Philotic Web

Eee!!! That's way exciting.

Oh God. Oh God. I'm not allowed in here, so I'm just going to drop this for whoever and run screaming from the thread.

Hi Alea,

Thanks to write and for your interview offer. I would love to do it, except that I think it would be a little dificult for me if it´s a spoken conversation podcast, I´m not that confident with my English. What I can do is offer you if interested, a written interview. It´ll be my pleasure to do it.

Let me know if it works for you.

Thanks and good luck with the website!

That is from Sebastian Fiumara. He works on the comics.

http://sebafiumara.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

*runs screaming from the room*

.

Listen, the movie is ramping up. Ender fans are going to need and want a place to go for news and interviews of this type - If things don't begin getting organized and happening, I may just have to set up a blog front page myself that can at least be temporarily and immediately used for awesome stuff like this until something more permanent is set up, or worked into it.


This is great! This is what PWEB was made for! Let's do it! the Enemy's Gate Is Down!

Wait a second. WHAT IS THIS. WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?

Oh, Alea. Look! Magic!

*The purpose of this post is NOT to step on any toes. It's NOT to hurt anyone's feelings. And I'm sorry if I'm saying stuff that has been said by someone else.....my memory is shot these days and I can't go back and reread everything that has been said on the topic. Also, I am not in a frame of mind to debate points and defend myself at this time, so if you feel differently, just propose something else and I won't be offended.*

I think we need a committee to get this website done. I feel like we've been trying the whole-community-gets-a-vote thing, and nothing actually gets done. If there is no leadership, nothing will get done. There are WAY too many little decisions that need to be made and if no one is in charge, than nothing will get started in the first place, and even if things DO get started, if we vote on each and every little decision, progress will be too slow to ever accomplish anything.

Here is my proposal:
We need a committee that is in charge of this thing.
-Obviously we need techy people who can actually make things happen. We have a great team of techs. Are you guys on board with being on a website committee? Any other techy people want to be involved?
-We need experience. I propose Dave, if he's up for it. He's the original vision of this site. He's been involved in getting content and interviews and announcements. He seems excited about the website taking off again and just offered to put in a place holder on the front page. The committee could really benefit from relying on his experience.
-We need someone to keep the committee responsible to the community. Someone to report to the forum what is going on in the committee and to voice the communities concerns and approvals in committee meetings. Someone to say to the committee "Ok, now we are at a voting point for the whole community." This person would also moderate those votes on the forum. As the heart of our community, I would recommend Alea for this position, but I'm not sure she would be willing to do such a thing until after December. Does anyone want to volunteer or nominate someone?
-I think we should have at least one of the Mods on the committee since they are people we have voted in with trust. They can help sticky any voting threads and "moderate" committee conversations if/when they get heated.
Decisions will be made with the entire committee, not leaving anyone out of conversations.

Right now, we need someone to take this interview and run with it. I think Alea is perfect for the job, since she has been amazing at making contact with key people when we need it and did an awesome job with the Spotlights. Again, I don't know if she'll agree to do it. If she wants to just pass it off, we need someone to do it. Does anyone want to volunteer? (No, I can't volunteer. See comment on my frame of mind at this time. If that seems hypocritical to you, PM me and I'll fill you in as to why I can't right now. Alea and Kirsten can verify this also.)

Once we have the interview done , we'll need a place to put it. Since the website won't be ready for some time, I say we take Dave up on his offer for a temporary front.

Anyone else have ideas or improvements or suggestions or proposals?

I am so, so sorry that I made it necessary to add in all those qualifiers and disclaimers. I feel rather awful about that, still, as well I should. As such, I just wanted to pop in and say I read your suggestions, I don't feel it would be fair or right of me to offer opinions on it either way, but thank you so much for continuing the conversation.

I did offer Taal any assistance he might want from me, before you posted, because he seemed most enthusiastic and what I lack in sense or maturity I make up for in enthusiasm, myself; if he wants to channel that, I'm up for it. I will accept Sebastian's offer to do a print interview and turn over whatever I get from that to Taal.

I'll let the powers that be make their decisions one way or the other and for crying out loud, please do not feel at all obligated to include me on any sort of committee if you all have doubts about my stability. Yes, I'm going in December to get my head straightened out but I won't be miraculously cured that day, so I'll understand if you feel I need to sit this one out. Basically, feel free to utilize me but don't feel obligated to do so.

Alea, you should know me well enough to know that I've always done qualifiers like that on post like this, since I'm always afraid of offending people. It wasn't your fault.

I would be very glad to vote you on the committee. I don't think anyone here has the heart that you do for pweb or this project. You'd definitely be my number one vote. I just didn't know how YOU felt about it and I didn't want to assume what your feelings were on the matter. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

Yes for Taal and Alea. I'd be happy to be on the committee as the mod, as I have the time. Just throwing it out there.

I want to make something VERY clear.

I have no desire to usurp, or step on anyone's toes. I recognize my lack of place within the current community. I do not desire to assert rights as a mod when it comes to board administration.

What I do want to do is be a facilitator, and perhaps organizer, and delegator. I do not even want to be a primary poster of the content - I want that to be you.

If there's ever a point when we need to abort, by all means, let me know.

As a first step, I'm going to go ahead and setup a wordpress blog with a very basic theme that I'm sure we'll edit and tweak.

To begin, I see the following key categories for the standard Reporting/News update posts: (titles are descriptive, not final labels)

* Novels and Stories
* Comic and Graphic Novels
* Games & etc.
* Movie
* Ender in the Press/Media
* Event Notices (Book signings, gatherings, special events, etc)

Those are basic, and generic. They are also what people would subscribe to in order to get the latest news, and what would initially drive traffic to the site. At the moment, this alone would be slow, and not generate much content (Although posting collections of those YouTube videos of the Ender Auditions, and perhaps having polls and battles over who the viewers like the best could be fun). Eventually, as the movie rolls out, clearly each of these elements will have much more activity.

An important part of keeping the site relevant and useful will not just be its use as a news aggregator (although that's what will initially draw people in), but as an expression of the Ender Fan Community. Try to come up with some suggestions for some regular features/columns that would be of interest to Ender fans, and keep them coming back even when there's no new Media news. Check out some of your favorite fan sites for some suggestions.

Also: To make things manageable, to begin, I'd suggest having one key individual assigned to each of the News Categories, as being the 'Boss' of that section, and the one who would be in charge of content for that section. They can delegate and give permissions and assignments out, but at the end of the day, they would be in charge of that Category. When the movie heads into further production, of course we'll expand it into wider categories. But for now, to get started, I think having 1 person to 'own' each category above - who is willing and able to put some effort into some investigation, keeping tabs on updates, pro-active inquiries, etc -.

If there's no objection, I say we go the route of volunteering for those positions. Adjustments can always be made later if needs be.

If you're volunteering for a News Story, you should be either already generally familiar with that category, or willing and able to become familiar. (IE, if you want to be in charge of books and stories, you should be familiar and up to date with all the stories, such as IGMS, etc --- if you want to take comics, have familiarity with the comic titles, etc.). And if you know someone not involved on the boards here who you think is qualified, by all means vouch for them, and we'll see what we can do.

Please don't share this link yet with the Outside World:

To show that I'm serious about this, I've set up a basic framework over at http://thephiloticweb.net, along with a couple sample posts, not designed at all to be actual finalized news items, but just examples of concept.

Alright. Who wants to take responsibility of what and start discussing it and making it real?

My nocaps logo will beat your allcaps logo in a fight.

Heh. That's actually how I write. I haven't used lowercase letters in handwritten stuff in...over a decade.

Again, the logo that's up can certainly just be a placeholder.

Before I start with my part, to clarify, Steph's suggestion for a committee was not meant to suggest a committee was responsible for continual, long-term research, creation, and addition of the actual content itself but rather a suggestion that a committee, with you at the helm, brainstorm the type of content we'd like on the site and then propose/develop a structure around that, just to get things started. She intended all along for the actual content creation and additions be volunteer based. If that makes sense.


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Dave, first off, I’ve told you this privately but your enthusiasm for this project is refreshing. Second, I do not mean what I am about to say as anything more than hopefully helpful information to mull over. I do not intend them to be criticisms of anyone, they are not meant maliciously, it is just observations from my attempts over the past year to get this off the ground.

I don’t know of a better approach than to ask for volunteers, really, what more can be done, but I do think the end result will be more of what has happened in the past. Most members aren’t the fans they once were, were never that great a fan to begin with/don’t care enough to want to, or don’t have the time to dedicate to something like this. Having one person become the “owner” of a category is fine, so that someone is held accountable and can keep track of progress, but I do think people who do volunteer should be given the option of jumping around as their interest, time, and ability to go more or less in depth permits.

People may only be able to do basic Google searches or submit bits and pieces; I think asking people to become an expert in an area is going to sound a little intimidating and to be honest, whether or not that is intimidating, I think the pool of willing and able is all present and accounted for in Nomi, myself, and you – though I hope others do come forward, to help either with content or any needed tech assistance. Wil did state he’d possibly attempt a new banner but I don’t believe he’s interested in extended assistance-giving after some of the behavior over the past year. Basically, I see this attempt having the same issue that we’ve had: not enough volunteers right out the gate.



My second, general comment is, I’m wary about anything being done now (including but not limited to appearance) with the attitude that it can be changed/fixed down the road because, and I don’t believe this is an unfair comment to make, we have a tendency to let things go for years at a time unless people raise a fuss (usually me, from my perception of things). With a more motivated, more dedicated group of people working on this, waiting to get things right or letting it evolve with time would be a no brainer but with us, it’s just been my feeling that we want to go for the best, “permanent” or “final” product we can upfront in case the same old, apathetic, “Something temporary is fine for now” holds for longer.



I hope that doesn’t come across as any sort of personal attack. I just wanted to have that out there, as concerns/thoughts.



As for me, I don’t feel competent in any of the areas you mentioned and I’d sure as heck try to become more knowledgeable on them but it seems like a rather large learning curve; I don’t know that I would feel more confident with any one area over the others. I think I’d do best with more freedom to jump around, if you didn’t catch that in what I wrote up top. I'll have to think on this more, see where others' interests lie, if anywhere, and maybe hear a bit more before I can decide for myself.

I love this idea! And maybe sometime in the future I'll have enough time to contribute meaningfully, but I really don't right now.

I would be willing to be a part of a brainstorming committee, if needed, to get things up and running. I'm with Alea on this one--we'd be better off getting a more permanent-looking thing right from the start than a temporary thing we fix later.

I don't feel like I'd do a very good job of managing a news category, but I can help with putting together some of the background. I know a lot of that has already been done, but I'm a lot better at working with things that are already there than trying find out a bunch of new information.

Does this help put at ease your sensibilities a little?

Not at all.

I've been playing around a little tonight. But I'm done for the night. It's nowhere near where I'd like it, but I'll play with it some more later. (I'm not happy at all with the font style, size, etc)

I've been doing this all wrong.

Wil, would you like me to set you up an admin account that would let you get in and get full control of the templates/design? I would be happy to turn design and design implementation over to you.

I thought to myself, "Why don't I just install WordPress on the philoticweb.net server, so Taal doesn't have to play in his own sandbox all by himself?"

Then I remembered that our sandbox does not have up-to-date versions of PHP and MySQL...

You too, Wind Swept. Any of you who have expressed an interest in contributing technical and design work on the site, head on over to the other thread, talk about it, and we'll get things set up.