I think I might kill off The Poetry Wiki, since no-one is using it and it just provides an opportunity for spammers.
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Tag: The Poetry Wiki
Julie, in the comments a couple of posts down the page, said:
Harry,
I’ve gotten emails from people who’ve checked out the wiki and think it’s a neat idea, though none of them are playing. Yet? I hope so.
I think one reason that The Poetry Wiki didn’t take off in its previous incarnation is that, psychologically, it’s quite intimidating. It’s not quite like anything you’d normally do with poetry, and it’s hard to know how to approach it or where to start. Are you rewriting the poem drastically? Tweaking it? Trying to respect the original intention? Bouncing off it in some other way? Cutting? Adding?
Julie’s idea of posting one of Spenser’s poems as a starting point gets rid of one psychological block, because you don’t have to worry about how the original writer will react.
I might post a similarly unthreatening piece to play with later, although the best thing to do would just be to dive in and edit.
Or, to be more accurate, back in the face of overwhelming public apathy except from Julie.
Since I’ve got the spare bandwidth and everything, I’ve started a new wiki to replace The Poetry Wiki. I’ve called it ‘The Poetry Wiki‘. Original, I know. It just makes more sense to have everything in the same place.
I’ve used the Mediawiki software – i.e. the same used for Wikipedia – both because I know lots of people are somewhat familiar with it, and because Wikipedia has a lot of helpful stuff about how to use the software. You could start with the Wikipedia Help Page, for example.
At the moment it’s a blank canvas, so get in at the beginning. Have a go. Tell your friends. Jump in and make suggestions about how the site should work. Try out the editing syntax. Post some poetry.