I've recruited a competent volunteer editor. (not me!)
(see my follow-up post on the discuss list for some of the good things
that an editor provides)
A few extra details left out of my announce post.
The volunteer editor is my partner Sara, B.C.Sc. (honours), B.A. (major
in theatre).
For now, she's going to have exclusive and final editorial control --
we're not putting out a call for people to join an editorial bikeshed
collective. What we need from other people is content and content
aggregation (pointing us at good stuff by other Skullspace members). If
submissions like these are lacking, we'll push ahead and dig though
already published content by Skullspace members, and ask for relevant
permissions in order to get a quick first issue out.
We're not going to be ambitious for size, format, and quality of our
first issue -- likely just one or two 8x11 pages with a two or three
column layout done in a word processor. We'll scale up tools, formats,
and editorial control if the project evolves that way. Publishing a
first issue in some ugly form trumps almost all other considerations.
Some of the good things we'll get from a human editor vs a big open feed
or wiki:
* Someone with writing skills who will sometimes have a back and forth
with submitters to improve the clarity and focus of content.
* Exercise editorial judgment: is the content of interest to the
members and appropriate/responsible to print?
* Exercise selectiveness, not necessarily bringing to print every
submission that has the potential to be clear, focused, appropriate, and
relevant, but also pick and choose if need be to ensure diversity of
content and conserve resources (e.g. paper, time and attention spans of
readers, editor's time)
Deriving from the last point, a focused and edited publication will give
us something condensed that can be seen broadly by members new and old.
None of us can ever expect take in everything that everyone else puts
out there, but a small quarterly publication creates greater
opportunities for there to be a few things of Skullspace origin that
that many end up seeing, some points of common cultural reference. This
is one of many things we can do to help build community.
The fact that we're going to design this for print will help in these
respects as well. We will post a link to the pdf issue each quarter to
announce, but it may very well be read at all by some subscribers and in
many cases partially. The print copies left lying around the space will
inevitably reach people who passed over them online, not to mention
guests who might not follow the links on the web or even bother visiting
our website.
Printing may be cheap -- but it is more costly than electronic
transmission, so it helps demonstrate to a potential reader that some
care and selection has ocurred prior to publication.
And I'm sure folks will be glad for the extra print materials to
supplement our pamphlet when we do promo work at trade shows.
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