Online Collaborative Fiction Anyone?

jaxon_brooks asks: "I'm interested in doing some collaborative fiction (not interactive fiction) using a web front end to a text revision system. There is a project on SourceForge called CoElab, which stands for 'Collaborative Elaboration'. But they are in an early stage of development and have yet to release any files. Does anybody have experience trying something like this? I know Perforce and CVS are designed for coding, but would it also work for fiction? Maybe it could be the beginning of a collaborative writing community." If CVS is good enough for text documents and code, it's good enough for prose, however are there other alternatives that might work for this situation that haven't been mentioned yet?

Wikis

[phUnBalanced]

I always thought a wiki would be a great implementation of this.

I would link mine, but I don't want to hurt my poor dsl line. However I always found this link [usemod.com] useful for info on what a wiki is.

Basically it is an anonymous / identified community (however the user chooses usually) that allows usually all, sometimes most, pages to be edited by anyone else. Quite fun. Peer review is an explanation of why people don't screw the whole thing up. Also all documents can be rolled back.

Re:Wikis

[Snafoo]

Yes, Wikis are the key.

I use them extensively for personal use (homework notes, accessible from everywhere, thanks to dsl!), LAN docs (at work), and, well, for fun. :)

Two excellent wiki implementations are available from freshmeat. I'm too lazy to provide urls, but hey, you can search, that's what that 'keyboard' thing in front of you is for :). (Yes, I know I'm giving up karma by not providing useless URLs you could find on your own. *I* do not whore; I only pimp. )

TWiki:
*Very* complete environment written in CGI/mod_perl. Comes with much documentation and is nice and featureful.

PHPWiki:
Fast, minimal, 'blackbox'esque wiki. I used to use this, but I've since moved to Twiki because of the user-management features (I need them for work).

Also, check out www.wikipedia.org for an example of what you can do with the medium.

Re:Wikis (addenda)

[Snafoo]

Also, use w3m (again, search freshmeat) to view your wiki.

W3m is a fantastic text-based browser has this great feature wherein TEXTAREA elements spawn an instance of YOUR_FAVOURITE_EDITOR. This makes large-scale wiki use more enjoyable by at least a factor of five.

Trolls.

[Karma 50]

Watch out for the trolls.

They try to disrupt /., they'll try to disrupt your collaboration too

Prosebush -- Collaborative Fiction Community

[rongen]

Hi, what a great chance to plug Prosebush [prosebush.com]. This is a site where you can read and write stories with others in a wide range of genres. The stories can branch out as many times as you like so you can continue a branch or start a new one when you want to take the story in a different direction.

The community is completely unmoderated and has some non-fiction areas as well for people to discuss the site and writing in general (we have online workshops and so on).

Check it out! It may not be exactly what you are looking for but it is certainly a good place to start and may give you some good ideas...

Re:Prosebush -- Collaborative Fiction Community

[asn]

Yeah -- and don't forget the personalized story recommendations! :)

Go Prosebush!

Check out Thoughtslinger

[Leif_Bloomquist]

Something similar is Thoughtslinger [thoughtslinger.com], which "lets you and your co-workers converse, share files, and simultaneously co-edit shared documents." It's not up yet, but looks like it will be interesting when it's ready.