This is personal

pulp is built on the notion that smart folks do better work when they get to work closely with other smart folks whom they trust. And that time spent helping a colleague get through a difficult bit will be repaid, karmically at least, with interest. To that end, we work with real names; comments are not anonymous, and we won’t publish promotional material for businesses, individuals, or institutions.

Work that is multi-author, or the collaborative production of a working group, on the other hand, is right up our alley. We will set up working group names if you need them, and the full set of authors/collaborators will be attached to the WIP, Strand, or Archive.

but also a working community,
pulp is an independent entity. Built by one of the editors just as a way to support the growing community who do this work and think about what it means. We are not supported by any of our employers, schools, nor professional orginizations. We do however, have pretty deep ties to and overlap with the EPIC Community. That said, we’re always interested in figuring out ways to support the folks and the work and the field however we can. So ping us if you’ve got an idea.

of Authors, Readers and Critics.
Not everyone has a bit of writing that they need or want to work on right now. Dry spells, deadlines, treks to Baffin Bay—any of those might get in the way. The way we see it, close critical reading, suggestions, questions, and encouragement are every bit as important to what we are doing here as is primary authorship. Because of that, there are people whose main engagement with pulp is as a Critic or Reader. Honor that work. Because everyone who is listed as an “author” is committed to reading and responding to the work that their peers share.

We hope and expect that the community will grow. The editors and authors already helping to build pulp will also cultivate the community of authors. Invite folks, read ideas for new WIPs, have conversations. If you want to become an author, look here, think about it, and let us know. If you know someone you think would be a good author or critic or mentor, let us know about them and them know about pulp.

Attribution Rules!
Somewhere between footnoting everything that someone may have already written, and claiming pretty much everything since the invention of the zero as your own idea, lies the fine art of attribution, of acknowledgement and engagement with the ideas of your field, your predecessors, and your peers.

Pulp provides spots on all of the contribute pages to acknowledge those who have had an impact on the work going up, as well as more standard bibliography or reference sections. With the range of possible targets and base disciplines being so wide, we decided to forgo having a “standard” reference style. The bibliographies will, however, be searchable, and if it seems that having a standard format will increase the usefulness of the site to the community, then that’s what we’ll do.

Overall, the idea is linked to a short list of humanist values: do unto others; be honest; be generous, think of the long term. It will be good for the field. And besides, if it seems that someone is abusing the collective trust, we’ll kick their butt right off.

Argue, but behave.
That’s our version of “trust, but verify.” No ad hominem arguments, please. We like Socrates, but remember, he didn’t just fire off questions without thinking them through. Some of us have been deeply influenced by the tradition of the ‘critique’ in the arts (granted, some of us have been scarred by it too). Above all else, respect. Respect the participants of the research programs, respect the clients, not just their IP, and respect your colleagues. This is a small community. It isn’t YouTube, but like YouTube, we’ll boot you out for flagrant or pervasive violations of trust, respect, or honesty.

Sometimes, you need a little (private) space
While the overall intention of pulp is to make more work more widely available, to open up venues for discussion, we recognize that sometimes there are inarguable limitations to sharing work in progress. A number of folks have asked if we could have ‘private’ spaces for some work, with a limited number of readers/critics. It’s a good idea. However it turns out that the easiest way is a bit limited, and all the other ways are far too complicated to work.

We’re working on it. Until we get it spot on, here’s a workaround. This faux article tells you how to make a private space/workgroup on pulp.

Aging Gracefully
Alongside the commitment of the group, one of the things that makes the model of an open-ended workshop work is keeping the material fresh. On the other hand, we have built the pulp platform precisely because so many of us have such disjointed schedules and commitments. Pulp is the ‘patient capital’ approach to intellectual capital. So, we do ask that authors keep the WIPs and Strands within a reasonable horizon. If you know that you have to drop it for a while, archive it! Editors will keep an eye on the active lists, but we’d really rather not badger folks.

Add to this!
We’re just getting started (September, 2009). Try as we might, we are pretty sure we haven’t thought of everything. This isn’t a high tech site. So some of the things are going to work by having ‘protocol’ that we all understand and share. The “House Rules” (which is where you are reading this) is essentially, our working protocol for the community. We may, in the future, add a more detailed code of conduct, an, as Maria Bezaitis has called it, Hippocratic Oath for this emerging field. It would be great if it emerges organically from pulp. But it would be even better if we never need it.