Eric's Note
January 1995
I guess everyone doing editing depends upon how one means editing. The model Victor's proposed is much different than a model where an editor wants specific changes and either makes them or directs the writer to make them.
Part of what will emerge, but only from actually doing this, is a some collaborative structure which works. If we use a hypertext model, then additions become the model. But as a hypertext becomes larger and more complex, the editing decisions may have to be made in what gets linked, how and by whom.
Fred's got an essay started in the ACW homepage titled "Not Your Father's Kind of Organization" in which he's begun a hypertext on how he sees ACW forming and how the web will contribute to that. He's got a not at the end of some of the links inviting readers to send contributions to him indicating where they'd like their piece to be linked--which word or phrase from which node in the essay he's started.
That makes Fred the facilitator. Some of us worked on a proposal for 4Cs last April that used a model where folks suggested changes to me and I tried to work them in, then sent revised drafts back out to the group. Traci used a similar model in a group proposal for a workshop at CW95.
Eric's volunteered in the past to do something similar--he posted his essay on Morphing Scholars, for example. He's also collected threads from MBU and invited comment. I've got some e-mail posts generated from a cowrite on revision which topic was generated from a Netoric MOO on revision, which was generated from a conversation Tari had with a colleague about requiring revision (as I recall).
So there's much that's been attempted in various ways, but what seems to fall apart is the follow through. That could be for a number of reasons, but one underlying one might be a lack of structure. I'm not sure how to handle that, but there must be a way.
What I'd like to suggest is that since there's interest in this topic--How to create a text which uses the technology in as democratic and nonhierarchical way as possible.--that we do it somehow as we talk about it. Maybe one way to begin would be to have Eric's orginal post converted to html along with our responses and placed in the web. References to other projects (Fred's for example) can be linked where they're made. If we do as try to figure it out, when we're done we'll have practiced what we imagined as our imaginations evolved.