent much of the last five weeks refreshing the recent changes page to see what has been added, altered and deleted in a forlorn attempt to stay on top of things. But a fifteen hour plane flight on Friday will enable me, I hope, to read it in a single sitting, as I would read a traditional novel, and I will endeavour to add some further thoughts to this blog after this.
I’ve also been monitoring the stats and wanted to share some with you now. Nearly 1500 of you have contributed to the writing and editing of A Million Penguins, contributing over 11,000 edits making this, in the words of Penguin’s Chief Executive, ‘not the most read, but possibly the most written novel in history‘. 75000 people have visited the site and there have been more than 280,000 page views.
So what of the experiment - can a collective really write a novel? I guess the answer has to be a qualified maybe. Watching the recent changes and the discussion pages and the user talk pages gives me hope - it is clear that some of you have really worked well together, discussed each others contributions and have even made plans to collaborate further in the future which is really encouraging. But clearly opening this experiment up to ‘the whole world’ caused problems - we had vandals, pornographers, spammers and any number of people who had such differing ideas about what would make a good novel that a real sense of cohesiveness was always going to be hard to achieve.
As the project evolved I think I stopped thinking about it as a literary experiment and started thinking about it more as a social experiment, and from this point of view *slips lab coat on, adjusts safety specs* my, what a great bunch of subjects you have been! The department of Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University are going to employ a researcher to write a paper on the project later in the year and boy, will he or she have some great material to work from.
So what happens now? We’re actively looking at how we can convert the 1030 pages of the wikinovel into an ebook and as soon as we work it out, we’ll let you know here and also at the Penguin Blog. We’ve also learnt a lot about wikis and about communities from this project and I hope and expect that we will see a great many more ’social’ experiments from Penguin in the future and also that we will use wikis again as a way of encouraging discussions and conversations around particular books, authors or topics.
One last thought for now - in the beginning we had Carlo, and Inu, and Mikael, then Big Tony appeared then Big Bababooey Benjy (and variants thereof) and then the whales appeared and then Jim and, well, you can see for yourselves here. This project has been exhilarating, controversial, frustrating, engaging, funny, touching and at times it has nearly driven me bananas. But one thing it has never been is boring and everyone who has contributed a character, a plotline, changed a spelling, added an apostrophe, blogged about it or even just read it can take great credit for that.
From all of us to all of you - a million thanks.
Jeremy@Penguin
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March 7th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Well said Jeremy. This has been a magnificent ending. Congrats to everyone. I am sad to see it end. But wow.. cheers everyone
March 7th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
“Editorial content?” Good luck Jon!
I ain’t seen it, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
ps. the estimated word count of the novel (front page version and its six following sections = 52,422 words
cheerio
March 7th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Now look here Martin. IF that is really your name.
This is an experiment in COLLECTIVE goodwill. An attribute you clearly do not possess one iota of.
And furthermore, I doubt if you have completed a single sentence in your time, let alone a thousand pages of digital giberish.
Congrats all round to the team, sterling job.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
I feel so sorry that it’s all over! What a wild and interesting experiment! And so successful on so many different levels. It was great to be involved. Thanks to everyone who has put so much time and effort into this.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
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March 7th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
This whole project has been a slander on my good name!
I have never met anyone called ‘Carlo’, ‘Inu’ or ‘Jeremy’.
In my capacity as chief instructor at Greenshields Driving School, I have always taken great pride in my family, my work, my name.
And now, this…
March 7th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Sir,
sure ‘opening this experiment up to the world caused problems’, as you said. But the importance of this experiment was in the freedom of expression. On the whole I found respect and collaboration. On the way maybe Penguins community found its good identity through ‘natural election’. Greetings to everyone.
Neri
March 7th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
It has been an amazing experience. I feel sorry to be losing this odd community and hope that there will be some clusters who stay together and write together.
I agree with Neri’s comments above.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Jeremy@Penguin and all future readers,
This has been a rush! Thanks for the experience, the magnificent effort, and the countless hours poured into this project. It is fun to see something that you worked on finished. Of course, now curiosity holds our imagination as we await the final format.
On a personal note to those who wonder if the withdrawal (deletion) of my own words in this or that section means a withdrawal of kindnesses, appreciation, etc. ~ nothing could be further from the truth, but rather was a continuation of my goal to lessen the “size of my footprint here” by the time of the cut-off. I even emptied my secret closet here, Nevermore, now deleted too! So nothing personal, but my warmest thanks, friendship, and appreciation to everyone I met through this endeavor.
Best always,
~ paul
March 8th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Wow. It’s over. It feels like a community center has closed down. It was an interesting ride. I look forward to what comes next from this. Thanks to the team and especially jeremy (my name too …) for your posts and overview as the wild herd moved along. A great experiment in community and open source/wiki lit.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
i *love* a million penguins! although my pet section (choose your own adventure: history) was um, only written by me, it was an interesting journey. wonder if my pandora’s box bit is still somewhere in there… thank you everyone! its been a great ride. even with the bananas, lol.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Jeremy Penguin,
“Will the real Raman please stand up?” The fourth post is using my Penguin Wiki name. I don’t mind if he, or she is allowed to do this under a different password, but I don’t want his or her ideas, edits, contributions, or more potentially negative behaviors confused with mine.
By the way, “a social experiment” is a good term for this enterprising process. I think it taught us all quite a bit about the nature of creative semi- anonymous cooperation. Many got to philosophize about their concept of what constitutes a novel, and I must say that the general view appears to be surprisingly conservative, considering the full blown evolution of post modernism and writers like Burroughs, Barthelme, Hawkes, Nabokov, Coover, Pycnchon, Acker, and Kundera. All of these fine authors comment quite considerably on the changing form of the novel, via meta-fiction and the style of their writing as a holistic process. I thought, by now, the evolving aspect of the novel as a still fertile non-linear creative process, not product, has reached the status of second hand knowledge, but once again, I am dumbfounded with a more traditional public viewpoint.
Thank you for allowing me to participate. Even if too many cooks may have spoiled the soup, none of the fun of making it was ruined.
Yours in the ever changing process,
Raman
March 17th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
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