Thoughts from the general direction of Terje Bless:
It occurs to me as I read «A “Second Renaissance?” Well, Maybe a Little One» that this was the article on the Oxyrhynchus manuscripts that I really wanted to read; not the incessantly duplicated dross that went before it. The link came from the #swhack Weblog, with some helpful commentary from sbp. This isn't a unique occurrence for the crowd in #swhack; with such a collection of bright and diverse people it's quite often one of them will come up with a link — including commentary — or even an original article that piques my interest. Often despite my utter lack of interest in the topic in general!
Following that train takes me to the disenchantment I feel for where traditional newspapers and journalism have degenerated to, and for the insufficiency of “New Media” — Blogs, Webzines, etc. — to replace them. In the “Golden Age,” an article would be well-researched, comprehensive, and frequently opinionated; whilst editorials and letters to the editor might carry running debates between the luminaries of the day. The format for the latter tends to encourage more care taken in the writing, and the context — of wide publication in a society where competition for attention has not rendered it moot — the same for the opinion.
The new media approach to this problem has typically been a reputation system of sorts, mostly one based on automation or some form of technical aide. But whether filtered through some kind of vote-based system (@@FIXME: should have link to example;), or spit out raw — like the #swhack Weblog — from the input of a group of peers, these still reflect the battle for attention spans rather than the measured deliberation of wide publication. Essentially, they all seem to turn into link Blogs.
I'd like to see ressurected the good properties of traditional newspapers. Perhaps not the strict periodical schedule, and perhaps not the sometimes awkward writing styles. Certainly not the dead tree format (I'm a technologist afterall!). But somewhere around here there is an idea for a new kind of publication; a format and set of tools that encourages creating the content that I most want to see.
As sbp put it; “The Periodical Weblog”.
I picture the format of a Periodical blended with a Weblog, and using the toolset of a Wiki. I imagine the #swhackers would provide a fertile pool to draw material from, and, given their diversity, ideally suited to lure in more readers-qua-writers. The highly individualistic tendencies — a great asset, generally — would pose a challenge; so the format would need to be mapped out, and the expectations clearly defined. The most difficult problem would seem to be the effort required and this is probably where one would need to focus attempts at optimizing; tradeoffs in the format and toolset to favour the writers' lazyness. Possibly, lack of a fixed schedule — dispensing with deadlines — would allow the average effort to decline; and topic specialization avoid the escalating complexity of aiming for comprehensiveness. The sheer number of potential contributors — 35+ at last count — should also lessen the pressure on any one of them, and hopefully there would be more over time as readers are encouraged to contribute.
And on that note, I give to you: «Blue Moon» — The ZineBlogPeriodicalWiki. :-)
