[FM Discuss] Article for discussion: Publications are not for peers

[Andy Oram]

Michael Mandiberg's project is an important collaboration with FM.
Maybe the collaboration will give some new authority to both sides.
I'm sure somebody could write a book on gaining and using authority.
But how does it grant authority to post to FM? If anybody can start a
new book just by asking, what makes it desirable?

Maybe FM is a good place to be just because it's better organized than
the average web site (faint praise there), the layout is somewhat
better than other web-based material (I don't really think that's
true), or people know it has a lot of material.

Or maybe the free software community has come to trust the community
review process we use. If that's the case, we'd better make sure the
process works and that quality is high.

My article is still a work in progress, because I feel somehow that
peer review is a different mode from publishing, but I can't easily
draw the line. I'm treating a blog as a publication site for this
article, but the article says blogs are part of peer review. Maybe the
question is one of attitude or power relationships, not media.

Another important theme Michael put in his mail was about crossing
traditional classification boundaries. I think the publishing industry
is more open cross-boundary projects than most fields. I can see why
stores, art galleries, and even online sites have trouble carrying
items that cross boundaries. Some book categories are like that too
(Ursula Le Guin had trouble getting many of her books recognized
because they were neither fantasy nor science fiction), but our field
offers more opportunities than a lot of others.

Andy