Topic: Some Editorial Suggestions
Started by: clehrich
Started on: 10/4/2004
Board: Push Editorial Board
On 10/4/2004 at 4:51pm, clehrich wrote:
Some Editorial Suggestions
While we wait for stickies, let me make some suggestions. I'm not necessarily wedded to anything here, but some of this might be useful.
First, a central principle: the primary job of an editorial board is to keep the main editor from shouldering all of the burden.
Okay, so how do we go about doing that?
1. We need a charter. This should be fairly straightforward, and clear to all of us. Eventually, a trimmed-to-the-bone version should appear in the actual journal for all readers to see. By "charter," I mean: what is this journal? what is it about? what is its purpose? who are the contributors? what is the editorial board for? It should be positive, not negative; that is, we want to know what the journal is for, not what it is not for. Initial discussion, however, may work quite effectively by distinguishing the journal from other forums out there.
2. Following up from this, we need a statement about contributions. In particular, what if someone wants to write for Push but isn't on the board? We need to explain how submissions should happen.
3. We need a relatively consistent sense of tone and focus. This helps keep the journal from being an apparently random collection of stuff.
4. We need editors to have tasks. These need not all differ, but they should assist Jonathan in delegating work.
5. We need to know what Jonathan's special tasks are, the ones that cannot fully be delegated and for which he has final say.
6. We need to have a reasonably clear sense of what articles should look like in terms of length, rough structure, annotations, style, etc.
7. If we do reviews, there needs to be a clear process by which these get written and a format in which they appear.
Here are some suggestions:
The charter will presumably be laid out by Jonathan, but we should then debate it until we're satisfied. This is going to be almost like a contract, in that it's something that all the editors have to agree to work with.
I suggest that contributions go first to Jonathan, who then delegates them to particular editors for initial review. These reviews should follow the traditional three-way structure: publish, don't publish, publish with revision. Once the text is in "publish" form, or has been revised, it should probably go to the forum for comments and criticism, but this should not go on very long; there should be a fixed period during which this can happen so that things don't take forever. Authors should be asked to produce a maximum of 3 drafts: first submission, revision, secondary revision (on the basis of forum discussion). Whenever possible, we should cut this to 2. Editors should also have a fixed time to do the preliminary review and suggestions; if you can't take something on, you need to let Jonathan know ASAP so the piece can go to another editor. The reviewer of an article should have the option to make his or her comments anonymously, sending the review via Jonathan, but should not be discouraged from signing his or her name. This helps, incidentally, when someone sends a piece of crap; Jonathan just puts on his "Push Editor" hat and writes, "Thank you for your submission. I am sorry to inform you that it does not fit our needs for Push at this time." That, incidentally, should be a form letter, not tailored to the purpose. Contributions from editors should be handled the same way, though obviously one should not review one's own contributions!
Please note that reviewing and commenting on submissions should be the primary task of the editors, and that means such reviews should be very tough but fair. The object should always be to make the article something the author and Push can be proud of. No fair pulling your punches to be nice; be as tough as possible, though not rude or nasty, so as to push the author to produce something wonderful.
Tone is very difficult. On the one hand, a very formal, academic tone makes the thing seem like serious business, but it also reduces our audience considerably. On the other hand, a free, chatty tone may make pieces seem like rambles rather than real articles. I'd like to see a fair bit of play with tone (as in Eero's piece), but an overall grounding in a pretty formal, analytic tone, something I don't see a lot of in RPG writing. One very important point is to get some sort of reasonable sense of what is and is not common knowledge. Jargon is one part of this: LARP is probably pretty well known, but Big Model or GNS maybe shouldn't be. Acronyms should be avoided unless extremely common, e.g. LARP but World of Darkness and Wizards of the Coast. We should assume no common reading knowledge outside of RPGs.
For editorial tasks, this is really a matter of saying, "I'm interested in reading contributions on the following sort of things," so that Jonathan can send you stuff you're interested in reviewing and commenting on. Two or more of us who are absolutely confident that they can do accurate and rapid proofreading should be designated to the purpose; I will volunteer to be one of these. Such proofreading, incidentally, happens between the final submission and the publication; it should not return to the author for yet another glance over. Alternatively, we could return it to the author one last time but say that the author's task is solely to check final proofreading, which is to say that significant revisions will not be honored. Whoever volunteers for proofreading had better be damn sure he or she can fix grammar and spelling and such accurately and also do so without actual rewriting. I expect that this will be a significant job for anyone who doesn't already do a lot of this professionally, as I do, but it has to get done -- RPG writers are not notorious for their proofreading abilities, and here we have the further point that some writers are not native English speakers.
Jonathan's special tasks are pretty much up to him, but I think a few of them are certain. It looks like he's in charge of layout. He should also be solely responsible for
• Soliciting contributions
• Rejecting contributions
• Designating reviewers for contributions
• Handling arguments and fights with contributors
• Final determination of things like the charter
This helps him and us a lot, because these are things he can do ex officio, which is to say, "Because I am editor, and speaking as editor, I say...." This is then not debatable.
What articles should look like is a tricky matter in an online journal, particularly one with this topic. I suggest that a rough word-count be set, which is more effective because it eliminates layout concerns. I suggest that there be two or three article types, with their own word-counts and expected use of annotations and whatnot. A classic division is article, review article, and note, with the first being long, the second pretty long, and the third short; the content too varies, where the article provides its own basis for understanding, the review article is focused on particular other texts, and the note is locked to a very limited issue. Annotations should be in the form of endnotes, and should be limited to references and some discursive notes of extremely limited technical interest. They should not be included in word-counts, but Jonathan should reserve the right to tell an author to cut or compress annotations if they get out of hand (as in taking up 5 pages all by themselves). If full references are given in the annotations, bibliographies should be omitted except for review articles. Headings and subheadings in articles should be clear and to the point, and should actually assist navigation of a long article. Notes or whatever we call very short articles should not have such divisions.
Reviews, if we run them, should be solely composed by members of the editorial board, unless and until someday we get so "hot" that everyone wants to review for us. Unless this gets to be overwhelming as a task, in which case we'd need a review editor, Jonathan should field all inquiries and solicit manuscripts. The deal should be that Push will review manuscripts in PDF or print form only; no unfinished product will be reviewed. The author must provide this text free, with the understanding that it will only be distributed to the actual reviewer and of course Jonathan. Jonathan should then post to the forum that a manuscript has shown up, provide a link to the author's website or some other information so that we know what the text is, and wait for someone to say, "Yes, I will review this." There should be a consistent format and length for reviews.
---
Anyway, that's more than enough, but it's only a start. Sorry to belabor this kind of issue right away, but this stuff gets harder to deal with the longer you go on, so I hope we can get it all settled now. Then Jonathan can put it up with the stickies, and on the website (in a format for public consumption), and we don't have to worry about it further.
On 10/5/2004 at 12:18am, Jonathan Walton wrote:
Re: Some Editorial Suggestions
clehrich wrote: 1. We need a charter.
I was already planning on drafting a "mission statement" along with the stickies, so this one is definite. I'll throw up a draft and we can bang it around.
2. Following up from this, we need a statement about contributions. In particular, what if someone wants to write for Push but isn't on the board? We need to explain how submissions should happen.
In my mind, it works like this:
A. I'll invite people to join the board (which is implicitly opening the door for them to submit material) when I know they have something really interesting and worthwhile to say about roleplaying and/or that they'll potentially be of great help in the editorial/layout process. Obviously, I can't be constantly adding people and this takes time and thought, which is why we have other options that keep this from being some elitist club.
B. If other people want to join the board or submit material, they'll need to show that they've got something that Push wants, which means talking to me about the article that they have in mind, submitting a draft of the material, etc. I'm also thinking that, like the Diana Jones awards, people who've successfully run the gauntlet of editing and gotten their work in the journal will be asked to join the board if they like (i.e. added onto this forum). This gives us new blood and a way of keeping the journal going if the "old regulars" get buried in other projects for a few months. It happens.
C. I really think we want to de-emphasize open submissions. Talk to us about your article first, even if it's already written. If it sounds good, we'll ask you to send it to us.
D. Honestly, I'm a bit unsure about the feasibility of your highly-structured editorial cycle (send articles to me, I send them to editors, they go over them once, revisions are done, etc.), since this seems to ditch the peer editing process. Are you modeling this on traditional publishing paradigms? Because I think we're doing something a bit different here. Where the public hearing, the sharing of wisdom, the community building? My suggested model would look more like:
-- Article gets submitted to me or gets written by someone who's already a member of the board.
-- I, or the author, posts the article on the forum.
-- Peer editing happens. We talk about it. We rip it apart. We offer suggestions for putting it back together.
-- Revisions happen. If necessary, the author works with another board member who seems to have a strong interest in the article and making it work.
-- It gets sent to the proofreaders. They do their thing.
-- It gets sent to me. I do my thing.
3. We need a relatively consistent sense of tone and focus. This helps keep the journal from being an apparently random collection of stuff.
Yup. This is why I wanted a forum, actually, so we can build a community of contributors that all understand what the journal is "about" and can deliver material that feels related. Each contributor and member of the board can potentially have just as much to say on this point as I do. This takes time and collaboration, I think, but it helps that many of us already have relationships (if just from bumping into each other on the Forge and elsewhere) that we can draw on to speed things up.
This isn't Dragon or Games Unplugged, filled with articles submitted by people who don't know each other. This is a journal produced by a community of interesting roleplayers, one that our readers will want to be a part of, participating in an ongoing conversation about the nature of the hobby/medium/artform, its potential, and where it's going.
Your points about accessibility and jargon and such are already covered in the stickies.
4. We need editors to have tasks. These need not all differ, but they should assist Jonathan in delegating work.
Tasks sounds a bit harsh, especially for a volunteer outfit like ours. Basically, it sounded like you meant interests. Yeah, we should definitely have a sticky thread that consists of "Hi, I'm ________, and my interests are ________; I would be willing to do x, y, and z for Push." That way, when I get a submission or need something, I just skim the thread and start emailing people who might be able to help out.
Would that fit your bill, Chris, or were you suggesting something more formalized? I guess I'm wondering how much is too much to expect from people, but then, I'm a nice guy.
The proofreading thing is a must and I was hoping you'd step forward to help with that job, Chris. I can do some of this too, if required, but it'd be better to get professionals or semi-professionals or people who just really dig the meticulous eye thing.
5. We need to know what Jonathan's special tasks are, the ones that cannot fully be delegated and for which he has final say.
The ones you list are a great start. I'll see if I can come up with any others. I think this will doubtlessly include one final proofreading/editorial walk through the articles, but hopefully most everything will be fixed by the time I'm prepping it for layout.
6. We need to have a reasonably clear sense of what articles should look like in terms of length, rough structure, annotations, style, etc.
Check. I think having a few general length guidelines is good (short, medium, long), and standard annotations guidelines are a must. The latter was one of Ron's special requests when he and Clinton gave us this forum. He wanted to make sure that people got credit for their ideas and that you could trace the development of certain concepts if you wanted to.
7. If we do reviews, there needs to be a clear process by which these get written and a format in which they appear.
I think reviews should work like this: don't review games that you haven't played at least a handful of times. This means that we don't accept review copies of games and we don't review games that people ask us too. End of story. Yet another way in which we're going to do things differently.
Review a game only if you have something to say about it. Reviews are basically just normal articles, except they happen to focus on a particular game. We should be able to have 5 people write reviews of the same game and have them be almost entirely different and all worth reading, even if you read them one after the other. Talk about what features of the game work FOR YOU and which ones you found annoying or unhelpful. Don't generalize. Talk about your personal experience and why you feel the way you do. Tell stories. Include a bunch of examples from actual play.
How's that, Chris? More coming with the stickies, as always...
On 10/5/2004 at 12:51am, clehrich wrote:
RE: Re: Some Editorial Suggestions
I wrote: 2. Following up from this, we need a statement about contributions. In particular, what if someone wants to write for Push but isn't on the board? We need to explain how submissions should happen.
Jonathan Walton wrote: C. I really think we want to de-emphasize open submissions. Talk to us about your article first, even if it's already written. If it sounds good, we'll ask you to send it to us.I don't think it's a great idea to have "editorial board" = "people who have published or are publishing in Push." There are bound to be people with cool things to say and great articles who do not want to shoulder the burden of being editors. In the other direction, you will either end up with an elitist club, as you put it, or an editorial board that looks like a cattle-call, and there goes your carefully-crafted consistent tone and mission statement. If you want to downplay open submissions and go to invitation-only, that's fine.
D. Honestly, I'm a bit unsure about the feasibility of your highly-structured editorial cycle (send articles to me, I send them to editors, they go over them once, revisions are done, etc.), since this seems to ditch the peer editing process. Are you modeling this on traditional publishing paradigms? Because I think we're doing something a bit different here. Where the public hearing, the sharing of wisdom, the community building? My suggested model would look more like:You can do it as you like, but I warn you that what you're proposing will take a great deal more time and is more likely to annoy authors. What's bound to happen is a long discussion of every article, with very different suggestions and positions. Authors are bound to say -- and they will have every right to say -- that when push comes to shove, it's my article and you (Push) can either take it or leave it. I like the shared wisdom thing, but I do think a more distilled, focused process will keep things clearer and more effective all around.
As to "traditional publishing paradigms," yes, but those didn't get like that for lack of the internet; they got like that after many decades of trying to deal with people fighting. Traditional publication of a peer-reviewed journal must walk a tightrope between keeping quality high and keeping authors happy. I worry that what you're proposing will eventually produce neither, unless every article is in effect written by committee, which I don't think is a great idea at all.
Finally, the issue of "community building" and "sharing wisdom": well, the theory is that the community in question is a community of readers, not of the editorial board. The editorial board's job is to keep the quality and interest level high enough that that community keeps growing and keeps buying (or whatever) the journal; the editorial board's job is not to decide what is and is not "wisdom." This is the ugly, painful side of what a journal like this means: you will have to give up some ideals on one side to produce quality on another, and you need to decide which side you're going to lean on. What you're proposing is idealistic, but I just really, really doubt it's going to fly in this form. What I suspect will happen if you do it exactly like you propose is that people who are on the editorial board will read and comment on everything, sort of like a private BBS, and nobody else will care much. The task of the editorial board should, I think, be to ensure that as little as possible happens here on a private forum while what appears for public consumption is as good and stimulating as possible. In a perfect world, an editorial board could put itself out of business by being really, really good at what it does.
Does that follow at all? I don't mean to piss on the parade, but I think some really tough choices are going to have to get made, and the sooner we face them the better.
Jonathan wrote: Tasks sounds a bit harsh, especially for a volunteer outfit like ours. Basically, it sounded like you meant interests. Yeah, we should definitely have a sticky thread that consists of "Hi, I'm ________, and my interests are ________; I would be willing to do x, y, and z for Push." That way, when I get a submission or need something, I just skim the thread and start emailing people who might be able to help out.I meant to be harsh, Jonathan. You do not, repeat, do not, want members of the editorial board who are not willing to say, "Yeah, that sounds like something I ought to be doing, so I will take it on even though I suspect it sucks or will be tedious." Editing is very hard work. VERY. Let me put it this way. Suppose I've said that one of my interests is critical academic theory, right? And suppose, I don't know, Eero says the same, but you know Eero is less interested than I am. Fair enough. So somebody says, "Hey, I have this amazing article on Derrida and RPGs, 'cause it's all deconstructionist pomo, wow!" You look at an abstract or a paragraph and think, "Hmm, looks like it might be solid, but it might be nonsense. Well, Chris is the go-to guy for this." You ask me, and I say, "No, I'm busy." You try Eero, who says, "No, I am going to be riding reindeer that weekend." You go back to me and say, "Chris, how busy are you? Could you do it this month?" If I'm the kind of guy who says, "Nah, just a lot of stuff, you know? And it sounds pretty terrible," then you must throw me off the board. And nobody, but nobody, is going to tell you right now that he is going to act like this. You need, right up front, to be saying, "When I ask you to do one of the things you have signed on to do, I don't ask you to drop everything, but you have to be willing to do it within a reasonable time, which is to say X amount of time." Some folks may very well say, "You know, it sounds great, but I just can't commit to that." Fine. Thanks anyway, look forward to your contributions, hope you'll continue reading!
Am I trying to scare you? Hell yes! This is a lot of work, and a lot of organization, and you're going to shoulder one hell of a burden. DO NOT set things up such that your editors can with a good conscience make you shoulder all of it. Lay out right from the start what our jobs are, our tasks, and let us decide whether we want to do it.
Check. I think having a few general length guidelines is good (short, medium, long), and standard annotations guidelines are a must. The latter was one of Ron's special requests when he and Clinton gave us this forum. He wanted to make sure that people got credit for their ideas and that you could trace the development of certain concepts if you wanted to.Let me work on the annotation problem, OK? So far as I know, there isn't a Manual of Style format for RPGs or something very similar, but it should be possible to develop one that is clear, consistent, and efficient.
How's that, Chris? More coming with the stickies, as always...Oh, fine. I look forward to the stickies. Please don't think I'm trying to take the fun out of this or something, though I think it probably is partly my job to be the no-fun one. But this is a lot harder than it looks, and if you're thinking, "No worries, I know how hard it is," believe me, it's a lot harder.
On 10/5/2004 at 1:38am, Jonathan Walton wrote:
RE: Some Editorial Suggestions
Cool.
I guess I'm wondering whether to make this process more painful for me or for you. Frex: it's going to be very painful for me to give up my hippie ideals at this point, without even trying them out. I'm going to have to take the scapel to dreams and that's never fun. On the other hand, making you watch me attempt things that you feel are not in the best interest of the journal, knowing all the while that things would be so much better if only _____; I imagine that's going to be painful for you. This is going to be a learning process, one way or another, especially for me.
I'm also trying to decide, in my own head, where the line is between "doing something fun with a bunch of people I like and respect" and "creating a great product" is. Because, obviously, if this stops being fun, people are going to be less interested in it. That includes me too, but I'm more prepared for a substantial amount of Not Fun. Watching the amount of stress that Matt goes through with every issue of Daedalus is enough to make me rethink my approach a bit. In the end, is it the process or the product? Obviously it's both, but you're leaning strongly towards "product" while I'm hanging out in the center. Maybe we can play Good Cop - Bad Cop on some of this stuff and make the journal stronger by disagreeing. I'm not saying I won't bend some of my naive ideals to your harsh reality (and loads of experience), but you can't expect me to give up ALL of them at this early stage of the game. Is that fair?
Can I offer you a semi-official journal position as Head Bad Cop or Asst. Editor in Charge of Asswhuppin'? You seem to want it and since you were on top of the original Players' Guide concept from the beginning, I think it's only fair. Besides, hopefully our Yin-Yang approach to things will work well together (it has in the past, I think) and provide a bit of contrast. And then I won't feel bad drafting you to help with the style and annotation guidelines :)
In any case, I'm glad that we're sorting this out in the Push forum for all the board to see. See this? Yes, we care deeply about making this work. Yes, we disagree (sometimes strongly) about what this is going to entail. But our mutual respect and comittment keeps us working together to make it happen. This is why this journal is going to kick ass. Synergetic pluralism, baby! Can't beat it with a stick.
On 10/5/2004 at 2:09am, clehrich wrote:
RE: Some Editorial Suggestions
Good Cop - Bad Cop probably makes sense, but why don't you hold off giving me a fancy hat and a swagger stick until the stickies and so forth are a little more firmed up. I'm thinking, in fact, that it's probably better to start with the naive hippie ideals and get everyone galvanized. Then maybe I can do my celebrated Goebbels impression, which comes with a nifty tap routine.
Most of what I've been saying is really about making sure you don't saddle yourself with a lot more burden than you have to. There's a lot of work here, and we should help with that; I'm willing to join in on that. But don't be wishy-washy about asking, up front, or suddenly the shit will hit the fan and you'll be looking around going, "Um, guys? I thought there was a gentleman's agreement? Hello? Bueller?"
Anyway, I'm going to shut up about business for a bit and see what else happens around here. I'll tentatively take that swagger stick, but let's see if you actually need to hand it out.
On 10/5/2004 at 3:11am, Jonathan Walton wrote:
RE: Some Editorial Suggestions
Sounds like a plan. Thanks, Chris.